![]() ![]() If the booth was an attempt to stabilize the neighborhood, it is a still a sign that the city is open for business - important steps after events like 9/11, Superstorm Sandy and the coronavirus pandemic. I always get a kick out of that,” says Mayers. “I noticed whenever you see movies of the ‘70s or ’80s and they’re in New York, there’s always a scene in Times Square or Duffy Square where the camera goes by and you see the TKTS booth. Their influence can be seen in the abbreviated, vowel-less apps and company titles of today - Flickr to Unbxd and DNCE. Instead, it won design awards and lasted decades. They thought it would stay up for a year or two, at best. It was supposed to be light hearted, related to the theater and make a visual statement in a very busy place." “It’s a very theatrical kind of vocabulary,” says Mayers. They wove a translucent plastic fabric with the iconic logo among the bars and clamped spotlights on the frame. Mayers and Schiff were given just $5,000 for the capital budget, and they rented scaffolding to go around the booth. “They wanted to do an experiment because the area was in disrepair.” “Broadway was falling apart then,” says Robert Mayers, who with business partner John Schiff designed the booth and the logo. The neighborhood was different then - seedy and dangerous. It opened for business on June 25, 1973, using an abandoned trailer donated by the Parks department with holes punched in it for ticket windows. ![]() The first booth was a temporary experiment that stuck in Times Square. TDF created satellite TKTS booths in Brooklyn, at the World Trade Center and in Lincoln Center, as well as helped develop booths in Boston, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Denver, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Toronto, London and Sydney. ‘Kimberly Akimbo, ‘Shucked' & more shows see box office rush after Tony wins But it happens more now, and I love it,” says Ann Ramirez, a TKTS supervisor. That’s something that didn’t happen as often before. “There’s so many people that keep coming back even after the pandemic and will stand on that line to come and see shows. Jay-Z and Keys may have had the steps to themselves in their video, but it is ordinarily a very crowded place. The current glass-enclosed booth opened in 2008, part of an $18 million renovation project that evokes a Greek amphitheater or Rome’s famous Spanish steps, where visitors can sit on the 27 steps and watch the street scene. Despite the rise of online rivals and apps hawking discounted theater tickets, lining up at the booth is as fundamental as cooing over the Statue of Liberty or taking a photo with a nearby costumed Elmo. Some 68.6 million tickets have been sold from the booth during its 50 years, with more than $2.6 billion going back to the shows. The theater gets all the ticket revenue and TDF gets a $7 service fee per ticket, which helps fund its education, community and outreach programs. Thousands of tickets are sold at the booth every day as the various commercial theater box offices calculate how many full-price tickets they can sell and then send the rest to TKTS. About 30% of the people who line up are first-time Broadway theatergoers. It's a discount ticket booth where same-day Broadway and off-Broadway shows can be more affordable for those who balk at prices pushing past $300 a seat for some musicals. ![]() Get Tri-state area news and weather forecasts to your inbox. ![]()
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