March 2007
Open Letter to the Boss
By David Michaels

Dear Bruce,

I am writing to thank you and the E Street Band for your epic performance several weeks ago in Washington, DC. The last time you played at a venue as small as my P Street apartment was probably back in the late 60’s at Asbury Park’s Stone Pony. From the opening chords of The Rising to the final soulful notes of Thunder Road, you carried my living room crowd on an unforgettable journey of rock and roll.

Please accept my heartfelt gratitude for allowing Alex Fleming, a first-year Strategic Studies concentrator at the Johns Hopkins University Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), to work the door and keep order in the crowd. He was instrumental in providing a collective security arrangement. As the concert was sold out, the lady working the front desk of my building doubled as the “Will Call Window Agent,” distributing authentic bar-coded tickets only to those on the guest list, thus eliminating the free rider problem. While blowing us away with Dancing in the Dark, you may not have noticed that marginal utility paradoxically increased with the admission of each additional wrist-banded fan. The backstage area and VIP lounge helped to accommodate the large crowd, capturing our consumer surplus. Although the concession stand was limited to my 25 square foot kitchen, Southeast Asia Studies concentrator Nancy Tran helped us reach the optimal equilibrium of supply and demand for beer and soft pretzels.

I’ve been a huge fan of yours for quite some time, but this show was absolutely unlike any of your previous 17 concerts that I’ve attended. In such an intimate venue, you reached into my soul, and for two and a half hours made me forget that anything existed outside the walls of Apartment 402. When I turned around during Born to Run to see a packed house, fists pumping, and a mesmerized crowd screaming your lyrics in unison, I knew the moment was perfect.

I will never forget that night. If only it were you there instead of the October 16, 2002 Live in Barcelona DVD.

Yours truly,
David Michaels