C.J.: Dr. Crutchfield wants to be paid for bad Sade experience

A cameraman's behind got in the way of Twin Cities dermatologist Dr. Charles Crutchfield III's family's "world-class experience" at a Sade concert at Target Center in 2011.

Crutchfield sued the NYC ticket broker in Dakota County District Court and earlier this year won a judgment of about $2,000. Now all he has to do is collect.

"I wanted to expose my children to great music, so they have an appreciation for it," Crutchfield told me. "I got four tickets, front row — my wife, my 13-year-old daughter and 10-year-old son — so they could experience some world-class music. I thought if I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it right."

The Eagan dermatologist thought he had the ultimate hookup for good seats after seeing a piece on CBS' "60 Minutes."

"I saw this [segment] that said, Hey, have you ever wondered, at a big sporting event like Wimbledon, the Super Bowl, who those people are in the front row in the middle and how they got those seats? Well, this is the guy who gets them for you. This is the guy, Ety at Inside Sports and Entertainment Group, who can get you the tickets.

"A couple weeks later I thought, 'I'm going to call this guy and get tickets for Sade.' Called them, got front-row seats and the whole time there's a cameraman standing in front of us. Butt crack. Plumber's crack," said Crutchfield, who can laugh about it now. "I thought, 'Oh, man.' My ears were getting warm to hot. Finally I told the usher, 'This is just unacceptable. Can't you get this cameraman to move?' She said, Can we move you to a better seat? I said, 'I guess, if you want to put me up on the stage. What's a better seat than where I am? Get the cameraman to move.''

Afterward, "when I contacted the place that was supposed to give us a 'world-class experience,' they said, We're just ticket brokers, we're not responsible for what happens there. I thought, 'That's not right. You guys have gone out and marketed yourselves as selling the 'World-Class Experience' and now you're saying you're just a ticket peddler? Give me a break," said Crutchfield.

No deal, said Crutchfield. "I said, 'Either make it right or we're going to have to take you to court.' And we won a judgment against them. We had a trial and they had a judgment for not showing up."

So far, Crutchfield said, he hasn't seen a dime. "Right now we are in discussions with an attorney to come up with a strategy to recover it," Crutchfield said. "At least it's on record and on the Internet that they are not the nice group they pretend to be."

I called InsideSEG and was surprised to get a guy on the phone who said he was Ety Rybak, a co-founder and owner of the company. When asked for a comment on the Crutchfield matter, Rybak said someone would call.

Al Schreiber did. We had a lovely chat, which Schreiber followed up with an e-mail a few days later that read:

"C.J.: Inside Sports will not be commenting on this. Thank you."

Chef Hodari Coker, a writer and successful TV producer, included the essential fact — "The guitar belonging to the Roots musician 'Captain' Kirk Douglas" — before scribing these preposterous words:

"Then Prince threw it in the air after his performance and broke it — but that might have been his point. The guitar would never sound the same after what Prince had just done to it."

Yes, he's one of the greatest ever to play a guitar, but that's just piteous and still not respectful of the property of others. As you may recall, Symbolina apologized to Douglas, eventually.

C.J. can be reached at cj@startribune.com and seen on Fox 9's "Buzz." E-mailers, please state a subject; "Hello" does not count. Attachments are not opened.