Dave Chappelle sells out Eugene show in a snap

If you want tickets to see the popular comedian Dave Chappelle at 9 p.m. Sunday at the McDonald Theatre, too bad.

Tickets went on sale at 6 p.m. Friday and all 750 at $50 each were gone within a half-hour, McDonald owner Kit Kesey said Friday night.

“This is the quickest we’ve ever sold a show out,” he said.

Not bad considering no one, not even Kesey, knew Chappelle would be playing here until about 2 p.m. Friday, Kesey said.

“The word that we got was Dave was in town and maybe had some bus trouble and maybe wanted to do a show,” Kesey said.

Seriously?

“That’s actually the word we got,” Kesey said. “I don’t know if they were joking.”

The theater posted the announcement just after 4 p.m. Five hours later it had 103 “likes” and 37 comments such as, “OH MY GOD!!!” and “OH SNAP” and “YES!:)” and “bs” and “SICK!!!!” and “Too bad I spent all my money on Batman.”

Chappelle, 38, had his own TV show on Comedy Central from 2003 to 2005, “Chappelle’s Show,” that was extremely popular. But he stunned the entertainment industry when he abruptly decided to quit just before the third season.

Kesey speculated that because Chappelle is doing a show in Portland today, and his bus broke down here en route and he couldn’t get a part until Monday morning, why not do a show in Eugene?

But Internet postings on Friday indicated that tonight’s show at the Newmark Theatre in Portland was also a spur-of-the-moment thing with tickets going on sale Friday.

This is not the first time Chappelle has done this in Oregon. He did an impromptu post-midnight show in Portland’s Pioneer Square in July 2009 after word spread via Facebook and Twitter.