Devoting as much as 30 hours a week to the venture, Barstis supports himself through real estate deals and a part-time job as a financial analyst at a development firm while he tries to build up the organization.
One recent morning, he worked the phones and fired off e-mails in the home office of his Georgetown condominium. Individuals and groups e-mail him with information about available tickets. They include sports teams and arts organizations with blocks of unsold seats, business people with tickets to the corporate box they cannot use and individual ticket holders.
Michael Barstis hosts Keideshia Parker, left, Corryne Gussom and Brishell Jones at a game.
(Susan Biddle -- The Washington Post)
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In turn, Barstis e-mails 150 schools and other programs that work with low-income kids in the District, telling them what's available. They are so hungry for the tickets that he can give away some of them as little as two hours before an event.
That morning, Barstis puzzled over an offer from a Delaware wrestling promoter for tickets to "any of our live events on our schedule." It didn't sound promising. Barstis cannot provide transportation, nor can many of the groups he works with -- and, he added, "I don't know what kind of cultural education a kid gets from going to a minor-league wrestling match in Delaware."
Earlier this year, he was offered two tickets to the college football national championship game at the Orange Bowl, but with no money for airfare, he had to turn them down.
An easier sell were 100 tickets, donated by Discovery Theater, to two performances of "Aren't I a Woman," about women's rights activist Sojourner Truth. Barstis checked his e-mails, seeking replies to the offer he'd sent out the previous day. Several had bounced back.
He got on the phone. Within minutes, the Hyde Leadership Public Charter School, the KIPP DC: KEY Academy and the School for the Arts in Learning had snapped them up.
"There you go," Barstis grinned.
For many kids, the gift of tickets turns into a life lesson.
At the Georgetown basketball game Wednesday night, the half-dozen girls pranced around the suite, checked out restrooms and trouped to the snack bar with coupons distributed by Barstis.
"Can I buy a wristband?" seventh-grader Michelle Mays asked, pointing at an advertisement for a $5 Hoya wristband on the scoreboard.
Teacher Amy Norris, who had accompanied the group, pointed out that the plastic trinkets cost more than the usual $1.
Buy one "if you feel it's worth it," she told Michelle. "I don't want to talk you out of it."
Michelle decided it wasn't worth it.
As the second half rumbled along, Norris shouted, "What's the score, girls?"
The chattering students sneaked glances at the scoreboard.
"44-25," somebody yelled.
"Just checking," Norris said with a grin.
Even if they neglect the game, such events are invaluable to the girls, Norris said. It teaches them time management -- some take Metro to and from the events -- as well as punctuality, dressing appropriately and other life skills, she said.
Even more, "for a little while, they're an equal," she said. "Today, even more than an equal: sitting in a box seat."
