Not to worry.

To the casual Web surfer, Pollstar.com came into existence 75 years ago when we launched our tour database of bands like Aerosmith and Schleigho on the unsuspecting digerati of the Great Depression. However, what you may not know is that we’ve been tracking the never-ending story of date, city, state and venue for over 200 years, ever since we published that first Joan Rivers itinerary in what was then known as Colonial America.

How do we do it? How do we cover all the expenses of bringing you dates for great acts such as International Extreme Music Festival and The Juliana Theory on a daily basis? How do we keep from teetering on the abyss of financial devastation like so many Silicon Valley ventures of late, whose names you’d be hard pressed to remember even if one of them was the answer to the million dollar question and you had all of your life-lines left?

One of our major revenue streams is the Pollstar.com store. Described at times as a cyber Saks 5th Avenue or a virtual Neiman Marcus, we like to think our little corner of e-commerce more closely resembles those gift shops you’ll find in the better truck stops and Howard Johnsons across the country. The kind of place where you can pick up a Backstreet Boys T-shirt or a matchbox twenty hat as well as a glow-in-the-dark “My son is a booking agent for William Morris” bumper sticker.

However, we are not immune to the dot-com shake-out. While the widely reported eBay auction of our half human / half Vulcan chief of I.T., Mr. Ivan, proved to be a hoax started by a demented Vanilla Ice groupie, we must admit that the bear market has forced us to put some of our future plans on hold.

For instance, we had to cancel our plans to bring you Pollstar.com Land, an amusement park where families could enjoy a total concert industry experience. Our plans included a 20,000 seat venue where we would have the biggest artists, like John Mellencamp, The Irish Tenors and U2 playing nightly. Keeping with our concert industry theme, we would rename the venue for whoever could cough up the bucks for corporate sponsorship. One year it may be called “The Pollstar.com Verizon Pavilion,” or the “Pollstar.com Tweeter Center of the San Joaquin Valley” or “Pollstar.com Pick-A-Part Auto Wrecking Yard (By The Bay).”

So when the next dot-com monolith implodes under its own debt-ridden weight, rest assured, Pollstar.com will still be here. We’ll continue to bring you the latest dates for David Grisman Quintet and Lake Trout. Our store will carry the best ‘N Sync merchandise at reasonable prices, and we’ll never sell your private data to mass market spammers. At least, not at the current prices they’re offering.

We’d also like to take this opportunity to apologize to all the eBay users who were taken in by someone’s idea of a practical joke, for we would never, ever sell anything via online auction.

And we have a very special message for the person who was the highest bidder for our chief of I.T.

Your check bounced.