No, I didn't take this video, unfortunately. I didn't get any actual pictures of the artists at the concert because I didn't have my camera. I was too afraid of losing it. I'm actually happy that I didn't bring it in though because if I would of, I would of potentially spent the entire time trying to get good pictures and wouldn't of been able to enjoy it.
The drive up there was pretty smooth. We stopped at Applets and Cottlets and I actually ate a cheeseburger, and broke the pescatarian thing again. For some reason I craved it really bad, and there weren't any other options really at the gas station besides hot dogs that ALSO broke the rules. I really didn't have much of a choice because I needed to eat something that was going to fill me up for an extended period of time. I didn't know how long it was going to take to get to Seattle from there.
Everything she got in this picture was only $9-- just as much as how much my meal costed, but look how much food she got. She got some soup, kimchi, rice and beansprouts... plus a coke. Versus my old boxed sushi and onigiri. I should of either gotten one of those fresh Bento box things, or something at the Korean place, or even pad thai... Luckily, she got a ton of food so she shared with me. The soup was INCREDIBLY good. I thought it was going to be too spicy but it actually wasn't at all. It was super full of green onions, kimchi, and other deliciousness. I didn't really like the slimy noodles in there, though, but they were only at the bottom. They were clear and it sort of creeped me out.
The sushi that I got that was very yucky. Looked good, but I had to put a LOT of ginger and soy sauce on it to make it even edible. The rice was too wet, like the yucky stuff they sell at Winco. The fish tasted cooked.
After we left Uwajimaya we went to Daiso, I blew $21 on crap I didn't need but loved regardless, and headed back to my car. There was this black woman next to us, taking a nap in her car with her dog. I wanted to change clothes but we were afraid that someone would walk by and see me, so I made sure the coast was clear before I started stripping. It was sort of awkward, because there was this guy walking around trying to get people's tickets off their car, but he only bugged us once.
I changed into a black tank top, a dyke-y plaid shirt, and jeans. Originally I was wearing shorts. It was cold and windy outside, but I had to wear something light enough to survive in the concert, but still enough coverage to keep me from being miserable in the wind.
This is where things get a little weird. Me and Katelynn drove to find Key Arena, and when our GPS said we were only .9 miles away, we decided to just go find a parking spot and do the rest on foot. We found a place that was $12 for 10 hours, which sounded good to us. It was sort of in a richer area of Seattle, on a hill, near some construction. It was on Bell Street. When we parked, we decided that we were going to take our purses and such with us to go find Key Arena and then bring it back once we found it. It was still early at this point, around 2' PM. There was hardly any line.
We wandered. For what seemed like hours, unable to find Key Arena. We asked for directions a multitude of times, and passed the stupid Science Center again and again and again. Eventually, we realized it was by that big fountain and EUREKA! WE FOUND IT. Then we realized... oh shit, how do we get back to the car? Neither of us wrote down the street, but we figured we'd be able to retrace our steps. Negative. We walked for a couple miles to get back. When we did, we were both exausted, and smoked for a bit to calm down. We put our purses and such away, and I grabbed my debt card, my phone and my keys. Katelynn only had her phone, and she was debating taking it. Thank God she did. I remember saying, "Am I forgetting anything?" and Katelynn responded, "Uh... I don't think so..." This time Katelynn wrote the street of our parking lot on her wrist so we could find it later tonight.
So the second time getting back to the Key Arena wasn't the biggest challenge, but still took time and effort. It was about 5:30 PM at this point, the concert started at 8' and more people were starting to line up. The second we got there Katelynn asked me, "Do you have the tickets?" I openly yelled out "FUCK!!" She seemed pretty embarrised, and me being a bit stoned I felt guilty.... really guilty. I felt really, really bad for "embarrising" her (this continued to cross my mind, even if she probably wasn't embarrised at all, but probably more irritated with how many times I apologized...).
Even with the address on her wrist, this was the hardest time finding the car. We began to feel rushed. We were nervous that we would be getting in line behind hundreds upon hundreds of people and wouldn't get a good spot... when really we had nothing to worry about. I walked up and asked directions from this one business looking guy who sort of looked like Wes Richardson. He told us that he was actually going toward the same place, and was using GOOGLE EARTH to find it on his IPhone. We started following him, and soon realized that he had NO CLUE WHERE THE HELL HE WAS GOING.
It was then 6:20 PM-ish that I started to get desperate and used my car GPS to find it. My GPS is only for use in a car, and I remember trying to use it when I was in Seattle going to Sakura Con and it led me, Jed, Alberto, Sophie and Mikayla for miles until we hit a highway.... So obviously, I wanted to avoid using the GPS unless absolutely nessasary. But we did. And it led us first in a huge circle (because we were going to be taking a left on a crosswalk one-way right turn road, the GPS first led us somewhere else...). Then, once it got it's shit together actually led us there. Me and Katelynn.. and this guy that was now depending on us, all ran. Literally. Almost all the way to the car. Once we found it, I got the tickets, shoved them in my pocket, and we ran almost all the way back.
By about 7:20 PM, we finally made it to the line. Thank the lord, right? Well, we soon realized how long the line now was, and Katelynn's friend who had been in the front of the line was already let in. This was discouraging, but we didn't really care. We were here, that's all that mattered.
On our way up, a couple idiots walked up to us, first trying to sell us tickets (which, needless to say, were bullshit) and some weird black kid wearing a sweater that says "I NEED TICKETS." I basically told them both to fuck off, these were OUR tickets. The tickets that I had to work my ass off for to afford this trip. All the weird plans and loopholls that me and Katelynn jumped through to get to this point. Then I started to wonder... Does this kid with the I Need Tickets sweater do this shit at every concert? Probably. I hate stupid maggots scumbags that try to scam people.
So walked passed about 500+ people to get to the back of the line. We stood there, wondering how crappy our situation was. Were we going to end up in the back? Then we realized that once the line started moving, that they were seperating people-- People with General Admission tickets (non-seat) and seat tickets.
This is the layout of the Key Arena. AA and BB is where the General Admission gets to stand. Though being down here might not get you the most fantastic view in the world if you're short, you still get to dance and jump around and be the closest to the band if you can fight your way to the front. At the point that we walked in, we were right there in the front. We were about the 4th row from the front. We couldn't believe we got so close. Me and Katelynn linked arms, and decided that if we stuck together we'd be able to stay up in the front. We couldn't of been more wrong.
We met up with Katelynn's friend that works with her at Wal Mart and his group of friends, and I found a guy that was going to latch onto me during the concert. He's tall, but sort of scrawny, and he had a better shot of being in the front if he had someone to cling too because together we were harder to move. So we had this miniature chain going. When the openning band started to play, we were already more packed than we were at the front in the Coheed and Cambria concert. But we stuck together. As we got closer to the show starting, I got very nervous... There was a group of cute guys standing next to us that told us that they felt sorry for me because I am going to get squashed and advised that I go to the middle. Not listening, I responded, "No.. we should be fine."
System gets on stage about 9:30 PM. They started with their two roughest songs: Prison Song and BYOB. The guys next to us said that during BYOB, we're fucked.
There was a water bottle being passed around, and a friend of Katelynn's offered a sip to me. I took a drink, asking if it was sealed when they got it. They claimed it was. I took a swig, and passed it on. This was probably my worst decision of the night.
It only took about a minute to figure out that I had to get the fuck out of there. The second it started, there was a wave of people that came in and crushed me. Me and Katelynn were seperated, but the guy behind me still held on tight. I was like "Fuck, fuck. FUCK!!" when I was getting squashed to the point that I couldn't breath and felt like I couldn't move. I put my hands up, as if to push people back, but soon my arm got pushed across the front of me and I felt like it was going to be dislocated. The guy behind me was like, "Lets get the fuck out of here!" We fell back. Without Katelynn. I was scared that she was still stuck in the mess. We had a hard time getting back, but we noticed that we weren't the only ones. Some people had to be taken away because they couldn't breath. We managed to get to the middle and I almost felt like crying because of it. I wanted to be up in the front sooo bad, but it was obvious that wasn't going to happen. We were still pretty close, about exactly in the middle.
I texted Katelynn, worried. No response. About thirty minutes later, I got a text from her saying "I fell back." I thought this just meant she got to the back of the crowd, and I told her to head toward the middle and she might find us. Little did I know that she meant she was actually TAKEN by a guard that thought she was attempting to crowd surf because she was pushed nearly over the bar, and she got KICKED OUT OF THE CONCERT. I was SO pissed when I got the whole story about this. I got this text at 10:07 PM, so she was in there for about half of the show. She said she wasn't disappointed because she "saw most of it" and someone offered to get her a beer. I was, however, extremely disappointed and wished she was with me. I felt it was somewhat my fault, and we should of hung out toward the middle in the first place. But having been to the Coheed concert where we managed to be in the very front packed like sardines, we thought we'd be able to do it.
Just a side note about this, about 90% of the people at the concert were men. There was a pretty uneven gender distribution. About 40% of them were over 6' ft tall. So this made if very difficult for me to see, and I had to find little holes where I could see a clear view of Shavo without being completely blocked. I jumped around a lot, so I saw a good portion of it. I don't feel like I saw any more than most people did in the front. I could of either been in the VERY front, so squashed that I was unable to see them at all because I'd be too focused trying to keep from getting injured, or behind someone taller than me. Regardless, I really tried to make the very most of it.
The performance itself was incredible. Shavo is INCREDIBLE in person. I couldn't believe I was actually seeing him. It was unreal. He didn't sing that much, and neither did Daron. Serj did almost all of the singing, even in songs where Daron and Shavo usually chime in. Serj himself is like a vocal acrobat. Most of the songs were very close to the album version, especially instrumentally-- nothing was changed. In some spots, Serj changed it to show off his range, which got a little old in some of the songs because at first a lot of us didn't even know what song he was singing until the chorus because it was so modified.
I was super dehydrated at about the 21st song or so (they performed 29), and had to go get a drink. We left at Chop Suey, and walked up the stairs to go the drinking fountain. Having been jumping around, dancing, and singing along with the music continually for about an hour and a half (being surrounded tightly by hundreds of people), I was extremely dehydrated and overheated. When we got to the fountain, I took a drink and it didn't have any effect. I continued to drink, and my mouth continued to be super dry. I thought it was weird, but we rushed back when they started playing Forest-- one of my favorite songs by them.
I can't remember what song they ended with, but when they did end I was both sad and a tad bit relieved. The heat was getting to be too much. I was starting to get scarily dehydrated. My body was exausted, my feet sore. It was 10000% worth it though. This was my favorite band ever and getting to see them was a dream come true.
We were horded out of that concert like cows. There were thousands of us, so getting up the stairs was a challenge. I had to go up because I had to get a shirt-- this was super important to me because I wanted PROOF that I was here because I couldn't get any good pictures of the band themselves. I texted Katelynn to PLEASE save me a spot in line for the shirts. I know this seemed selfish, but it was sort of a meeting place as well. I felt bad, but looking at all of the people I realized that it was my only chance of getting one. Once again, I owe Katelynn big time.
After getting out of the arena, I had to get up to the next floor. This was also crammed with people, and we were moving sooo slow. It reminded me of being on the Titanic where the people were stuck behind the locked gates. It took me about 30 minutes to actually get to the shirt thing, and then I faced another problem-- SHIT I GOTTA GET CASH. Typically, these type of things never take debit cards. I ran to the atm, and fiddle fucked with it three times before it finally gave me my money. I found Katelynn, right in the front of a huge crowd surrounding the stand. I passed her the $60, and managed to get up there myself. I was set on a shirt that had the concert dates, because the sweater didn't and just looked like something you'd get at Hot Topic.
I got the shirt out of a small box of them. When I got it, I was amazed. I got everything I wanted out of going. I got to see them, I got to be near the front, I got a T-shirt to prove I was there. I was still sad that Katelynn got kicked out, and pissed at the guard that literally picked her up and falsely accused her. She didn't seem to bent up about it, considering that were going to go party at Zach's house that night.
We made our way back to the car after buying Slurpees (on me) at 7-11. Our feet were killing us. I felt at this point that this had been the greatest day of my life. It was 11:30 pm, and we were going to drive back to Zach's friend Sarah's house in Everett. We sat in the car and drank Slurpees for like 30 minutes, waiting for the crowd of people coming out from the concert to die down a bit. My mom laughed when I told her this, because she said "That shit is never going to die down!" Lies, our drive out of there wasn't even that bad. I used the GPS to get us back to I-5 South, and we got to Zach's house very smoothly.
Zach is very feminine, as I imagined. I did not imagine however that him and Sam were VERY nice and not snobby at all. In fact they were extremely welcoming. I really liked Samantha. I was really tired, and felt weird. I asked if I could take a shower. I got in the shower and just stood there, feeling as if I was covered in a layer of filth from the concert. I got out, blowdryed my hair a bit, and was almost immediately asked "What did you take at the concert?" as if I did drugs (aside from pot). I was like, "Nothing...". I laid down, and told everyone that I was gonna crash. Not to be a party pooper, but it was 1:30 AM and after a super long day I was too tired to party.
I very shortly, began to feel very sick. I felt like I was going to puke. AGAIN. This pattern of sleeping at foriegn places and getting what resembles the stomach flu pisses me off. People thought I might of drank something laced with Acid or Ecstacy, and I thought maybe I had been too. I was dancing and jumping around like CRAZY at the show, and didn't realize that I didn't get tired. I however did not feel nessasarily happier or that I had extra sensory. But I am convinced that because it was combined with Wellbutrin, I didn't get the same effects that someone else would of...
Or maybe this was just from paranoia. The add up of all of the stressful things that had happened that day, such as getting lost, worried about being caught smoking (even if it's the last priority of policemen in Seattle and you could practically smoke it walking down the street and nobody would give a rats ass), and even how much money I'd spent. I felt weird and unattractive after the whole ordeal, and being surrounded by really fully decked out people in makeup made me feel a little insecure. Maybe this pushed me over the edge. I started puking, dry heaving, and having diarea. This was a nightmare.. I felt like I was a total party crasher, and I hate, hate HATE PEOPLE SEEING ME VULNERABLE.
Katelynn was nervous. Really nervous that whatever I took will get me dehydrated to the point that I had to go to the hospital. I felt like shit, didn't sleep, and at about 6:30 AM we got up and sat in the car to head home. Neither me or Katelynn got any sleep the previous night, and might of even been better off just heading home after the concert instead. Katelynn said she could drive the whole way, but at about Cle Elum I was feeling better and we switched. I drove us to stupid Toppenish, the most ghetto town ever. We stopped at a gas station, and this idiot bitch cashier wouldn't put the right amount of money into our gas machine.
It was about 10:30 AM, and katelynn drove the final stretch. We got home at 12'. I really hoped she did have a good time overall, regardless of all the crappy shit that happened. I really wish I hadn't of gotten sick and we all could of just had a good time at Zach's like we'd planned. Next time we go, we're going to have a solid plan of WHERE we are going to park and the amount of time we can spend at certain places.
No concert is ever going to top seeing System of a Down, but I intend to see more concerts at the Key Arena in the future. I know now that I can travel with Katelynn, as she's patient enough to deal with me constantly misplacing my keys and phone and camera andandandand...
Overall, success.
yours,
Emily
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