The Night of Crystal Castles-Dont LISTEN to BOUNCERS

So I tried to get into the Crystal Castles show @ Studio B in Williamsburg, BK...

Early Thursday afternoon I got onto a train embarking on a task that many labeled "impossible". This task of course was to get a fake ID BEFORE the Crystal Castles show @ Studio B. The reason for this is, the event was 21+. In my short time on the NY scene, I've learned that bouncers don't really fuck around with IDs. I went to two 18+ shows and the bouncers checked everyones ID before they entered the club, and everytime before they re-entered.

I got off @ Grand Central and took the train to Times Square. I heard it was "EASY" to get a fake at Time Square, just look for someone selling non-government ID's and tell them you're over 21, etc. This is not true. I probably went to 20 different stores that advertised electronics, passport photos, pornographic DVD's, and everyone told me the same thing, "No". A few people told me to go to 8 ave but every store I went to there said they couldn't help me. One guy that owned an adult entertainment store told me that after 911 the cops cracked down on stores selling fakes.

An hour or so into my adventure, I realized it was hopeless. I was NOT going to get a fake ID before the show. Onto phase B, try and get into the show as an 18 year old. I didn't necessarily expect this to work, but I figured if I didn't even try to get in, I certainly would never see the show.

So in between trying to get an ID and going to the show, I met up with that girl Chanelle that I met the previous night. I was a bit surprised that we met up because I had my doubts about whether I would see her again. She gave me a good suggestion about how to "fix" my ID. She suggested I take a red pen and change the last nine in 1990 to an eight, thus making me 28 years old and eligible to get into any club. I thought this was a decent IDea, definitely worth a try, but after further review, I realized my ID said, NOT 21 UNTIL 2012, haha.

So Chanelle, her friend and myself went to dinner, because we were all hungry. We ate at this restaurant in Time Square called Dallas BBQ. The food was horrible! Basically the equivalent of a TGI Fridays or Chili's. I had a cheese burger with a bunch of nasty ass shit on top of it that probably raised my cholesterol by 100 points. I only ate half of my burger and a few fries because I was worried I would get violently ill if I ate the whole thing. The girls loved the food and ate twice as much as I did. It's a shame that out of all the good places to eat in the city, we picked a tourist spot that had horrible food. I paid like 15 dollars for a shitty ass burger, would have rather just went to McDonalds or Wendy's (which I did later that night and enjoyed the food much better).

So after Dinner I parted ways with Chanelle and her friend. She gave me directions to Studio B and we said our goodbyes. She's going back to England for a few months and so I'm certain this time I won't see her for atleast a longgg time.

I took a train to Union Square because I was cold and wanted to buy a hoody from American Apparel. I got lost for a second but finally walked a few blocks to the American Apparel store on 23rd street. The store was closed so I lit up a cig and walked 10 blocks to Union Square. I got on the L train, like I was suppose to, but forgot which stop to get off. So I got off of Lorimer, because that sounded like what Chanelle instructed. I was lost again, in Brooklyn this time. I got in a cab and told him the address to Studio B. I paid him 8 bucks, in addition to two subway rides so I had already spent about 30 bucks this trip.

THE LINE WAS REDICULOUS. I got out of the cab and saw the line extend an entire block. I searched for the end of the line and realized it stretched another whole block. I kept searching and finally saw the end, half way down a 3rd block. Any longer and the line would have created a full square around the club. I sat in the back of the line and lit a cigarette.

To make a longer story shorter, I waited in line for like an hour. I talked with a few people and smoked cigarette after cigarette trying to pass the time, anxiously wondering if I would get in. People were drinking, smoking weed and trying to convince others to go check out the Modest Mouse show that no one wanted to see. Everyone was there to see Crystal Castles.

I made friends with the guy behind me named Seth. He was a cool dude from "rural virginia", that moved to the city a few years ago, he told me about how the last time he saw the group play he got tickets before the show and walked right in when the doors opened. I found it amazing that a band could get so big in a few months. I guess it didn't help that the show was FREE, free in NYC is like crack. Seth had a good idea; he said, "if we don't get past the second turn before 10:15 lets bail". We did make it past our goal right around 10:15pm and all of a sudden it looked like we were going to get into the show.

When we were half way to the door, the big black bouncer that seems to be in the way of eager hipsters at every free show said, "The doors are closed, no one else is getting in". All together the crowd let out a loud, "Aww man". We felt like we were robbed. We had waited in line for over an hour and just as we see the light at the end of the tunnel, the whole thing just comes crumbling down.

I waited with Seth and his two other friends for 5 more minutes just to see if they would let other people in. It was hopeless, we decided to bail and check out another bar around the corner from Studio B because someone had given us a flyer and told us to check it out if we didn't get in.

Skip forward half an hour and one beer later. We left the bar that was advertised as "an after party for the Crystal Castles show", there certainly was no after party, just a bar trying to lure angry hipsters for a few drinks and free music. Seth said, "let's walk back past Studio B and see if they let people in". A few moments later we were back at Studio B and low and behold, the line was only half a block long. We didn't recognize anyone standing on the street which probably meant that the majority of people that we waited in line with either left or got into the show. Seth asked some girl how long she had been waiting and her response was "like half an hour". We were enraged. That means, if we had just waited 15-20 minutes longer, we would have gotten into the show! How could we be so stupid! To be honest though, we could have hopped back on-line and still have gotten in, but at 11pm we were all pretty much over the show.

I learned a valuable lesson that night. A lesson that I sort of already knew. Don't listen to bouncers, they have nothing invested in these shows except a job. There job is to control the influx of patrons at bars and make sure that no one under age drinks-essentially, there job is to deny people from entering a club (hence the title, bouncer). They don't care about Crystal Castles or any other band playing. When a bouncer says, "No one else is getting in", what they're really saying is, "There's too many people in line, so half of you stay and half of you leave". The club wants to make money so they'll fill it to capacity for as long as they can, DON'T LISTEN TO BOUNCERS!

So at the end of the night I took the L train back to Manhattan, but instead of going to Manhattan, I went further into Brooklyn. So I got off the L and took a cab to Union Square, paid the driver like 12 bucks for a ride that should have cost 2 dollars. Than I ran out of money on my metro card, bought another single ride and waited 8 minutes for the 6 train to take me up to Grand Central. I ran up the stairs to Grand Central, found my train and literally watched it ride off with out me.

I was a bit releaved because I was starving and so I went to Wendy's and got a #2. I finally got on the train at like 1 O'clock and slept the whole way until I arrived back where I started, completely wiped from two nights of walking the streets to Manhattan and Brooklyn. I was done with trying to get into shows, getting lost and paying 5x as much for transportation-done, but not for long.

So like 40-60 bucks and 8 hours later, I was tired, a bit hung over/drunk, ID-less, and I didn't get to see Crystal Castles.

NEXT SHOW IS COLD WAR KIDS, FOR FREE, @ PROSPECT PARK on the 27th of JUNE! I'm going early...

See you there,

popGURU