Ah, if only I had been able to avoid the trip to Queens, and waited outside the Nokia since nine in the morning (as was the original plan)! I was later told by DanLee that he'd managed to sneak into the place at ten-ish, got backstage and observed the band members from some mere feet away before he was kicked out by a staff. ("'Ey! You aren't supposed to be in here yet!" "I work here." "Psh, right. Where're your badge and I.D.?")
The weather hadn't seemed so bad when I initially stepped out of the 42nd St. station at 1:10 PM. I called Dylan, and was slightly horrified when he told me that he, Zhu, and Ridwan were stationed all the way back at around 47th St. When I passed Nokia's entrance near 43rd, I sure-as-heck glared at the bastards who must have camped out since Friday-god-knows-when, all huddling and stamping and weeping from the cold, wrapped in their blankets, eying the line of later-comers behind them with an unmistakable air of feline pride. The thick line along the sidewalk was sectioned and divided, going down 7th Avenue up until just 47th, wrapped around the street corner, and (I imagine) wound the rest of its way around the block. I spotted Dylan's curly mop-head and red jacket just next to the street-corner pay phones, and gave Zhu a greeting punch to the fatty stomach before shifting next to Ridwan. These guys had arrived there around an hour earlier; the line behind them was already growing far beyond the bend.
The next five hours of my life was absolutely the worst waiting experience I have yet undergone. The sun was still nice and comforting until 2 PM; after that, it suddenly became cloudy (and even windy) and the chill was starting to set in everyone's bones. In Jing's case, her worst sufferers were her feet. (Converse does not exactly provide the thickest soles to separate the concrete's iciness from socked feet. Two toes on my left foot remained unresponsive for almost a month before I started regaining feeling in them.) Nelson showed up at around the second hour of waiting, providing Dylan and Zhu with alcohol (that royally pissed me off) which they all passed around, while we played a paper-version of Word Association (the highlight of the 5 hours?). Then the three of them decided to crash at a Friday's one block down 7th Avenue, and left Jing and Ridwan to suffer the coldest hour during that entire afternoon (4 - 5PM) while desperately fighting to keep our spot as the group behind us suddenly decided to push forward as much as they physically can. Some time after five the three returned, all smelly-breathed and rosy in the cheeks, and Nelson checked out at about the same time Dan finally showed up. Apparently the latter left after said encounter inside Nokia and went to Union Square to hang out with some of his Junior friends, instead of, you know...holding the rest of us a much better spot on the line.
The crowd finally began to move at 6:05, which I guess was relatively punctual. It really felt as if they were scanning in the tickets as slowly as humanly possible just to make us suffer even more. In a frenzy, we stuffed our bags one inside another's to facilitate the checking-in later. By the time we (Zhu, Dylan, and I) finally dashed into the venue, there was already quite significant a huddle around the stage. The rail, long-since-invisible, seemed a holy and unattainable place in my head. I looked behind and around, looking for signs of Dan and Ridwan's return from the coat check while checking out the place as a whole. It was amusing to see the seated portion in the back, where the younger audiences and their parents would be filed.
As everyone finally reunited and more people shuffled continually behind us, Dylan blew the first condom balloon. Some idiot hit it beyond the rail and onto the stage, but thankfully, the security guard served it back into the crowd instead of trashing the thing. A second, less-well-made balloon went up in the air, and both were popped soon after. =/ A dumb squealing poser girl tried to crowd-surf even before the concert has started, and was yelled down in no time.
The lights then dimmed as the background music toned down, impacting immediately the crowd's dynamic. As people squeezed forward to the first extremity, I counted the heads in front of me: some obscure number between five to ten, perhaps seven. Our little group was already starting to drift apart; Zhu, Dylan, and even DanLee somehow all ended at odd rows behind me. The only reason Ridwan and I managed to stick together for the entire night was because he held on to my shoulders/waist and wasn't letting go for dear life. Stage lights (green, red) were initially turned in such a way that the crowd was too blinded to very well see those who entered on stage.
Bleed the Dream looked like your average emo band, and the vocalist (kind of cute, but mostly meh) had on this pair of extremely tight pants that went unzipped five minutes into the show. About half the crowd was physically moving along to their music, which all sounded the same after the first or so song. I suppose the highlight here was when he swung the mic by its wire some five times around his neck and managed to not only avoid choking himself, but also unwinding it in quite a non-awkward manner.
===End of original draft===
Dug up this thing that blogger somehow saved for the next six years, a report that I unfortunately never finished. Now that I think about it, my timeline with Deg goes something like this:
2003 - discovery of band
2006 - Deg tests the water in the US, but tickets sold out within the first few minutes at Avalon Club. Jing skipped track anyway to stare at the outside of the venue, bought and ate a pack of expired cashews to commemorate, and morosely went home.
2007 - Successfully bought tickets to the above show with Dylan in person at the venue the day sales started. Highlights include: holding direct eye contact with Kyo for what felt like eternity, catching Die's pick, and getting majorly yelled at by parents because landlady reported to them that I didn't get home until ~1AM.
2008 - Second time I saw Deg, went with Jarek/Jimmyn/Jen. Got as close as second row, touched the bar, but wasn't able to squeeze all the way to the front. The two chicks ahead of me had to have been on drugs because they literally did not stop full-body headbanging for the entire x hours of the show. I had to be physically supported on the way back to Jimmyn's car, surprisingly not bruised. Performance-wise, this was a better show than my first, and my feelings for Toshiya enjoyed a 200% surge ever since he stole the show.
And...nothing for the next five years, apparently, despite Deg having toured the US a few more times.
Until now.
September, two months ago, marked the tenth year anniversary of Vulgar's release. They've grown no less than I have grown.
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