Just My Luck, Friday the 13th

I've never been really superstitious about Friday the 13th, I usually just think of it as another day. This is why I thought it would be a great idea to drive up to Chicago to see Crystal Castles this Friday, even though it fell on Friday the 13th. If this experience has taught me anything, it is to be a little more superstitious next time.

We, being Mark,Alex,Randy and I, left for Chicago at 9 in the morning on Friday. This would be our first road trip together as a "family", and we were very excited to get out on the road. We ended up sleeping in 2 hours past the time we wanted to leave, but we didn't think anything of it. Once we were out on the highway, the trip started with blaring music, constant videotaping, mixed with laughs. However I would soon find that this feeling of joy would be short lived as once we had traveled no farther than 5 miles into Illinois do we get pulled over. Now this has been a constant theme with this group of four, as the last time we all got together for Mark's birthday, we got pulled over for speeding and Alex got a $90 ticket. This time however, it wasn't Alex who was screwed, it was me. At the time when we got pulled over, I was filming and I left the camera on the whole time. When the officer came to window he asked for both Mark's and my licenses, even though Mark was the one driving. Then he asked why I wasn't wearing my seatbelt....crap. A little fun fact about Illinois, in Illinois it is legal to ride your motorcycle at breakneck speed without a helmet, however when driving in a car made of solid metal  with safety features abound, it is illegal not to wear a seatbelt. The kicker to this is that if pulled over, you are then issued a ticket for $60 fucking dollars!!! We were no more than an hour into our trip and I get slammed with this shit. I try to laugh it off and we continue on our trip.

After a while we switch drivers and I take over. We stop at a rest stop, and one of us has the brilliant idea that instead of parking in the city, we can just park in the next town over, Joliet, and then we will just take a train into the city. This seemed like a good idea at the time, but ended up screwing us over in the end. we switched drivers and I fell asleep in the back, when I woke up we were in Joliet. We got to the metro station and found out that it was $15 to park... already we took a hit because if we were to park in Chicago we would have paid probably about $20. To top it off we find out that the ticket counter is closed inside and we missed the train by 3 minutes and would have to wait an hour for the next train. After waiting and freezing our asses off on the train that stopped every 5 minutes, we finally made it to the city.

I've been to Chicago so many times that it has started feeling like home, I feel like I know my way around the city really well... however none of us had any idea how the hell to get to our venue. Thankfully Randy had GPS on his phone, but the farther we walked the more we started to think that something was wrong. We ran into two guys who liked my shirt and I told them about the concert. They told us that we were walking in the complete opposite direction and that now we would have to take the Blue Line to get there. This set us back about $5 and we finally arrived at the venue. We walk in, and it looks like someone gutted the Fox theater and paved the seating area.

We walk in and the first DJ's were playing.  The line up for the night was Proxy, Destructor?, The Twelves, Sinden, and then Crystal Castles. We had to sit through the other DJ's which ranged from decent to horribly repetitive. I would have probably liked the music a little more if I wasn't exhausted and was tripping on drugs. After 5 hours Crystal Castles finally came on, and I made my way up to the front. The show was exactly what I expected with people slamming into each other and smashing against the stage as Alice Glass jumped into the crowd. The music was blaring and the stink of hairy, sweaty, shirtless men permeated through the air. The bouncers didn't know what to do with all the people pounding into each other. It got so bad that they had to start pouring water in our mouthes like little baby birds and they pulled people out who looked like they were about to pass out. The girl next to me broke a rib and they had to pull her out of the mob. Overall, the show looked a little like this.

Yeah...I felt like I could have died... It was totally worth the whole trip.

When the show was over and I got out of the pit, I was soaked from head to toe with sweat. We decided to skip out on the last act, Rusko, and headed outside to cool off. I rung out my shirt and  I could have filled a water bottle with my sweat. We went to Walgreens and I picked up some water and a new shirt, I threw my ruined clothes in a plastic bag. Next we had to hit the subway and get to the train station. We had a bit of  a dilemma because our train wouldn't be able to take us home until 7 in the morning, however at the time it was only 1 a.m. To pass the time we went to Millennium park to wait. I got to play homeless for the night and I slept on the park bench for a good 3 hours. After we got kicked out of the park we went to the train station where I slept some more. Apparently while I was asleep, a homeless man came up to us and asked us for money. I gave him a dime and told him to fuck off, but I did this all in my sleep. I have no memory of this ever happening. I slept for an hour or so and when I woke up, everyone was gone. It felt like the opening scene to 28 days later and I was stranded in a train station. I started to freak out because they had my wallet and my train ticket, and the train left in twenty minutes. I called Mark and there was no answer, then I called Alex and the same thing. After 5 minutes of panicking, Mark texted me "we went to Duncan Doughnuts". I was pissed that hey would leave me like that, but I let it go because we had to catch our train. From then out it was smooth sailing all the way back home.

Even with all the speed bumps and getting screwed out of nearly $100 bucks, I left with some pretty funny stories. However now I think I'm going to take some time to chill out, I'm done with crazy excursions for a little while.