By Mia Zajac
Hi everyone welcome back to the blog! Today we’ll be talking about my super amazing cool interesting and not terrifying experience at the 5 Seconds of Summer Take My Hand Tour. Some background on 5SOS; they’re a band native to Australia composed of Luke Hemmings on guitar and lead vocals, Calum Hood on bass, Michael Clifford on guitar, and Ashton Irwin on drums. They formed in late 2011, have released five albums, and toured with One Direction from 2013-2015. Disclaimer: I LOVE 5SOS so this post is in no way bashing them despite what the title says. This is about the venue and my personal experience at this specific show.
5SOS at the Pier 17 show
I attended their New York show at Pier 17 on July 12th of 2022. This was their second show that I have gone to, my first was their 5SOS Meet You There Tour in 2018. To start off the most terrible concert experience I have ever had I traveled to NYC at 12 am to arrive at 2:30 am and was the 121st person in line. This is embarrassing, but it was actually my first camping experience so give me a break. And my worst. I can’t stress this enough; it was actually the worst day of my entire life. I did cry. In front of people. That I didn’t know. In the line. Now don’t get me wrong camping isn't bad if you do it right. I did not do it right. Then combined with the actual mess of a line, fights, and abnormally hot temperatures crying was warranted. This concert messed me up so badly that I was freaking out the entirety of my Wallows NOLA trip when I was number 27 in line, not 121.
Our VIP Soundcheck Cards
Starting off strong I did not have any blankets or jackets or common sense. So, instead of sleeping and getting a couple of hours in, because I would rather die than lay on the dirty ground with no towel or blanket, I sat in my uncomfortable camping chair the whole time and did absolutely nothing. With my abnormally small bag and pure faith, I just waited for hours. It was so great because I got to experience firsthand the temperature change from 69 to 78 to 88 and I also got to witness my faith in humanity leave my body one sweat droplet at a time. I can’t begin to stress even more how terrible it was, yes I do understand that it was entirely my fault for showing up that late and not prepared but the venue itself was not it. Pier 17 was an absolute nightmare, there is no shade whatsoever so if you do plan to camp bring a literal tent and like 50 fans, so you don’t die. It didn’t help that the pier itself was dark grey and just soaking up the heat. Now you may be thinking ‘oh she’s being drama, this was only an issue because she didn’t prepare’ yeah it did suck major because I had nothing with me but guess what. The girls I met in line were also dying and they were stocked with a cooler, blankets, hats, sunscreen everything you could ever need. It was awful, at least I met some girls I could complain with though. Even so, we were all so easily irritable that I genuinely was at a point around 10 am where I was like hey maybe I should call my parents and have them drive 3 hours in rush hour at 10 am from Connecticut to come to pick me up because I was really considering hitchhiking at that point. But, before I left my mom told me ‘This idea is stupid and you won’t make it through’ so since I wanted to prove a point, I stuck it out. Now hell started to break loose when the security, who’s been there the entire night, decided to tell us at 3 pm that we all had to move the line with 300+ people over to the opposite side of the benches. People went wild, it was a scramble to throw ourselves over the abnormally high benches to secure our spots and not be trampled and/or cut. I did end up being cut by like ten people because I went from 121 to 130 but honestly, I didn’t care. Others did though, there was a literal fight about to break out in front of us because a whole group had tried to cut these people who had been there since 1:30 am.
The line at 3 pm ft. the Athleta cooler two of the girls brought.
Then there was the camping drama of the ten people who started the line and number system. At 12 am they numbered each other then the others who got there after them, then they dropped their stuff and left. They went to their hotel and didn’t come back until 2 pm. When I tell you everyone was up in arms about that it was crazy. The shade (sadly metaphorical) and side-eye that was being thrown around the venue had to be some record or something. The cherry on top of the cake was the show being delayed like three hours, one of the three hours was due to weather which was understandable. The venue was on the roof and that’s unreasonable to expect them to play in dangerous windy rainy conditions. But the other two hours were us being brought in late to the VIP holding area for the sound check and getting yelled at by security about cutting and stuff, yes yell at the people who are all tired and probably have some degree of sun poising and/or minor heat stroke. My group became so delusional that we even saved a chicken nugget from our 1 pm million-dollar Mcdonald's meal to become the mascot of the concert (pictured below). That was the best part because it helped me get my Twitter username; WallowsChknNug which is my prized possession.
The Chicken Nugget braving the heat
Me pictured with the Chicken Nugget
(we had a photo shoot in our holding cell)
The rest of the show was actually really great when the sleep deprivation hit and my body temperature went below 100. They sound-checked Vapor and Valentine two of my absolute FAVORITE songs and the energy in the venue was great, considering everyone had like a sip of water the whole day.
Calum and Luke
I would love to go to another 5SOS concert, even for pit, but I will never go to another Pier 17 concert ever. Even if One Direction got back together again and offered me a free concert there and Niall Horan said he would propose to me I would still say no.
Thanks for reading this week's post and supporting me, I appreciate it so much I will see you guys later <3.
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