The Cheap Seats...
On Thursday evening, See Luan and I went to see the Bon Jovi concert; she's a huge fan. We had gotten the cheap seats, basically 10 rows down from the farthest away seats in the Staples Center. Section 312, row 3 (here is the venue layout). While the opening band was playing, we saw some open seats in section 118, right next to the stage. In fact, the entire section was basically empty. So we took a chance...
We ended up walking into section 116 where an attendant lost her shit over us not showing tickets and walking past her, but that was too far around the corner, so we went back. Walking towards 118, the woman who was supposed to be checking tickets was checking her phone. Score. We walk past her and sit in a section of open seats. As 9PM approached, the section started filling in. We kept getting bumped from seat to seat for the first 15 minutes after Bon Jovi started. We ended up sitting in section 118, row 14, seats 2 and 3 for the rest of the concert. See Luan was scared for the first hour or so, jumpy whenever someone would walk down the aisle to find their seats.
We may have been a bit ambitious, as literally every other seat in the section, and the sections around it, were full. Also, a fairly large number of them had back stage passes, vip passes, etc. We might have even been seated near some almost actors. See Luan has some great pictures of everything, which presumably she'll post on her Facebook.
On a technical standpoint, the show was pretty good. The lighting presented the moods, the 5 gimble-mounted video screens + the other adjustable screens offered interesting additional views and visual variety. They played some newer and older stuff, though may have made the unfortunate decision to delay a couple of their classics until the encore. People that were sitting near us were saying "what, no Dead or Alive?"
I enjoyed myself, despite not being as into Bon Jovi now as I was when I was 10. Seeing See Luan rock out made it totally worth it :D
We ended up walking into section 116 where an attendant lost her shit over us not showing tickets and walking past her, but that was too far around the corner, so we went back. Walking towards 118, the woman who was supposed to be checking tickets was checking her phone. Score. We walk past her and sit in a section of open seats. As 9PM approached, the section started filling in. We kept getting bumped from seat to seat for the first 15 minutes after Bon Jovi started. We ended up sitting in section 118, row 14, seats 2 and 3 for the rest of the concert. See Luan was scared for the first hour or so, jumpy whenever someone would walk down the aisle to find their seats.
We may have been a bit ambitious, as literally every other seat in the section, and the sections around it, were full. Also, a fairly large number of them had back stage passes, vip passes, etc. We might have even been seated near some almost actors. See Luan has some great pictures of everything, which presumably she'll post on her Facebook.
On a technical standpoint, the show was pretty good. The lighting presented the moods, the 5 gimble-mounted video screens + the other adjustable screens offered interesting additional views and visual variety. They played some newer and older stuff, though may have made the unfortunate decision to delay a couple of their classics until the encore. People that were sitting near us were saying "what, no Dead or Alive?"
I enjoyed myself, despite not being as into Bon Jovi now as I was when I was 10. Seeing See Luan rock out made it totally worth it :D