EXO in LA Adventure
Two years later...
I wanted to write up a report of this and I don't really trust Tumblr so I figured I'd put it here. I'll probably also repost my Dream Boys report from over there at some point soon. Without further ado~
So when EXO released their tour dates, I was sad that they weren't coming to San Francisco. Los Angeles seemed too far away. But then I found out it's only like a 5 hour drive each way so I was like YOLO. And I bought the tickets plus a hotel room. Concert was last night (Sunday 2/14) so I drove down Sunday morning, went to the concert, stayed in a hotel, and drove up today.
The drive down yesterday was pretty good. Relatively relaxed, though not as much as cross country driving is. I guess the road is too well travelled for that. Saw lots of flowering trees. Near the end some mountains appeared out of nowhere and I got to drive past a lake, so that was nice. I was in a pretty good mood all drive but was low-key anxious because the timing for my day was tighter than I'd like since I couldn't check into my hotel until 3, the hotel was an hour from the venue, the concert was at 6:30 (with doors at 4:30), and I wanted to get dinner in LA in between my hotel and the venue.
Got to the hotel at 3, checked in pretty easily. I left most of my stuff in my room and packed some money + ID, glasses, binoculars, and ticket into a small bag. I got ready for the concert (I hadn't bothered to wear makeup to drive in haha) and then I then headed into the city. I wanted to eat at Coco Ichiban, since it is my fave Japanese chain and we don't have any in NorCal. Traffic going into LA was way better than I expected (I was expecting terrible) and then driving through the city streets to Coco Ichiban was actually pretty nice. The streets are way wider and less insane than SF streets. I hate driving in SF and will avoid doing so whenever possible.
I got to the restaurant at like 4:20ish, which was pretty good IMO. Sadly the cheese curry wasn't as amazing as the Japanese Coco Ichiban, but it was still better than I've managed in my attempts to recreate it. And honestly I'm okay with that because it keeps the Japanese version ~special~ haha. Unfortunately I was too anxious to eat all of it.
My goal was to hit the venue at 5:30, an hour after doors open to allow the crowd to dissipate but leaving me plenty of time. Driving there was nice, I drove past some giant fountainy lake in a park. And I got off the freeway and went straight into the parking lot. There was waaaay more parking than I expected (since there was an underground garage that you can't see from Google Maps lol) so I got a spot way more easily than I feared. I headed over to the venue at exactly 5:28... and the lines were huge. Checking Twitter explained why: they still hadn't opened the doors yet. They finally did like 10-15 minutes after I arrived, meaning I was in basically the longest possible line lol.
I was standing awkwardly in line when this girl from a parallel line ran over to the girl in front of me. She goes "Your bag, are you an Arashi fan?" and I realized the girl in front of me had an Arashi Blast in Hawaii bag!!! I jumped into the convo asap haha. The girl who had run over was from Shanghai (!!!) and her fave was Nino. Girl in front of me liked Ohno, and I of course said I love Sho. Shanghai girl mentioned that she likes Ohmiya. Girl in front of me (who later introduced herself to me as Melissa) told us about seeing Arashi in Hawaii and we both expressed envy. Then Shanghai girl went back to her friends. I decided I wanted to have people to chat with in line so I asked Melissa if she followed other Johnnys groups. She said she didn't, but she was familiar with some and we briefly talked about Taguchi leaving KAT-TUN lol. Her friend, Janet, wasn't into Johnnys but then we all started talking about EXO. Who our faves were, songs we like, etc. The line finally started to move. We basically spent an hour in line chatting (and eventually shook hands and exchanged names haha). We talked about our seats and they were actually in the section in front of me! Seating was a pit on the floor w/the stage, a small loge section around that, and then concourse around that. Concourse was just a few steps up from loge though, not a whole different floor like a balcony. I was in the front of my concourse section. :)
Anyway we eventually crept forward towards the doors. The line came back at us in a snake wrap and we were like "oh no plz be a different line!" but of course it was not. We all thought it was like Dinseyland lines haha. So did some other girls in front of us. I then realized I haven't been to Disneyland in like 20 years :O so crazy. As we got closer though they started telling people to go to another entrance that had no line and then the wraps collapsed and chaos ensued. We eventually got in though, after a quick bag check and the world's most lazily perfunctory metal-detection-wand waving. The lines for the bathroom were huge but our seats were alllll the way around anyway so we kept going. I said goodbye to them at the entrance to our sections and headed off further from the entrance (smartly, I think) and found a bathroom with no line. Just as I was about to wash my hands we could hear screaming from the arena. People freaked out and started RUNNING out of there. Girls were running out w/o drying their hands. I hustled through washing my hands (and dried them!) and scurried over all hella alarmed.
False alarm! The screens in the venue were showing videos *sigh* nothing exciting. But I went to my seat anyway. I was one seat in from the aisle. On my right was a girl by herself (and then the aisle) and on my left two girls together. I chatted briefly with the girls on the left. Then one light went out (legit one) and everyone FREAKED OUT and started screaming. False alarm again. I then talked to the girl on my right. We discovered that we both like Kai best (and therefore would be screaming at the same times) and also loved Suho a lot. We agreed that Suho should have more fans because he is amazing. I mentioned that I loved how Suho is a huge Star Wars fan, and she agreed! She said she loved Star Wars too and asked how long I'd liked it. Looking back, she probably meant by age, but I for some reason (exhaustion?) thought she meant in absolute terms. This girl is late teens/early twenties and prob in college.
Her: So how long have you liked Star Wars?
Me: Since 1997.
Her: O_o
So then I explained about the re-releases haha. Anyway they kept making us think the concert was gonna start multiple times before it finally did! Nearly an hour late but whatever. It started with a VTR talking about ~discovering~ them (EXO's whole thing is that they are aliens with magic powers) (they selectively use or ignore this whenever they feel like it) and everyone demonstrating their magic powers. Everyone screamed for their faves. It was nice to be surrounded by fangirls cuz I didn't feel embarrassed haha. Then they appeared!!!
I'm not gonna do a whole huge rundown because that would take forever. But some highlights:
- seeing Kai do his cheek-pokey dance in Overdose
- Kai's solo in MAMA
- Kai's dancing and moving and existing, generally tbh
- Baekhyun sounded great and his piano number was lovely
- During one MC Chanyeol declared that he loved jogging and jogged offstage before coming back from the other side. Then he did that again. Then he declared his love for jogging and pretended to jog off a few more times. Suho said something that sounded like "Chanyeol I miss you come here" but as that is one of my 573283025 EXO ships I might have misheard
- Baeksoo singing with their arms around each other during Playboy
- Kai during Playboy
- Kai's solo dance part (sadly there was no water) (this dance is often performed in a puddle)
- I finally get the Xiumin thing, he was super cute and :D :D :D and genki the whole time, very much like a Japanese idol actually. Also whenever everyone was jumping to a song he was doing tuck jumps like clearly he had a ton of energy
- At one point they tried to have us do a call and response... in Korean. Chanyeol and Xiumin demonstrated. It was like Chanyeol: *says the prompt line* Xiumin: *calls the response in Korean* The Crowd: *unintelligible noises*. Chanyeol was laughing and shaking his head
- The dancey part of the show was AWESOME! My section wasn't standing during the show otherwise (aside from girl to my right, A+ to her) but Chanyeol told us to get on our feet so we did! Then they did a bunch of awesome songs like Machine and Let Out the Beast as we danced and screamed along.
- I also stood for the encore because I wanted to and it was the encore
- I didn't know all the ballads they did because I never listen to their ballads lol
- Chen sounded great and his guns are just as amazing IRL, plus he had tons of energy
- Baekhyun was cute and bouncy but not as energetic as expected
- there was a VTR where they all did something cute with the camera, aka the audience. Suho was ADORABLE in this haha, his involved taking pictures. Xiumin's had baking. Baekhyun cutely failed at Jenga. Kai teleported in and out being gorgeous.
- the Coffee VCR is the cutest thing ever in life
- when they came out right after ^, Kai messed with DO's hat it was cute
- Chanyeol pushed Baekhyun and Kai together during the paused part in that song, yay all my OTPs
- At the final MC Chanyeol picked up some stuffed flowers thrown on stage and wound them around his arms it was so cute
- He also said that since the LA Marathon was today that he wants to run in it next year because he loves jogging!! (legit I have no clue where the jogging thing came from tbh but it was fun)
- Xiumin said LA actually stood for "Lovely Angels" aka us (haha)
- Baekhyun said he actually had a sore throat that day, which explained his lower energy to me
Then the show ended and I ended up sitting in the parking garage for half an hour unmoving lol. Like everyone turned their cars off and just sat for over 20 minutes before movement reached our level. Once it did I got out relatively quickly. They directed us to drive through a part of the campus (like through it on a sidewalk between buildings, not on a road) and then we popped out right at the freeway entrance making my drive super straightforward from there. :)
Then today I drove back! Not too exciting except I stopped at an old west themed tourist trap for the lulz and defeated it by not buying anything. :) I also drove past some ranch with legit thousands of cows which was shocking. The drive wasn't as nice cuz there were more cars so things didn't really spread out very nicely and I couldn't cruise much.
Now I'm home and tired and I probably forgot a ton of stuff in this entry but that's what editing is for haha. :)
I wanted to write up a report of this and I don't really trust Tumblr so I figured I'd put it here. I'll probably also repost my Dream Boys report from over there at some point soon. Without further ado~
So when EXO released their tour dates, I was sad that they weren't coming to San Francisco. Los Angeles seemed too far away. But then I found out it's only like a 5 hour drive each way so I was like YOLO. And I bought the tickets plus a hotel room. Concert was last night (Sunday 2/14) so I drove down Sunday morning, went to the concert, stayed in a hotel, and drove up today.
The drive down yesterday was pretty good. Relatively relaxed, though not as much as cross country driving is. I guess the road is too well travelled for that. Saw lots of flowering trees. Near the end some mountains appeared out of nowhere and I got to drive past a lake, so that was nice. I was in a pretty good mood all drive but was low-key anxious because the timing for my day was tighter than I'd like since I couldn't check into my hotel until 3, the hotel was an hour from the venue, the concert was at 6:30 (with doors at 4:30), and I wanted to get dinner in LA in between my hotel and the venue.
Got to the hotel at 3, checked in pretty easily. I left most of my stuff in my room and packed some money + ID, glasses, binoculars, and ticket into a small bag. I got ready for the concert (I hadn't bothered to wear makeup to drive in haha) and then I then headed into the city. I wanted to eat at Coco Ichiban, since it is my fave Japanese chain and we don't have any in NorCal. Traffic going into LA was way better than I expected (I was expecting terrible) and then driving through the city streets to Coco Ichiban was actually pretty nice. The streets are way wider and less insane than SF streets. I hate driving in SF and will avoid doing so whenever possible.
I got to the restaurant at like 4:20ish, which was pretty good IMO. Sadly the cheese curry wasn't as amazing as the Japanese Coco Ichiban, but it was still better than I've managed in my attempts to recreate it. And honestly I'm okay with that because it keeps the Japanese version ~special~ haha. Unfortunately I was too anxious to eat all of it.
My goal was to hit the venue at 5:30, an hour after doors open to allow the crowd to dissipate but leaving me plenty of time. Driving there was nice, I drove past some giant fountainy lake in a park. And I got off the freeway and went straight into the parking lot. There was waaaay more parking than I expected (since there was an underground garage that you can't see from Google Maps lol) so I got a spot way more easily than I feared. I headed over to the venue at exactly 5:28... and the lines were huge. Checking Twitter explained why: they still hadn't opened the doors yet. They finally did like 10-15 minutes after I arrived, meaning I was in basically the longest possible line lol.
I was standing awkwardly in line when this girl from a parallel line ran over to the girl in front of me. She goes "Your bag, are you an Arashi fan?" and I realized the girl in front of me had an Arashi Blast in Hawaii bag!!! I jumped into the convo asap haha. The girl who had run over was from Shanghai (!!!) and her fave was Nino. Girl in front of me liked Ohno, and I of course said I love Sho. Shanghai girl mentioned that she likes Ohmiya. Girl in front of me (who later introduced herself to me as Melissa) told us about seeing Arashi in Hawaii and we both expressed envy. Then Shanghai girl went back to her friends. I decided I wanted to have people to chat with in line so I asked Melissa if she followed other Johnnys groups. She said she didn't, but she was familiar with some and we briefly talked about Taguchi leaving KAT-TUN lol. Her friend, Janet, wasn't into Johnnys but then we all started talking about EXO. Who our faves were, songs we like, etc. The line finally started to move. We basically spent an hour in line chatting (and eventually shook hands and exchanged names haha). We talked about our seats and they were actually in the section in front of me! Seating was a pit on the floor w/the stage, a small loge section around that, and then concourse around that. Concourse was just a few steps up from loge though, not a whole different floor like a balcony. I was in the front of my concourse section. :)
Anyway we eventually crept forward towards the doors. The line came back at us in a snake wrap and we were like "oh no plz be a different line!" but of course it was not. We all thought it was like Dinseyland lines haha. So did some other girls in front of us. I then realized I haven't been to Disneyland in like 20 years :O so crazy. As we got closer though they started telling people to go to another entrance that had no line and then the wraps collapsed and chaos ensued. We eventually got in though, after a quick bag check and the world's most lazily perfunctory metal-detection-wand waving. The lines for the bathroom were huge but our seats were alllll the way around anyway so we kept going. I said goodbye to them at the entrance to our sections and headed off further from the entrance (smartly, I think) and found a bathroom with no line. Just as I was about to wash my hands we could hear screaming from the arena. People freaked out and started RUNNING out of there. Girls were running out w/o drying their hands. I hustled through washing my hands (and dried them!) and scurried over all hella alarmed.
False alarm! The screens in the venue were showing videos *sigh* nothing exciting. But I went to my seat anyway. I was one seat in from the aisle. On my right was a girl by herself (and then the aisle) and on my left two girls together. I chatted briefly with the girls on the left. Then one light went out (legit one) and everyone FREAKED OUT and started screaming. False alarm again. I then talked to the girl on my right. We discovered that we both like Kai best (and therefore would be screaming at the same times) and also loved Suho a lot. We agreed that Suho should have more fans because he is amazing. I mentioned that I loved how Suho is a huge Star Wars fan, and she agreed! She said she loved Star Wars too and asked how long I'd liked it. Looking back, she probably meant by age, but I for some reason (exhaustion?) thought she meant in absolute terms. This girl is late teens/early twenties and prob in college.
Her: So how long have you liked Star Wars?
Me: Since 1997.
Her: O_o
So then I explained about the re-releases haha. Anyway they kept making us think the concert was gonna start multiple times before it finally did! Nearly an hour late but whatever. It started with a VTR talking about ~discovering~ them (EXO's whole thing is that they are aliens with magic powers) (they selectively use or ignore this whenever they feel like it) and everyone demonstrating their magic powers. Everyone screamed for their faves. It was nice to be surrounded by fangirls cuz I didn't feel embarrassed haha. Then they appeared!!!
I'm not gonna do a whole huge rundown because that would take forever. But some highlights:
- seeing Kai do his cheek-pokey dance in Overdose
- Kai's solo in MAMA
- Kai's dancing and moving and existing, generally tbh
- Baekhyun sounded great and his piano number was lovely
- During one MC Chanyeol declared that he loved jogging and jogged offstage before coming back from the other side. Then he did that again. Then he declared his love for jogging and pretended to jog off a few more times. Suho said something that sounded like "Chanyeol I miss you come here" but as that is one of my 573283025 EXO ships I might have misheard
- Baeksoo singing with their arms around each other during Playboy
- Kai during Playboy
- Kai's solo dance part (sadly there was no water) (this dance is often performed in a puddle)
- I finally get the Xiumin thing, he was super cute and :D :D :D and genki the whole time, very much like a Japanese idol actually. Also whenever everyone was jumping to a song he was doing tuck jumps like clearly he had a ton of energy
- At one point they tried to have us do a call and response... in Korean. Chanyeol and Xiumin demonstrated. It was like Chanyeol: *says the prompt line* Xiumin: *calls the response in Korean* The Crowd: *unintelligible noises*. Chanyeol was laughing and shaking his head
- The dancey part of the show was AWESOME! My section wasn't standing during the show otherwise (aside from girl to my right, A+ to her) but Chanyeol told us to get on our feet so we did! Then they did a bunch of awesome songs like Machine and Let Out the Beast as we danced and screamed along.
- I also stood for the encore because I wanted to and it was the encore
- I didn't know all the ballads they did because I never listen to their ballads lol
- Chen sounded great and his guns are just as amazing IRL, plus he had tons of energy
- Baekhyun was cute and bouncy but not as energetic as expected
- there was a VTR where they all did something cute with the camera, aka the audience. Suho was ADORABLE in this haha, his involved taking pictures. Xiumin's had baking. Baekhyun cutely failed at Jenga. Kai teleported in and out being gorgeous.
- the Coffee VCR is the cutest thing ever in life
- when they came out right after ^, Kai messed with DO's hat it was cute
- Chanyeol pushed Baekhyun and Kai together during the paused part in that song, yay all my OTPs
- At the final MC Chanyeol picked up some stuffed flowers thrown on stage and wound them around his arms it was so cute
- He also said that since the LA Marathon was today that he wants to run in it next year because he loves jogging!! (legit I have no clue where the jogging thing came from tbh but it was fun)
- Xiumin said LA actually stood for "Lovely Angels" aka us (haha)
- Baekhyun said he actually had a sore throat that day, which explained his lower energy to me
Then the show ended and I ended up sitting in the parking garage for half an hour unmoving lol. Like everyone turned their cars off and just sat for over 20 minutes before movement reached our level. Once it did I got out relatively quickly. They directed us to drive through a part of the campus (like through it on a sidewalk between buildings, not on a road) and then we popped out right at the freeway entrance making my drive super straightforward from there. :)
Then today I drove back! Not too exciting except I stopped at an old west themed tourist trap for the lulz and defeated it by not buying anything. :) I also drove past some ranch with legit thousands of cows which was shocking. The drive wasn't as nice cuz there were more cars so things didn't really spread out very nicely and I couldn't cruise much.
Now I'm home and tired and I probably forgot a ton of stuff in this entry but that's what editing is for haha. :)