love is the word

mission:

• hook up a stranger with a 2-day pass to the treasure island music festival

from time to time, my homie weyland hooks it up with concert tickets to various shows and events.  so first off, many thanks to weyland for always lookin out :)  and for being an amusing drunk as well :D  hahhahaha, i still won’t forget your self-induced confessional session at farmerbrown that one day (you’re probably like, which one?!)!  fun times.

i’m a planner in many respects.  don’t get me wrong, i love spontaneity, unbeknownst to many.  if i have the means to do it, i will pick up and hannle it with some randomness.  but anyway, over time i’ve come to bring my “organizing” down a few notches so to save myself some stress.  so when presented with a pair of 2-day passes for the music fest, i reached out to a few close homies, all of which couldn’t make it or weren’t too interested.  i didn’t really wrack my brain thinking of who might want to go, so sorry if you wanted to be my date =/

i also didn’t wrack my brain too hard because it had been a minute since i had been to a concert alone.  i love being in ‘solitude amongst the masses.’  i love walking slowly amidst the hoards of people rushing through the financial district during commute hours, taking in everything around me, but not with too much on it.  just being there, somewhat still.  kind of meditative for me.  it’s beautiful at a concert.  just you, the pounding pulse of an impassioned sweat-drenched sound, and everyone else.  a sensation that moves all through you, leaving a slightly lightheaded euphoria.  i, a dot in the crowd, all alone, but still somehow communed by this great sound.

i wanted to take the opportunity to share that with a complete stranger – no strings attached.  just because.  my initial plan was to to wait around for someone looking to buy a ticket at the box office and give it away to them.  to my luck, while waiting for the shuttle in the at&t park parking lot to treasure island, a young dude on a bike strolled over and generally asked if anyone in the line had an extra ticket.  no one answered.

i don’t know why, but i hesitated.  i guess i can have a tendency to want to stick with how i’ve planned something out in my head (meaning, the whole box office idea).  i immediately realized i was being silly, and here was someone who was asking for a ticket.  at this point he had turned around to bike away.  i yelled out to him, “aye!”  i waved him over.  i still don’t think he paid me much mind at that moment, “do you want a ticket?  i have one.”  that caught his attention, “how much?”

“free,” i said.

i’m not sure dude knew what to think or if he believed me.  he sort of exclaimed, ‘oh, thanks!’ or something to that effect.  he then rode off.  i figured he hadn’t taken me seriously and just left.  ah, well.  turned out he went to park his bike as i saw him walk over about 5 minutes later.  i told him i didn’t have the ticket on me and needed to get it at the venue because i was on a list.  i think that made homie a little skeptical, but he stuck with me.  i told him, “you have to be with me to get your ticket, but after that you’re on your own.  you don’t have to hang with me.”  i think i was weirding him out by the minute.  the dude in front of us in line chuckled.

we get on the bus and homeboy ends up sitting with me.  i’m texting, he’s texting, we are totally playing it modern day technologically apathetic.  awesome.  i tried to do my own thing for the most part and not freak him out by trying to bff him :D.  eventually, i decide to be casually cordial though and ask him a bit about himself.  he’s a 22 year-old pre-med student at sf state that works at a bike shop in the marina.  and apparently i’m now free to get hooked up with bikeness something or another at his shop.  rad.

he asked me at one point, “hey, i want to at least get you a beer.”  i told him i was cool.  once we got on the bus he goes, “wow, thank you.  do you want me to get you some weed, anything?”  i told him i don’t smoke or drink.  ‘who the hell is this square ass weirdo,’ i bet he’s thinking.

i asked him how much the ticket costs, he said one day cost $50.  i laughed and told him i guess he was getting a pretty sweet deal.  he emphatically agreed and told me that’s why he felt like repaying me in some way.  i told him it was all good, but ended up slipping him a minicard telling him that in fact, i was working on a project.  30 random acts of kindness in 30 days.  he should check out the website if he wanted to.  he looked mad perplexed and just plopped the card in his pocket.  haha :D

we get off the bus and head over to the box office.  as often goes with guest lists or special lists (i’d technically “won” tickets on the radio), the retrieval process can be disjointed.  and always, i even get a little apprehensive if folks will find my name on some list somewhere and let me in.  i started thinking how it would suck if i just hyped up dude only to find out that there was no ticket.  the event staffer says she’ll be right back, and we see her go back and forth a couple times.  “i guess this stuff is kinda backdoor, huh?”  says my new friend.  “yeah, it can be,” i say.  he then starts commenting about how it’d be funny if i was some weirdo girl that just made up this whole story about free tickets.  hahhahah.  “awesome,” i think to myself.  “i look like a psycho loner.”  yeeee.

it ends up working itself out and i also manage to get dude sunday’s ticket held under his name at will call.  once the saturday ticket is handed to him, and he’s filling out his name on an envelope handed to him by staff for sunday’s will call, it finally becomes a reality.  “wow.  thank you, you’re awesome,” he says.  i was just really glad it worked out in the end.  i ask him his name, “ryan,” he says.  i tell ryan he’s welcome and that in payment he should do something nice for someone else.  one of the staffer dudes at the box office tent smiles, probably not fully certain about what exactly just went on, but knowing enough.

we hand our tickets in together at the gate and he waves off again, ‘thank you! enjoy your night!’  something like that.  i have a memory of a gnat at times.

i leisurely walk through the park.  meander over to the left.  on the other side of the fence are large rocks lining an expanse of water, and a spectacular view of the sf cityscape and bay bridge, all lit up.

the massive sound.  thumping.  young folk bouncing around to it.

it was beautiful.