5 Seconds of Summer has a song called "Kiss Me Kiss Me" and one of their most iconic lyrics from that song is: "Here's to teenage memories." I've been living by that line for years now. This August, though, I turned 20, so it no longer seems appropriate. Right before my 20th birthday, though, I had one final adventure... one final teenage memory.
You know what I thought was a good idea? This travel itinerary...
New York, New York
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
New York, New York
Mohegan Sun, Connecticut
Cherry Hill, New Jersey
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
New York, New York
over the course of about five days.
Was it ridiculous? Probably. But it was also the best road trip thus far in my life.
When you and your friends decide to follow a boyband on tour for a weekend, you’ve probably already lost. So, why not just go all out. The first problem for us, though, was that we needed a car. A bunch of young adults living in NYC just didn’t have a car readily available to them. Lucky for my squad, I had one back home, but home was Harrisburg, PA.
The first tour date was in Connecticut. And if you know any geography, this meant I’d be backtracking. Desperately, I took the bus back home to Harrisburg to pick up my car. From there, I woke up extremely early on the morning - August 9th… the morning of the concert in Connecticut.
On my way to pick up my friends, though, I literally got into a car accident. Luckily, it was a fender bender in mostly stopped traffic. The other guy was a cake delivery truck and after we pulled over to the side of the road, we realized we had no damages. In fact, he said he was actually most concerned about the cake and my anxious mind realized I wasn’t fully processing what he was saying.
All I could think about was how I would have to drive into the Bronx to pick up my friends, who were meeting me there. Ali was the only other member of the group who could drive and the sooner I could get her behind the wheel and get us out of NYC, the better.
Then came the show itself. I had a meet and greet package… genuinely don’t know why considering I’ve “met” this band countless times, but still, there I was. Plus, Ali and I were working the show, too, doing some press stuff. Actually, between guest list spots and pre-purchased tickets, my squad ended up with a ridiculous number of seats for no real reason. It was fun, though, to jump between spots in the audience during the band’s set and watch the confusion on their faces when they were able to pick us out of the crowd everywhere.
In fact, I had gifted my favorite member a pack of fake nose rings during the meet and greet and only a couple of songs in he raced over to my side of the stage, found me third row, and gave me the smuggest look. Justina, Val, and I all leaned in to see the flicker of silver in his nose.
“Is that…”
“It’s a nose ring.”
“Alex, you okay?”
The rest of the show was spent with Daniel giving me looks and adjusting his nose ring any time he was close to me… great.
Now comes the part that makes even less sense. The next show was the following night in Philadelphia, but we booked our hotel in New Jersey, just a bit outside the city. We did this far in advance in an effort to save money.
Of course, the band (after we booked the hotel) decided to have a free meet and greet at a mall in the same town we were staying in. Here’s the catch: it was only for the first 50 fans to show up, which meant if you really wanted to meet them you’d be sleeping on the streets.
For a group of girls that had met this band collectively probably well over a hundred times, you’d think we wouldn’t want to participate. Honestly, we weren’t fully convinced of going, either.
We set off in the direction toward our hotel immediately after the Connecticut show, planning to check in around 2am. Instead of spending the night in the room, though, we checked out the line. There were less than 50 in line when we arrived, so we knew that if we just sat down, we’d get to hug the band. Basically, we didn’t sleep in our hotel room that night… and this wasn’t even the first time we had slept on the ground instead of a room we had paid for. At this point, camping out for pointless things had kind of become our squad’s brand.
So, we slept on the street outside of the mall (if you can call zoning out as fangirls scream lyrics to their favorite songs sleeping). And, yes, we met the band. So, that brought us to the morning of the Philadelphia show.
We all tried our best to get a quick nap in, but Sky had meet and greet that day. Also, did I mention my car broke down? Yeah, wait… pause. My car broke. As you probably already gathered, car problems give me anxiety. The worst part is that it wasn’t even related to the accent I had been in. My muffler had basically rotted out and I could tell based off of the sound alone because this had happened to me before. We were hours from my hometown and my car, while drivable, wasn’t in great shape.
We weren’t stopping tour, though. Sky went to her meet and greet (via Uber while we all slept). Then, we met up at the venue later. Again, we had too many tickets… whatever… it happens to us a lot.
We stayed after the show to give one of the band members hugs out back. Sometimes I wonder if our insistence on waiting after the show has anything to do with the band or if it’s just our desire to not go home… or the safety we feel at a concert venue.
Either way, we didn’t leave Philadelphia until late. Technically, Ali and Justina had the hotel room another night with the intention of staying there and going back to New York the next day. It wasn’t (as I predicted) hard to convince them to come to Pittsburgh. In fact, since we were driving from Philadelphia back to Harrisburg to spend the night, I had already weeks in advance told my family to expect all 5 of us, even though Ali and Justina kept saying they wouldn’t be doing the Pittsburgh leg… it’s cute when they lie to themselves.
Maybe we could have just slept in Cherry Hill, but we needed to get some of the drive to Pittsburgh (well, actually, Moon Township) done or we’d be driving forever the next day… and the show was literally in less than 24 hours.
Thank God I had beds for us to sleep in halfway between the two cities. Plus, I’m forever grateful for my mother for understanding that we HAD to finish tour. So, when we arrived in Harrisburg to spend the night, my mom took my car the next morning to get fixed, bringing it back just in time to hit the road.
Now, by this point, it’s important to realize that I had been battling a double ear infection the entire time. It was a severe double ear infection. Worst part? I had run out of my prescription ear drops due to a clerical error and my friends had to listen to me battle with healthcare professionals on the phone the entire drive. I was in pain this entire trip, but tour must go on.
So, Pittsburgh… or Moon Township.
We arrived and got into our AirBNB. I battled some more with healthcare professionals until I was eventually able to acquire more of my prescription. By this point, I really couldn’t hear much, but we didn’t have time to cope with that, so to the venue we went.
Somehow, Pittsburgh ended up being one of my favorite shows. I could barely hear anything, especially when the bass was turned up high. We didn’t have an excess of tickets for this show. In fact, I was tenth row as opposed to my typical ‘front row or no go’ mindset.
But, I loved every moment of it. One of my favorite parts of the show is when the band can see you in the crowd and they laugh because they probably know you a little too well, but they’re happy to see you at yet another show. Sometimes, it’s all in your head that the band is interacting with you, but…
After the show my favorite member came up to us by the buses. “Y’all were gettin’ it,” he told my friends and I. He wasn’t wrong. Were we obnoxious during the show? Yes. Was it fun? Heck yes. Did he just confirm that he could, in fact, see us and was, in fact, giving us attention? Yup! We already knew, though, especially because the last, like, two songs we had unbreakable eye contact that was lowkey a lil’ uncomfortable.
After that, though, things got wild. Here’s the thing about groupies: we’re annoying, but we know what we’re doing. Waiting by a bus is so second nature to me. I’m always respectful to venue security, as long as they are respectful to my friends and I. So, we sat outside the buses and waited… and waited… and waited. The band had ran to the gym, but there was only about 30 fans left at this point (including many fans that they personally knew), so they would stop and talk to us for sure. What time would that be? Late, very late (or early depending on how you look at it).
But venue security wanted to throw a tantrum. Note to all venues ever: if the fangirls are being respectful and not bothering anyone… do not start a fight with them. There are certainly loud disrespectful mobs of fans who you need to control, but girls who are eating pizza, sitting on the group quietly, and even cleaning up after themselves are not a harm and are literally not worth the fight. You can threaten to call the cops, but I promise you they aren’t scared of that because the most cops will do is escort them off the premise…. And even then it only works if the area is actually private property. Trust me, don’t start a fight that you can’t finish… fangirls are very resourceful.
So, that’s why when Miss Perkiest-Security-Manager-I’ve-Ever-Met started sassing us, I mostly just ignored her. “So, what’s the plan ladies?”
“We’re going to sit here.”
“They aren’t going to stop for you. Just accept it. It’s not happening today.”
Blank stares in return. She clearly didn’t know who we think we are. She circulated between cliques of fans with the same energy, threatening even to call police. We all returned the same “leave me alone energy”.
I think we might have broke her. She threw an actual hissy fit. Funny enough, the band’s manager had brought us all water and even said he didn’t mind that we were there. He knew the groupies waiting pretty personally since we were all kind of the usual suspects and still the venue security lady was just mad for no real reason.
So, we all pretended to leave for awhile, but really just sat in our cars. Hours passed and eventually she left, too. Except, I check my phone and got a text from one of the other cars of fans. “The security lady is waiting in her car for us to all leave.”
Imagine… imagine clocking out of your job that probably doesn’t even pay that well and still feeling the need to follow four cars worth of fans out of the parking lot and down the street. You can hate fangirls all you want, but like… go to bed, you’ve gotta have something better to do.
So, once the security lady stopped following us, we all instinctively pulled into the same parking lot. Honestly, I didn’t know all the girls personally that well, but there was a common trust that we were now suddenly working together. After waiting for a few minutes, we all got back in our cars, drove back to the venue, turned our headlights off, and waited up a hill from the buses to scope out the scene.
It was my friends and I, ultimately, that had to just take the chance and make our way down the hill, where we waited by the buses to see if any security was going to throw a fit. The band’s team saw us and we paused, not sure if we needed to head back to our cars. And then, one of the members of the crew came over to us and just started a conversation. We sat down behind the barriers that had been put up (because we would never just sit directly outside the buses or try to sneak over to them and invade the band’s personal space). I looked up the hill and saw the rest of the girls eye the situation nervously. I texted one to let them know it was safe, the band’s direct team didn’t mind at all… it was had just been the venue that was acting up.
And so, we talked to the crew members and genuinely discussed the shows and what we loved and/or didn’t love. And guess what? Not too long later the band returned and for the fifteen of us left, they stopped and talked to us just as we knew they would.
We told them about the venue security lady and they laughed at her with us. Of course the band was stopping, they knew us personally enough and knew we weren’t going to scream awe-struck in their faces. If anything, it just irritates me to this day that the security lady didn’t know a thing about this band or the genuine connection they had with fans, yet needed to act like she was all-powerful and knowing. These weren’t some idols that I would be lucky to meet, this was a band of five guys who I had been following for years and who I knew better than I knew some of my friends from my hometown.
We talked to the band for hours, but honestly, it’s all kind of a blur. It was a night of hanging out with my best friends… and that includes the band.
The next morning, we drove back to Harrisburg.
“Hey, do you guys mind if we stop at Urgent Care?”
My double ear infection still hadn’t healed, so… yeah we had to stop and get that checked out before we went to the train station. It hurt when Sky left us at the Philadelphia station. By the time I made it back to my dorm room, I was heartbroken because I missed tour already.
It wasn’t perfect and so many things went wrong, but it was so full of true freedom. It was beautiful and fun and I wouldn’t trade it for the world.
People always ask me if I feel like I’m wasting my time doing things like this. Honestly, I don’t. We all need something that brings us joy in life. I’ve always wanted to be able to travel and write and that’s what I’m doing. How could it be a waste of time when I’ve never been happier? How could it be a waste of time when it’s brought me so much closer with some of my favorite people and best friends?
I was sick, my car was going through it, and I had to be back for work on Monday, but guess what? It was so worth every moment. As long as I am able to go on an adventure, I’m going to. Life is so short in the grand scheme of things. It’s also kind of pointless, so why not fill it with the things that you love?
