On Monday afternoon I headed out of work a little early and made my way up to PA for the evening. A couple months back a few friends and I bought tickets to the Bad Religion & Rise Against concert at the Electric Factory in Philly. I met up with a friend in West Chester, then headed over to Media, for a beer and cheesesteak, and that's where we met up up with another friend, who then drove into Philly.
It seems as though every time I go to a punk rock show of any kind, I go in with the best of intentions to just kinda hang out and watch the show from the balcony or side of the crowd, but for one reason or another that plan never works and I always find myself gravitating towards the mosh pit and the middle of the crowd. When Bad Religion played I actually managed to work myself up to about the 3rd row in hopes of grabbing the drummers attention and trying to snag a drum stick for my collection, but his apparent ADD foiled my plans. Oh well. Once Bad Religion was over my buddy and I were just talking to a bunch of other people around us, trying to find out if crowd surfing was allowed at the venue. I probably asked about 20 people around me if it was allowed, and almost every response was "I don't know, this is my first concert" or "No idea, never been here before." Eventually I got the attention of a bouncer/security guy up front and he mouthed to me "yea, sure if you want." Game on.
Once Rise Against hit the stage, things got really nuts. The moth pit opened up again, people flying everywhere, and plenty of crowd surfing. One benefit of being 'average' sized, is that you can get up and crowd surf really easy. I just find the biggest dude near me, and motion to him that I wanna go up, and he'll make a platform with his hands and launch me up on top of the crowd, and bam, you're crowd surfing [trying not to fall back onto the ground.] Once you get towards the front, the security guys grab you and send you to either side of the stage to make your way back into the crowd so you can do it all over again.
After being in the thick of the crowd for the first 2 bands and half of Rise Against, I was soaking wet with sweat and exhausted. I went up one last time, and then found my buddies and said I'm gonna retire to the back to get some water and cool off [side note: the 9:30 club here in DC does not charge you for water, so they definitely win for better concert venue.] I hung out in the back for the rest of the show watching, taking a couple pictures, and some video clips [seen below.] The main reason I went to see this show was for Bad Religion, but Rise Against put on a really energetic show as well, overall it was good times indeed.
Rise Against, 5/2/11 The Electric Factory, Philly
After the show was over, our whole group began walking around downtown Philly for a little while, cooling and drying off, with intentions of going to a bar for a little while. ......We found a Wawa instead and all got sandwiches and chocolate milk before walking home, and yes, the chocolate milk was an excellent choice! Below are a couple pictures from after the show while walking around.
Downtown Philly at night.
Enjoying our Wawa sandwiches at 1am, talk a motley looking crew!
Saw Old Glory being proudly displayed in front of one household
on the walk home, had to get a picture.
And here's a couple video's taken with my iPhone 4, pretty killer quality if you ask me!
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