The Upstate Life

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

TUL’s Take: The Cool Kids (AND KANYE) @ American Museum of Natural History, NYC

So I went up to NYC for the weekend to enjoy my last few days of freedom before school resumes tonight (blech). I actually had to take the Chinatown (Eastern Shuttle) bus Friday since I foolishly missed my Vamoose reservation and all the other busses were already sold-out. Incredibly inconvenient since I had to go all the way down to Gallery Place but at least I got to try Capital Q for the first time. And yes, it was delicious. Eastern was a tad shadier than Vamoose but it was also $5 less plus we barely hit any traffic. I did find it comical that the driver stopped at the Baltimore Travel Plaza to use the bus' own restroom. Naturally, there was one dude behind me that was on his phone practically throughout the entire duration of the trip. I swear he must've had a Jack Bauer-capacity phone battery since the cell just refused to die. I tried to listen to The Cool Kids to channel him out but of course my iPod decided to pull its routine of skipping every song of a newly uploaded album. I love it when that happens.

Anyway, the bus drops us off near Penn Station and I head towards Union Square to meet up with Brian, Courtney, and Allister at their office. After dropping my bags off, we head to Patsy's for an excellent dinner of pizza and pasta. The show was slated to start at 9pm but we felt we had plenty of time to go to No Idea for drinks before the Cool Kids went on since the event was scheduled to end at 1am. Little did we know how much of a clusterfuck this concert would actually turnout to be.

We arrive at the American Museum of Natural History a little before 11pm and despite having tickets waiting for us at will-call, we're instructed by the security guard to wait outside since the will-call line inside was absurdly long. After about 10 minutes, we're allowed admittance inside to wait in another line. Meanwhile, Kid Sister is already performing with A-Trak on the turntables. By the time we reach the front of the line, A-Trak starts spinning "Good Life" and the crowd starts going nuts. There were dividers blocking the main performance area from where we were standing so I couldn't tell at the time what was going on. Then my friend Joey, who was a few spots ahead in the very same line, texts me "Really happy to be in line with Kanye onstage." When we finally got our tickets, low and behold, Kanye West was in fact performing. A surprise appearance by a rapper in the lobby of a planetarium. Only in NYC, folks.

By the time we were able to actually get to the main performing area, we were able to catch the final song of Kanye's four song set, but it was still worth the $20 admission. Then A-Trak said "give it up for The Cool Kids one more time!" So, yeah, we evidently missed the headliners. Then again, so did about a third of the crowd since they were still stuck in the absurdly long line when Kanye was performing. The rest of the evening was filled by A-Trak spinning records until about 1am. All and all it was a cool event but poorly organized. You had to buy drink tickets from an ATM machine and then redeem them at bars located elsewhere which proceeded to run out of the alcohol you originally bought tickets for. I ended up drinking 2 glasses of red wine since they ran out of beer. Oh well, at least I learned my lesson to show up early next time for a One Step Beyond show. Simian Mobile Disco in March sounds really tempting.

Posted by Brett at 3:54 PM |