Living After Midnight

Ya know, in a perfect world, I would be composing this post — my first one in what seems like forever — on my iPad using my Magic Keyboard.

But as 2016-2020 proved to us, the world is a strange place and sometimes things go terribly awry. That’s where I’m at now as my keyboard charges and I tap-tap-tap away this post on my phone with 56% battery life, trying to tell you about our Sunday night/Monday morning adventures. So gather around the phonograph, children. It’s story time!

I had purchased tickets for the Foo Fighters concert months ago, almost a year if I recall. So long ago it was that I thought the day would never get here. But Sunday was it and to sum it up, the show was a-maze-ing as always. Thankfully, my situation wasn’t nearly as awful as it was when we saw them back in 2021. You can read about that dreadful month here.

The show ended at 11 pm and Anthony and I waded our way through the crowd and directly into the smell of bacon-wrapped street dogs wafting into the warm night air. If you go to shows in LA and don’t do this, you’re committing a cultural crime and should be punished accordingly.

We walked by the Coliseum, host of 1932, 1984, and 2028 Olympics and home of the Dodgers for a short time, while munching on our oh-so-delicious hot dogs. Shit’s better than any gourmet steakhouse, I’ll tell you what. Afterwards, we headed out to the USC/Expo Metro station for the ride home.

A little background. Unless absolutely necessary, I don’t drive in LA. The Metro lines are adequate enough to get me everywhere I need to go, a big plus when attending events like these that charge upwards of $50 for parking. This concert was no exception and paying $7 round trip via train for both of was is a bargain.

But there are some drawbacks, like leaving well in advance of the event and trains not running as frequently in the late evening. This was the case as we waited for ours to arrive at USC/Expo so when it did, we boarded and waited to get going. But something was amiss.

We left the station and proceeded to USC/ Jefferson. Before we could approach it, the train began to slow down and finally came to a complete stop. It happens. But then it began to go back to USC/Expo where we boarded.

“This ain’t good,” I told Anthony as we stopped at the station. He agreed as we sat there for a good 10 minutes before departing again — and the pattern repeated only this time, we saw a fire truck go by us as we headed back. Passengers were beginning to get annoyed because no announcement was made or so I thought.

The guy next to us said they had made one, stating there was an accident on the tracks. Maybe the ringing in my ears was so bad that I couldn’t hear it because we did, after all, just leave a Foo Fighters show.

It’s entirely possible because at the stop, people began to exit with someone else telling us the same thing. And when we saw the conductor standing there, we knew we were screwed.

“Huh, so that’s interesting,” I told Anthony.

“Yeah. So what now?”

With an accident on the tracks, that obviously means the trains in that direction aren’t going to run but we had to catch a connecting line back to where we parked near home. I looked up the distance: 2 miles to the Pico station.

I had to download all the ride share apps because — you probably won’t believe this — I have never in my life used Uber or Lyft. I may have worked for Lyft as a driver for one day before realizing that shit wasn’t my cup of tea but I’ve never used them as a consumer. This could have been the night.

I started to check rides and couldn’t believe it. $50+ to take us a measly 2 miles? Really? Y’all are crazy paying that but some train passengers did as a line of ride share cars began to appear across the street from the station. Even Anthony said that was price bullshit.

“The Pico station is 2 miles from here. You up for it?” Anthony grinned.

“Let’s go.” It’s now just past midnight in downtown Los Angeles and the two of us are literally walking the streets to the Pico station. Under normal circumstances, both of us would be carrying some form of personal protection while in that area but being we just left a concert, we were most definitely traveling light.

As we walked, Anthony saw some scooters and suggested we both rent one and ride it to the station so I downloaded the Bird app and saw that you had to prepay a minimum of $15 to start using them. For something we’ll probably only use once, we weren’t willing to pay that, so we continued to beat the streets.

It’s now way past midnight. Barely a soul out save for the homeless encampments on the sidewalks that we had to steer clear of since they were pouring into the streets. Heads on a swivel, we kept moving and barely paused for anything to be safe.

Except maybe for the rats that darted by us. And oh, the cockroaches too. But those were easily defeated in one fell swoop of a Nike.

A few people were shadowing us as we walked but we stayed alert. They ended up walking other directions as we stayed on Flower toward the Pico station.

We kept talking and stayed loose but definitely ready for anything that might have happened. Fight or flight, baby.

Finally after dodging rats and roaches, we saw the Pico station drawing nearer. It was now close to 1 am and there was a train sitting there waiting with passengers.

We had come this far and we weren’t going to miss this train back home — so we made a run for it.

No time for pictures or stopping for red lights; this was serious. It was a long night and we just wanted to get home so we sprinted to the station with me almost twisting my ankle on the rail. Up the ramp and onto the Blue Line. We had made it.

But so did the train that we were on. Literally minutes after we sat down, the train from USC/Expo had arrived. Anthony knew it was the same one because he recognized one of the people on it who was also at the concert.

So in the end, we could have waited and it wouldn’t have made a difference, but what fun would that have been? We can now say we walked the streets of LA at nearly 1 am and survived.

And by the time we reached our final stop, drove to the mini mart for a drink and then home, it was 2 am.

And after all that, we still hit the gym later that morning.

It was a long, memorable experience that lasted just about as long as the concert itself but something we won’t forget for a while.

Thanks again to Foo Fighters for putting on an epic show.

And with my phone battery now at 44%, this post is complete!