5 AM?! Why Wouldn't I be at a Concert in Central Park?

What: Summer Concert Series: Usher

Where: Central Park

Who: Erica and Me

When a friend emailed me with an invitation to attend Good Morning America’s Summer Concert Series in the Central Park I accepted not realizing the repercussions of such an agreement.

At 5:30 AM on Friday morning my alarm told me that I was already ten minutes late. I was to meet my friend, Erica, in 15 minutes near the park. I stumbled out of bed and into, what can only be described as, the night. Upon meeting Erica in the Upper East Side we walked to the 72nd Street entrance of Central Park.

There we waited in the wrong line for twenty minutes. Upon reaching the front of the line we were told that those with VIP tickets had to wait in a separate line, so we took our seemingly wonderful VIP tickets and waited another ten minutes in a line that awarded us a bracelet that signified our status.

We were then led past the crowd and into a gated area right in front of the stage where we would wait for the next two hours. The performer was supposed to be Rihanna, but much to my dismay she cancelled and Usher would be performing instead. The twelve year old girls and their mothers did not seem to share my disdain. Instead they hailed posters, screamed, and occasionally lifted their shirts in the hopes that they would be like one of the lucky thousands of girls before them to make it backstage.

Usher appeared thirty minutes later to have a stagehand walk him through his performance. The instructions he was given were interrupted by the prepubescent girls and their mothers screaming for his attention.

Not terribly engaged in Usher’s ability to follow the stagehand around I geared my attention to the two women who had started a fight. One could only guess what they were fighting about, but I hoped that at least one of the following scenarios had ensued:

1) One of the females referred to Usher as “her man”
2) One had accidentally bumped into the other
3) One had stolen the other’s boyfriend years ago, became pregnant, and this was the first time they had seen each other since

Regardless of the reasoning behind the fight, the visual of the two women, with their hair standing up and their clothes slightly torn, was enough for me. Others attempted to compete with this excitement, the girl that passed out, the woman who used Erica as an armrest, the girl that lied down on the pavement and put her legs between mine, but none of them came close to the intensity of the fight.

Another hour of scanning the crowd for a fight and Usher finally came on after being presented by Robin Roberts and George Stephanopoulos, both of whom left something to be desired. Their pasted on smiles and raised eyebrows may have translated well on TV, but were fairly creepy in person.

Usher performed, or rather danced, his way through two songs, neither of which I knew. His vocals could hardly be heard over the music, but his constant hip thrusts at dancers wearing their weight in make-up were evident.

It was an amusing performance that was made more enticing by the common belief among that crowd that each and every one of them was his biggest fan.

Upon finishing his second set, Erica and I bolted from the stage area and ran to the outskirts of the park to avoid any chaos that would ensue. Waiting three hours to hear two songs we could only assume that other concert goers had pent up energy. If this post sounds like a lot of buildup only to be let down, well then you now share my sentiment about the performance.

Goals Accomplished:
1) First time going to a concert in the morning and seeing Usher perform (safe to say the last as well)

2) Uncomfortable being around the massive amounts of estrogen
3) Learned VIP means standing in two lines