Bohan and Feng go to White Castle

Legend--- wait for it...


---dary.

So here it is... finally (sorry for the delay, my house internet sucks)... the story Bohan and Feng go to White Castle (for literally just 15 minutes, but I'll get to that later).

The adventure began early Friday (5/22/09) morning, when Anton, Julius, and I headed to Anime Boston 2009 at 8:30 (anytime before 10 is early). I wanted to register and get my badge before I left for New York, and I also got to meet up with Nate, who I haven't seen since last fall. Nate showed up in all brown, like all brown (corduroy, hat, everything). As ridiculous as it was, it was nowhere near as crazy as the plethora of flamboyant Anime costumes. Anyway, I digress. Point being, I went to Anime Boston and was back at MIT at 11:15. The bus left at 12:30.

But there were still things that needed to be done. We needs Bawls to fuel our journey. To get Bawls, we had to go to Microcenter, and our plan did not leave us much time for error. Against my better judgement, I ran to Microcenter and left Bohan to print our tickets and maps. After running in the sweltering heat for 10 minutes, I finally got to the goods.


2 g33k b33rs and 2 normal Bawls. There are only three in the picture because I couldn't resist drinking one on the run back to MacGregor. And then we were off (after I quickly set up my fridge for defrosting). It was 12:00 when Bohan and I got to Mass Ave. At first, we waited for the 1 bus to take us across the river to Hynes, and then we could walk/run to Back Bay, but when it didn't come for 5 minutes, we were desperate and hailed a cab. And...we got there on time. Crisis averted.


And we were off to the Big Apple.


Although we made it on the bus on time, there wasn't time for us to get food, and missing both breakfast and lunch (in the case of Bohan) was not a good plan. But Bohan made due with what he had a granola bar and Bawls.


What do you get when you put the busiest city in the United States together with Memorial Day Weekend? A buttload of traffic. What was supposed to be a 4 hour bus ride turned into a 5 hour one, and we got there a little after 6. The concert started at 7:00. We proceeded to rush from 31st and 7th to 36th and 8th, where White Castle was located. Now I know what the Jews felt, when they finally reached the Promise Land after wandering through the desert during the Exodus. At that time, Bohan and I was literally a bit delusional and lightheaded because we were starving. We had nothing in our system but caffeine. We needed this. And we got what we came for. White Castle.


But time was not on our side. We finished eating at 6:30; 30 minutes left until the start of the concert (or so we thought). Irving Plaza/The Fillmore was located next to Union Square. That was on the far end of Broadway. We were on 36th and had to get to 17th, so we sprinted amidst the bustle of New York City on a Friday night for 19 city blocks, and we got to the place, only to see this:


The ticket suggested that they were going to let people in around 6, and since this was general admissions, we thought we were going to be fucked. But instead, the line was wrapped around two sides of a city block, and they didn't let people in yet. Fail. But the line in itself was pretty epic. I have never seen so many asians together outside of China, and I have never seen so many Koreans period. Bohan and I were in the last 10% of the line, but nevertheless we came this far, and we were content to wait while finishing the last of our Bawls. The line started moving around 7:30, and by 8:00, we were in at last.

The place was packed, and even before we got in, the security was saying the place was filled to the max. But that did not matter. We were there. The Fillmore apparently also does not have any air ventilation system, and it was hotter than Megan Fox's body in there. Actually Tablo put it best, "I've been in hot countries... in hot venues... in the hottest time of the year, but I've never done a concert in a place as hot as this before. It is literally hot in here... physically hot too." But that did not matter. We are here.

The concert started off with Dumbfoundead (you can find a pretty good video of him rap battling on youtube) MCing the place, but we missed most of it. The first guy to come on was Kero One. He was this Korean rapper (surprise surprise) with a cute chick called Dolores as backup vocalist.


He was aight. His rap was mellow, but not as soulful as Epik High, and overall it was not too impressive or exciting. Oh well, opener are always not very good.

Then next group of the Map the Soul tour was Far East Movement, and these guys were hilarious.


They were this techno group and dressed up in outrageous spacesuits and claimed to be from 3008, when music had died. They wanted to revive music back in their time, but they needed to harness the energy from 2009 to help them. Basically, their set was ridiculous, but they had good beats and pumped everyone up for the main event.

Actually there was one more act before Epik High, and it was this dude called Beatbox DG (that's probably not right, but whatever). He was baller and did this awesome version of Sexyback. Meanwhile, Bohan and I got separated as we were scooting forward to get closer to the stage. Bohan ended up in the front right, and I was almost dead center. We both had amazing views. Crushed up against a sea of Korean fan-girls, I was ready and waiting. It was time to get the show started. I'll let the pictures do the writing.





Yea, that's right. Feel jealous. It's ok. I would be too ;) Basically Tablo was the man, and Epik High just pwns face. After 3 hours of watching these guys perform, my neck was sore. After 3 hours of jumping to the music, my legs were dead. And after 3 hours of screaming and cheering, I was fucking dehydrated (remember all I had prior to this was 2 bottles of Bawls and White Castle). My body was ready to shut down, but it felt so good. Seriously, Epik High was totally worth the bus ride, the running, and the starvation and dehydration. After buying some water at a nearby Starbucks, Bohan and I took a cab to Penn Station and boarded the bus back to Boston. We passed out immediately.

But this story isn't over without a classic Harold and Kumar moment, and someone was saving it for the last. So as we got off the bus at 4am in the back entrance of Back Bay, we realized that we only had 6 bucks for the cab ride back. The fare was $8.75 the first time. Fuck. But that was nothing right? Just had to find an ATM. And that's what we did or tried to do. We wandered around the dark streets of Back Bay looking for an ATM, until we realized that we were being followed. That's right, a freakin' black homeless guy was following us at 4:30 in the moring. Jesus fucking christ. I was scared shitless. We could have been shot. Anyway, Bohan and I took the nearest corner and sprinted for our lives. It was bad. Then we hailed the nearest taxi, even though we didn't have enough money...GG. I just told him to take us to Mass Ave, thinking we might as well get as close to campus as possible. But have no fear, for during the ride, Bohan managed to find 2 dollars in coins in the depths of his wallet. We were going to be get back in one piece. And this was us at 5am, back in Macgregor:



What a trip. I'll write about Anime Boston some other time. For now peace out.