Expecting a fun experience, I was excited to go see R&B artist, Bryson Tiller on tour at the Bill Graham Auditorium on May 14th, who was coming back to San Francisco after 2 years since his last performance. However, my excitement was somewhat dashed by the large crowd of people, eventually leading to difficulty enjoying the concert.
As soon as I saw that Bryson Tiller was having a concert in SF, I wanted to go. Since he’s an artist, my girlfriend and I always listen to, and know almost all the songs being played on his setlist, so my girlfriend bought us both tickets for our first concert together.
With the doors to the concert opening at 7pm, my friends (who also bought tickets to the concert) and my girlfriend & I, wanted to get there as soon as we could. We planned to be there around 5pm in order to try and beat the crowd. Instead, we got there an hour later than planned, and the line was longer than we thought it would be. Luckily there were other friends we knew already there waiting in line. Although it felt embarrassing to do, everyone was cutting the line so we decided to do the same. We ended up with a much better spot compared to where we started.
Once the doors opened, 30 minutes later than we were told, everybody went running, and to not be left behind, we all did the same. Pushing through everybody felt overwhelming for all of us. After all the running stopped, it wasn’t much better as we were all squished together getting pushed around, with one of our friends losing her purse on the ground (although luckily I saw it and picked it up for her). At some point, security was able to calm the crowd down enough to where the pushing stopped.
Immediately after my girlfriend & I made it past the bag check, we ran to get as close as we could to the stage where we also saw our friends who were also able to make it through the chaos.
Inside the venue though, things didn’t get much better. I was shoulder to shoulder with everyone, unable to move a single step and also getting pushed around. I found it annoying that no one was mindful of the people around them. People were calling out to their friends to push themselves through us while others took pictures as if they were the only ones there.
Then, before any performers were on stage, a fight started that caused everyone to get shoved back. It took us all to call down security for someone to finally come stop it.
When the concert finally started, the DJ was the first to come out playing some mediocre music that not many people knew. The people in front of us were jumping up and down to slow music which was irritating, and it also made the room a lot hotter than it already was. People were passing out around me until they finally decided to turn on the AC for us.
Following the DJ set, the main performance finally began, but people started walking out because they couldn’t handle being too close to each other, which gave us some much needed breathing room.
While I didn’t enjoy the long wait, I did start to feel less annoyed once the performance started. Most of the songs played were the ones I listened to and I enjoyed the dancers he had with him, one even performed on their own, dancing to the song “Ciao.” I also liked how each 3-4 songs Bryson would go backstage to switch out his outfit because I found every one of them funny to look at.
Although I did enjoy the concert by the end, since it felt less packed,I doubt I would have felt good about it if it weren’t paid for, to me the whole start was enough to leave and forget about that concert. There were too many times when my girlfriend & I wanted to leave but I was persistent about not leaving because I didn’t want her money to go to waste. By the end of the concert we were happy we stayed and would have regretted leaving without at least waiting for him to come out.
