Of Summer Adventures, Sticktoitiveness, and Wandering Adolescents

Photo by by Uwe Conrad on Unsplash

This summer, I went on an adventure. I've been talking a lot on here about how my favorite band of all time, Stray Kids, has been on tour. Well, what I didn't say is that I was planning on attending one of the stops!!!! That's right!! This summer, I saw my favorite band live, Stray Kids!!!!

Aah but, my dear reader, there is a nasty catch in the story.

I saw Stray Kids live, but my older sister, a friend, and myself had the misfortune of attending that one infamous stop.

If you're in the fandom, then you already know where I'm going with this. 

We saw Stray Kids on the 23rd of June in Washington D.C. Dun, dun, duuuunn!!

As I said before, if you’re in the fandom, then you already know what happened. For those of you who aren't... An intense heatwave hit the D.C. area that week, and, while the majority of the concert went as planned, due to numerous attendees suffering heat-related illnesses, the last section of the concert was cancelled.

It goes without saying that it was a pretty rough night. For many of the fans in attendance, and, likely for Stray Kids too, as they were the ones dancing and singing in that crazy heat. My heart goes out to all the fans who were seriously sick and/or hospitalized. While it hurts we had to cancel, the most important thing was making sure everyone was safe and that we all had a good time. And since that was becoming difficult to make a reality, cancelling the concert was the definite best choice. But I won't be going much into the details of that night on here. If you're really curious, you can look up exactly how things went down online. It was on D.C. news, and some fans have shared their stories on social media as well. 

The one thing I'll say is that, though many attendees report negative experiences with specifically the venue staff that exacerbated the issues we were already having, all the staff I encountered on that day were, though perhaps a touch frazzled, very kind and helpful. 

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The best way I can describe how I feel about the Dominate Tour is a Mario Kart race. You know when you're playing Mario Karts with a bunch of other people and you're all in a mass of cars and motorcycles, zooming along the track? The laps go by, one, then two. 

Okay, you're in the final lap! Oh no!! A turtle shell is coming- Ooh! It hit ya! Wait! That little dude on a cloud is coming to fish you off the side...

Aaah! He put you back on the track, but it's too late! Everyone else passed the finish line! "Race Over" flashes across the screen, and that infuriating losing music starts playing as your character sits, dejectedly bouncing in their car.

Yeah. It felt like that.

Every city, all around the world, prepared wholeheartedly to welcome Stray Kids and have a great time jamming out with them. We were all together, you know? Then all of a sudden, D.C. starts going off on it's own path, off the side, lol! Because I feel I need to clarify: I am immensely happy for all the cities that did get to cross the finish line of this race/tour. I just wish we could've crossed it too. :)

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Admittedly, it's been a hard thing to accept, and I've spent the weeks afterward trying to reconcile with everything that happened.

That night was the culmination of seven months of hoping and dreaming and planning? Really??

Let's step into gratitude for a moment. Simply getting to be there for most of the concert was a huge dream come true, and I am so, so, so grateful we got to see the members in person. Bang Chan, Lee Know, Changbin, Hyunjin, Han, Felix, Seungmin, and I.N. have inspired me a lot. Their personalities, friendships with each other, and music have walked alongside me throughout the ups, the downs, and the in-betweens that have made up the past year.

And because of that, I took a leap of faith and set off to try something new. To have this little adventure and see them in person, performing some of my favorite songs.

The adventure just didn't end well. Though we got most of the concert, I struggled to pay attention for about half of it due to the oppressive heat. We missed the encore, which means the trolleys, which was the section of the concert I was most looking forward to. Lastly, it was my first ever Stray Kids concert, and my first concert in general since 2018.

All of these things are just going to hurt.

So...

What do you do when you take a chance and it ends in disaster? When you race off to live this life to the best you know how and a moment later your face is in the muck and your knees are sporting bloody bruises? 

What do you do when your dreams return to you broken?

Well, I'm choosing to rise and dream again. I choose delusional hope, crazy optimism. I'm thankful for the good I experienced that night, like getting to go at all. As for the bad, part of life is the falling down, the disappointments. It's all part of the adventure. And I know you gotta learn to roll with the punches.

So, I choose to accept the disappointment of that night too. 

I accept my broken dream.

The summer season is over, friends. And whatever ups and downs it held for you, I hope we're all able to move forward with hope and joy into Autumn. Who knows? The best of days may be just up ahead.

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Now, then, let’s end this post with wild enthusiasm.

I SAW STRAY KIDS LIVE!!!!! 

And, guys, they look the exact same in person as they do on camera!! I thought there'd be some differences, but nope! That's really what they look like!!

And I got to get merch the day before, and my sister gave out freebies, and we got freebies from other people!

Also!! Stays are so nice and friendly, bro!!😭A huge shoutout to everyone we met on merch and concert day! (As we were heading out of the stadium after the concert had been cancelled, a girl handed me a freebie with a smile, "Would you like a freebie?", like, what?? We're all disappointed and it's hot as the dickens and your choice in all of that is to spread love and kindness??? To whoever that was, I hope you have a fantastic rest of your year, bro! I'm so thankful for the good people in this fandom! 😭)

To wrap up this post, enjoy these photos and videos I managed to get before we had to cancel. And at the very bottom, we have “Cover Me”!!!!!! 😍😍😍😍🤩🤩🤩. 

Even if we didn’t get the full concert, I got to sing “Cover Me” with Stray Kids and thousands of other fans!! 😭😭😭😭 BRB, I’ll be crying till they come back to the U.S.!

The photos and videos below belong to me, my sister, and our friend.
Please do not take them and upload them elsewhere on the web.

^"We're special, yeah!!"

^This shot looks so cool!

^Caught Seungmin smiling!!

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(Notes on the videos: 1. Flashing lights and noise warning for all of them
 2. Camera angles ended up a little wonky, so some of them have sections where I've included the audio only or are otherwise jankily edited. Apologies in advance for that and for some grainy shots as well.
3. A few misuses of God's name from people in the crowd from time to time)

The concert opening (:56) was so hype!!
(small curse word in the opening song toward the end of the video)

Member Introductions (4:20).

I managed to get no spoilers about the dancers medley (2:34) beforehand so getting this performance was a complete surprise. They did amazing!

Same with the band medley (3:16), I had no idea they also had a few minutes of the concert to themselves! They were superb! (this video isn't mine and it's from a different concert stop, but it's the same as what we got in d.c.)

S-class (3:29) live is so fire!

The bass in Megaverse (3:02) is crazy!! And just hear the crowd at the beginning singing Felix and Bang Chan's parts!!

The drum intro to Cinema (4:50) is amazing live! 😍The whole song is just gorgeous live!! Getting to be in a sea of light sticks was such a crazy moment, and a total dream come true.

Cinema ments!! (3:11)💛Seungmin said we sing good! 🥹

Lonely St. (2:19)

Cover me!! 🥹🤍

Watching all this footage, you'd never know how miserable I was because of the heat. I have to tell you it was miserable out there, but it looks like I'm having a great time, haha! Just goes to show, don't believe everything you see on the internet, kids! There might just be an unfortunate story behind the beautiful music and bright lights, lol!

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How were your own Summer Adventures, reader? I'd love to hear about them below! I hope they ended better than mine, lol!

My friends, go forth into this Autumn, and be
epic!
I'm rooting for you!!🫰