CRUSH SO CAL WAS...INTERESTING?
This past Saturday I attended Crush Southern California, and while I can't say I didn't have fun, I can admit that the experience was a little bit of a mixed bag. As those of you have read the blog before know, I am a huge fan of Insomniac and their events whether they be festivals or club events. I think they are a fantastic company and honestly the best one in the space. Their production is impressive, ground control is sweet, everyone working the festivals are kind and helpful, and the experiences are never anything short of amazing, which is why some of the things ar Crush this year left me somewhat confused.
The event was held at the NOS events center in San Bernadino, California where Insomniac hosts events like Escape Psycho Circus and Beyond Wonderland (which I will be coming to so if you see me, please come and say hi). Now because this event was nowhere on the scale of a big festival like Beyond it was limited to one of the structures, which was where my first point of contention rears its ugly head. The venue space was fenced off for the most part, except for the area where the event was taking place, which was honestly the creepiest thing on earth. The space sectioned off was gigantic and honestly seemed entirely too large for the number of people that were there. Even though everything could have been easily around twenty feet away from the room with the stage, everything was ridiculously spaced out, which seeing as it was freezing cold outside got increasingly annoying as the night when on. If that wasn't enough, you could only use one entrance and one exit, which meant that if you needed to go outside for a minute to catch your breath, you would then need to walk all the way around the building and then wait in a line to get back in. This may not sound like too much, but when you are wearing platforms and like a super thin outfit, having to spend seven extra minutes in the freezing cold for no reason is a bit irritating.
Even if we ignore that everything was needlessly far away, there was something else that really made the experience less fun and more of a negative one for me. The event staff was horrendous. From the moment my friend and I pulled into event parking we started on a bad note. Although no one carries cash anymore because it isn't 1945, we were very rudely told we needed to pay cash to park and then actually yelled at by some of the parking staff as we tried to exit the parking lot, as they had asked to do. We came back, cash in hand, and were told to park on the left side of the lot, which we then discovered was not only full but blocked off to prevent us from being able to get out any way except for backing out. We couldn't even do this because someone else had pulled up behind us, effectively blocking us in. There was no one directing traffic, so I had to get out and try and facilitate us all backing out of the parking lot myself. Once I had done that, one of the parking event staff appeared and proceeded to make a huge mess of all of the other cars which they had effectively trapped with no way to escape. After about ten minutes of waiting, we were finally able to get to the side of the lot that still had spaces. Again, this isn't really that much of a big deal but the fact that they didn't even really try to be aware of the fact that half of their lot was full, seemed a little strange. However, the problems didn't start there.
When we got to the ticket check, we encountered yet another issue, I was told, despite the fact that I had ordered a couples ticket (because that is how they were sold) that I should have received two different digital tickets, which I hadn't. I was very rudely told that I didn't have enough tickets and it was heavily implied that it was in some way my fault that they hadn't sent me the correct number of tickets. I was able to pull up the confirmation email I had received showing that I had two tickets, and yet the second person I dealt with (after the first one decided it wasn't worth her time to wait for me to look through my email), again tried to act like It was my fault. When I refused to admit guilt (lol) he finally very curtly told us we 'could just go through.'
When we got to security, I was checked twice. Now, this isn't a real grievance I just think it was worth mentioning because I was wearing literally no clothes, and didn't have a bag. The only place I could have hidden a weapon would have been literally inside myself somewhere. Nevertheless, I received not one, but two pat downs and my fanny pack was checked twice. As I have never once been patted down at any event, even ones where I had on all the clothes ever, I just couldn't help but throw it in here.
Anyway, I thought this would be the end of the negativity and the start of a fun night. Nope. I was wrong. The bar, which was a solid three hundred feet from the event space (even though the place was so empty they could have literally put it ten feet from the stage, and there would have been space), would only sell you drinks if you had a wristband. Which meant that there was an empty row of bar stands and a line in front of the ID check booth that took nearly twenty minutes to get through. Twenty minutes. Now I am not so bad that I can't wait in line for twenty minutes, when I got to the front, saw that it literally took thirty seconds to check the ID's, I couldn't help but feel like it had been a complete waste of time. They would have been more efficient if they had carded everyone when they went to get a drink instead of trying to be efficient with their 'let's check everyone before they can even get near the bar" approach.
Once you battled the rude people at the parking lot, the unhelpful and accusatory ticket people, and then the twenty-minute wait in the whipping winter winds in front of the ID check line, you could finally get to the stage itself, where you would promptly sweat yourself half to death. Ventilation was practically non-existence, which is fine if you aren't going from hundred-degree heat and pure humidity to freezing cold outside if you need to cool down. My date has asthma, and the temperature differential was murder for her.
All of the negativity aside the music was fantastic, the vibe inside was energetic and incredibly fun, and the production was terrific. The light shows and giant heart backgrounds were incredibly cool and worked very well with the warehouse vibe of the whole event. My friend and I went to the event without any expectations about the music, so the sets by GRAVEDGR and GAMMER were awesome surprises for us. I always enjoy going to events blind and just experience artists I haven't heard before and being pleasantly surprised.
All things considered, though the production and music were up to typical insomniac standards it was the little logistical things surrounding the event that made it a little less of a positive experience than I would have liked. Now, my friend and I might just have been incredibly unlucky and had encountered the worst people, but if so it was so consistent that it still doesn't seem unlikely that other people had similarly negative experiences.
I want to think that this was just a one-off, and that next year CRUSH Southern California is going to be a fantastic event. I trust Insomniac enough to believe that this might have been an oversight, but I don't know if I would want to return next year based off of the experience that I had. I honestly think that many of the problems that came with this event had to do with the venue. Even though it was sold out the venue space was far too spread out for the number of people they had in attendance, which meant that the energy died the second you stepped out of the stage. I think that a smaller event at a club like Academy or even at a different venue in or around LA would have made a lot more sense.
Did you go to CRUSH So Cal? If so, please hit me up with your experience. I would love to hear if anyone else encountered some of the same problems I did. If you went to a different CRUSH event in any of the other cities, I would also love to hear from you.
