I'm Slipping Into The Lava...

Bryant Park, New York City, August 10th, 2008. It was three days before the Jonas Brothers were set to perform on Good Morning America's Summer Concert Series and it was time to go shopping (gotta look good for the front row). After so many trials and tribulations throughout the last year on the JoBros rise to fame, it was time to get the bar. For those of you that don't speak fangirl, the bar is equivalent to the trident of Poseidon. Basically, if you have the bar you're golden. In English, the bar is a barricade that is set up to separate the performer from the crowd for security purposes, and if you're lucky enough to be posted up on the bar, it's the closest you can possibly get to the performer. There was no question that we would do everything in our power to get that bar.

So after a long day of shopping for this soon to be epic event, we decided to swing by Bryant Park and see if there were any fans crazy enough to already be camping out. Surely enough, approximately 63 hours in advance, there were two girls camping out on the steps of Bryant Park. Our hearts sank. We knew we had to stay. I had my mom bring us some things to hold us over until our other friends would come to relieve us for the "second shift" (we decided between the 5 of us to do 24 hour shifts with groups of two and three). My mom being my mom made us chicken cutlets, brought us sweatshirts and blankets, and then stayed with us all night as it torrential down poured (needless to say we camped out in the car that night).

The next morning when the sun finally came out, we assumed our positions in our camping chairs and began the wait. As business professionals passed us by on their way to work, some people didn't pay us any mind, and some strangers were kind enough to not only stop and talk to us, but to offer to get us food or coffee because they thought we were run away teens. After they understood what we were doing, there were two people that checked on us regularly during their routine walk to and from work. Being born and raised in New York, I honestly never expected that type of generosity from strangers. Essentially staying up for three days straight can make you feel pretty sick, so needless to say nothing tasted good. That was the first and last time I ate Pax, I could never forget that chicken and apple sandwich.

When we were rounding the 24 hour mark, the media started showing up. We were endlessly interviewed by radio, TV, and publicists. ABC was constantly interviewing us as this was great press for their station. We were essentially a three day ad for the concert. There was one interviewer that threw me off. She didn't look too official and she was way too excited when asking questions like, "Who's your favorite Jonas Brother!" I didn't know if I should play into it, but I thought why not (little did I know, this would be for the Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience movie).

The last 12 hours were the hardest part. We were getting agitated and nervous hoping that everything we did would finally be worth it. Now that the ABC 7 crew was starting to show up, I asked every single ABC 7 official, "Are you sure we'll be in the front? Because if there's going to be 1,000 VIP in front of us we’re going home." Time after time I was assured not to be worried because we would be in the front.

Then within the last few hours, this girl appears out of the abyss and has the audacity to walk up to me and show me "a note" from a "NYPD officer" saying that she was here first and she didn't have to wait. Obviously no one who had been there all week took this seriously, so we shrugged her off. Moments later she comes back with an officer who comes up to me and asks, "What seems to be the problem?" I started to explain that we had been there for three days and never saw this girl, and then all of sudden the cop started screaming at me saying, "You need to calm down! Why don't you sit down and smoke a cigarette?" I was now enraged and appalled because A. I never thought a law official would speak to me like that, B. I was only 17, and most importantly C. I am the BIGGEST anti-smoking person. I was calm before, now I had to consciously be calm as all the mothers behind me are screaming at the cop saying, "These girls were here first, they've been here all week! No one’s ever seen this girl!" As the stereotype goes, the egotistical cop threatened that if we didn't stop he would kick us all out and cancel the event as if he were important enough to cancel a nationally televised event. I literally could not believe what just happened, but I was not going to let him ruin my time...I would just get his name and precinct instead 😡

The time left after that was just nerves until the sun came up and we would finally pile into the park. And that's when my worst fear came true. We had the bar alright, the bar of general admission. But just like my premonition, there were 1,000 VIP in front of us. We were NOWHERE by the stage. Everything we did was a waste. We didn't know what to do, we were literally devastated. Honestly it was hard to have a good time after that, but we had to make the best of it. We sang along and put on a show every time the cameras passed us, and thank god we did because that's how we ended up being in the Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience movie, but we wouldn't know that until months later.

To be continued...