æspa

sashagee got me to go to another Kpop concert.

Originally she was going to go with rubyleon1090, but she asked me if I wanted to go and I said, sure, why not? I've heard a ton of æspa's songs because Laila went through a phase of listening to them nearby nonstop (now she's listening to the Friedman Birkat Havdalah), it'd be a fun night out, and I haven't been to a truly giant concert since I went and saw Weird Al back in 1999. So the grandparents came to get Laila, and on Saturday night we went to Fulton Market to meet up with rubyleon1090 at the Vig, the restaurant we picked that day and had made reservations at roughly four hours before.

My first thought was "This is where all the fashionable people are," though not necessarily because of its haute atmosphere--it was basically a sports bar--and we were all dressed fancy as well for the concert so it included us. We sat in the corner around a low wall from the bar section, which was incredibly crowded, ordered some tuna on sticky rice and French fries appetizers, and checked through the menus. I got the poké (which was good), an old fashioned (which was not), and then when the waitress asked if I wanted another drink, I said that sashagee and I had decided on the carrot cake instead. The waitress gave me a big smile and said "Oh, that's a better choice" and she was right--it was probably the best carrot cake I've ever had. Moist and not at all crumbly, just the right amount of frosting on top, just absolutely amazing. The Vig is worth going to just for that carrot cake even if you're not a sports bar fan or don't consider yourself to be fashionable. We finished up our meal, paid, and took a Lyft over to the United Center.

Like I mentioned, I don't usually go to big arena shows, and this is the first one I'd been to in twenty-five years. We went into the United Center through a side door with no line, past a bunch of lines that seemed to be 50% Asian women wearing miniskirts despite the freezing weather, and then past the merch booth and up three sets of stairs. I was not expecting to be sitting up so far from the stage that æspa were effectively ants:

This is on max zoom.

The concert was fine. I'm not an æspa superfan--that's Laila, to be honest--so the symbolism in the intra-song videos was lost on me. I just listened to the songs that I had heard dozens of times before when Laila wanted to hear them, including my favorite, Hold On Tight (my favorite because it's in English ), as well as a few songs I hadn't heard. The one in the image there is Pink Hoodie, new to me, and evidence of total failure on the part of the managing company because afterwards when we went to check out the merch station the two things sashagee asked for were a pink hoodie (they didn't have any for sale) and a t-shirt in children's sizes for Laila (they didn't have any for sale). I think there were a couple others but, well, I don't remember them.

That's the big problem, I think--as you can tell, I'm kind of indifferent to the concert. It was fine, and I had a nice time, but since we watched everything on big screens anyway and there wasn't a lot of interaction with the crowd, I didn't necessarily feel like I personally got anything out of it that I couldn't get from watching videos of their performance. The dancing, routines, etc were really only visible on the screens. Obviously I was in the minority, though, based on the reactions of the crowd, who shook their lightwands, danced when æspa called for it, and were clearly having a great time. Though, maybe it's just that I'm also not really in Kpop's target audience either.

rubyleon1090 invited sashagee to a Blackpink concert, and I think I'll sit that one out.