Post-Concert Excitement + Other LA Experiences

After Day 1:

Before the concert, I was very worried. We drove to the venue 1-2 hours before the show started and it was taking us forever to get inside. What if they start before we get to our seats? What if they run out of lightsticks? What if I miss the entire show? It was stressful. Thankfully none of those happened. My dad and I successfully acquired our seats before the show and two lightsticks at a price I’d rather not think about. Seriously, though, you don’t know love until you get your first lightstick.

The concert was, as expected, amazing. It was so surreal. Although BTS wasn’t right in front of me, they were close enough. BTS was a lot better at singing and rapping live than I expected. Of course, they had some backing vocals in the track, but the performance was still great. Their dancing was so perfectly synchronized it was almost creepy…in a good way. And let’s not forget V’s high notes. Notes. With an ‘s’. And when Suga does the thing…oh my goodness. You know, the thing where he takes out his earpiece just to hear the crowd scream for him. That man was made for the stage, you hear me?! Don’t argue. Let’s also not forget the backup dancers and the musicians that played the instruments. You all did very well, too.

Turns out, BTS did perform a number of their older songs. It was like they were paying tribute to themselves. It was awesome. I don’t know why, but I thought that BTS would somehow forget about their songs like No More Dream (their debut song), War of Hormone, N.O., and Boy in Luv. That’s ridiculous, I know, but I was surprised when they started singing and dancing to a medley of their songs from 2013-2015. They didn’t forget, they just grew up and matured from those songs. (But Jungkook rapping. I need to breathe, okay?)

And oH MY GOODNESS THE CYPHER. They performed Cypher Pt.4. It was…I hate to use this disgusting word, but it was lit. I love the Cyphers so much. I love Cyphers more than I love my gigantic slippers. I love Cyphers more than I love food. I love Cyphers more than I love people…I mean, that’s not saying much but I’ll put that in for good measure. If I thought the screaming was loud, then the screaming when Cypher Pt. 4 came on was ten times louder. But that’s all expected for a Cypher.

Also…J-Hope cried. He was performing his solo song, “Mama,” and he was walking up to the mic stand to sing a few lines. The lights dimmed and the screens showing his face was completely dark. And like the angel he is, the screens brightened and displayed his sweaty face and teary eyes. He passionately sang the few lines that, although I don’t understand what they were, I assume were very emotional.

That paragraph was very poetic and sappy, but don’t touch me I’m soft.

Although the entire concert was very extraordinary, I think the most memorable part of the entire thing was watching the other fans. There was so much love in the room, you could taste it. It tastes like oxygen. The cheers and the chants were deafening and the only thing that indicated that I was cheering along was the vibration in my throat. Each country had a different fan project. In Brazil, they made a special fan chant to go along with Rap Monster’s solo song, “Reflection”. In America, we had the rainbow ocean project. If you didn’t already know, the light in BTS’s lightsticks is white. The lightsticks in each section of the audience shined a different color. For example, one section was red, one was orange, one was yellow, etc. The fans passed out different colored bags to the audience members and the bags were used to cover the light so that it shined a color instead of white. I sat in the red section. I couldn’t help but look away from the stage and just stare at the crowd. Sure, it was just a bunch of organized and colorful lights, but the fact that the fans thought to do something like that for BTS was very heartwarming and made it all more beautiful.

Throughout the duration of the concert, I couldn’t stop thinking about how worth it it was. Seeing BTS performing with so much passion and seeing the fans reciprocate it all was indescribable. My throat is sore and my arm hurts like hell and my ears are ringing, but all this amounts to nothing in comparison to the experience. I can’t wait to go again tomorrow.

Day 2:

HOBI (J-Hope) CRIED AGAIN. MY BABY. RAP MONSTER THANKED HIS MOTHER.

RAP MONSTER THANKED HIS MOTHER. MY BABY.

I’m sorry. As I’m writing this, it’s pretty late and it’s also the day after the second night after the concert. I should’ve written yesterday, but I was really sleepy and I just crashed. I promise to make the future blog entries more authentic.

Both nights of the concert were fairly equivalent to each other. I would like to say that my arms, ears, and throat have survived. This night, I had better seats so I was determined to get better footage of the concert. The first concert did quite a bit of damage to my right arm and I actually had trouble sleeping because of it. So at this concert, I had to wave the lightstick with my left hand and film with my right. As a person who can’t do ten correct pushups in a row, doing this for three hours straight was kinda (very) difficult. The concert was still very much worth it though.

During our stay in LA, we didn’t just go to attend the concerts; we also wanted to see attractions like Koreatown (mentioned in my previous blog entry) and Venice Beach. I wanted to go to Downtown Disney, but we didn’t really get around to doing that. I still had a lot of fun!

I liked Koreatown a lot. It mostly consisted of restaurants and cafes, clothing stores, and beauty and makeup shops. My uncle, dad, and I made the mistake of eating a bunch of food at first, so we didn’t really get to experience the other foods in Koreatown. And no, I didn’t try samgyeopsal. And no, the waiter was not there. The experience was still really fun, though! There were two little shops with Kpop merchandise, both which were flooded with Kpop fans that wanted to buy merch for the upcoming concert. Ah, I forgot to mention, the shops in Koreatown are really cute. There was this little cafe in a mall with this exterior that made it look like it was its own little building. I didn’t go inside because I already drank tea twice that day and I wanted to sleep that night. I did take a peek inside and it looked like a little cafe from Paris. My mom, who had to stay home to watch my sister, asked my dad to bring back an eyeliner for her. When we went into the makeup store and my dad started asking for the eyeliner, the clerks were shocked at first but tried to help him. When he purchased the eyeliner, they were still bug-eyed and plastered awkward smiles on their faces. It was really hard to keep a straight face.

When we exited the store, he asked me, “Did they think I was buying this for myself?”

I’m very sure they did.

The next day, we went to Venice Beach. The beach is…it’s very the opposite of what I like. To give you something to go off of, I’m the type of person who probably wouldn’t go outside if I didn’t have to. There’s a lot of people, it’s bright, it’s hot, everyone tried to approach you and sell stuff, and everyone is super athletic and fit and loves to exercise. There was even a section called Muscle Beach where showing off your huge abs and muscles is not only acceptable, but encouraged. The weather was also strange, it was hot and very very bright, but it wasn’t sunny. I’m lucky that my sunscreen lasted long enough for me to not get a tan. If you’re wondering why I don’t want a tan, I’ll just say that being a Kpop fan skews your beauty standards quite a bit.

Something I realized during this trip is that…vlogging outside is hard. Really hard. There’s only one chance to take a shot of something and it’s hard to talk because there’s so much background noise and other people talking (especially somewhere like LA) and I don’t like projecting my voice in a public space. I actually thought that filming outside would be a lot easier because I had this idea that it would be less awkward than talking to a camera in a room by myself. I was wrong. I’m also the type that would rather relax and enjoy an experience than capture it on video. I should really work on that. I have so much footage to look through (when I saw it all I was so overwhelmed I almost cried…don’t judge) but it still doesn’t feel like enough. It’s most likely because I had so much footage of the concert and not much else. I should also work on staying consistent with my video orientation. I was recording with my phone, so there were times where I forgot to film vertically instead of horizontally. I’m also extremely uncomfortable talking on camera, much more so than I thought I would be. That’s why my blog entries are way longer than my dad’s.

I have a lot of stuff to work on.

~Megan Knight

Edit: I was wrong. I have enough footage…so much that I’ll have to split it into two videos. I’ll also be making a LA Experiences video, so look out for it!

BTS Concert YouTube video