I went to a fabulous Goo Goo Dolls concert on Friday night. A crowd of drunk people jumping around and sloppily mouthing the words to the songs they know can add a strange exhilaration to a concert. This exhilaration turns to downright horror, however, once the concert is over and it's time to enter the parking vortex.
"Parking vortex" is a much more apt description than "parking lot" at night. In the daytime, the parking area outside the Darien Lake Performing Arts Center was a completely unthreatening half-grass, half-gravel expanse full of boomboxes and friendly-looking people. In the darkness, however, it was a foreign planet. It was a swirling vortex of cars and smashed beer bottles and more cars and people stumbling around muttering to themselves and more cars. I knew I was in for trouble when a head popped out of one of the first cars I saw, shouted "USA BABY!" and promptly disappeared. Part of me was thankful for his concern that I might have forgotten what country I was in, but the rest of me felt like a sheep in the middle of a herd of patriotic lions that smelled like beer and wanted to eat me.
If I was just trying to get through this place on my way from point A to a nondescript point B, I could have done it without a problem. Unfortunately, I also needed to complete the task of finding my car. In a situation like this, your only defense against the parking vortex is an electronic key fob. When I held it up to the sky, pressed the "lock" button over and over again, and prayed to the CEO of General Motors that my car's beep would be loud enough to guide my steps. In my head, it looked a little like this:
Sword in hand and cape flowing behind me, I fought on into the darkness, braving mud puddles, the sad remains of pre-concert beer parties, and drunk drivers that took sick pleasure in coming as close to running me over as possible.
Getting out of the parking lot after a populated concert is kind of like bumper cars, only with real cars and people won't giggle happily when you come close to bumping into them, they will get out of their car and cut you. Then again, I suppose I am making an assumption there that I can't make -- people may very well get emotional enough about bumper cars to get out and cut you there, too. But bumper car rides have attendants who can protect you from random acts of violence. Parking lots at concerts are supposed to have some form of traffic control, but the policemen on shift that night were far too amused by driving around aimlessly through the grass in a golf cart to actually do their job.
I kept my testosterone and road rage to a minimum and got out of there safely. One woman who was pushed off the trail by the flow of traffic and sat there in desperation as car after car refused to let her in didn't fare as well as I did, but she probably didn't have a key fob sword. That's what happens when you try to get out of a vortex unprepared -- your dignity doesn't make it out alive.
