The Ryan Gosling Experience

Mistakes were made.

Let's just get that out in the open right now. When you book a trip to a music festival, it is often a good idea to buy tickets.

In my younger days, I may have been able to sneak in, buy a ticket, hop a fence. But trespassing is a young man's game, and I am quickly exiting that phase of my life.

Despite an email chain that had existed since my birthday, I was pretty sure the trip to San Diego wasn't going to happen. It was a trip that had been plagued with problems from the onset. The line-up changed 15 times before we finally settled on a group of 7 that would be going. We switched hotels 4 times and never established a firm itinerary. Even at 8 o clock in the morning on Saturday as I was checking out of Ralph's with mimosa ingredients, I had no idea who would show.

Miraculously, around 11am, 3 hours behind schedule, we departed Venice with all 7 confirmed travelers.

At 11:04 we had already made a pit stop. I had flashbacks to asking my dad if we could pull over on our annual drives to Disney World. "We'll be there in 12 hours, just hold it!"

We stopped. And then about 11:45 everyone decided they were hungry. We stopped again. It was an absolute disaster. I have never been in a more hostile car setting. Things were said, alliances formed, friendships nearly ended. But five hours after we left Westminster Avenue, we pulled up to the Marriott Gaslamp. The trip was by no means off to a good start, but at least we had arrived.

The initial tension was offset by the fact that I had picked up a fair amount of alcohol at the lunch stop. Red Bull vodkas and Fireball shots can typically improve even the most sour mood. I immediately began to binge drink while rooting through a gigantic bag of flash tattoos. Whether or not I was getting into this fest, I surely was going to dress like an idiot. I needed to have a good story at improv class when they asked me what I did over the weekend. Nothing says 'this guy parties' like a half faded gold heart on my cheek.

I made the statement, "Let's try to get out of here by 4:30." Everyone nodded in agreement and the party started.

Thirty minutes passed and I remembered that I was traveling with five girls.

If you are a straight male and you have always wondered why it takes girls so damn long to get ready, I can now give you a peak behind the curtain.

One girl tried on 5 different outfits.

One girl spent 20 minutes braiding another girls hair only for her to eventually say fuck it and throw it in a ponytail.

Every girl tried on everything they brought, then at least two items that someone else brought and then eventually switched back to whatever they were wearing in the car.

There were lots of 'getting ready pictures.'

Oh and then there was the 15 minute run down of how we were going to sneak in to the festival with false credentials.

When it was all said and done, we left the hotel room at 6, about 4 hours before the festival ended…
At least we were drunk.

We walked from the gas lamp district to Waterfront park. Upon arriving at the Will Call area my friend, who is an administrative assistant at a cool company, handed her business card to the guy handling the VIP desk.

"What's this?" He asked.

"I was told there would be ten comps waiting for me."

(Yes this was the extent of our plan)

"There are no comps for you."

"Ugh fine, we'll pay for tickets."

"It's sold out."

Fuck.

So we stood there with our thumbs in our asses for 20 minutes or so trying to find a weakness in the fence, trying to bribe some minimum wage security guards. The girls quickly grew tired of this and decided to head to dinner. But I wasn't ready to give up. I stalked the grounds of the park, checking Twitter for organized gate crashing, scouring Craigslist for some guy that had an extra ticket for sale. Nothing.

It wasn't until I saw a 16 year old girl try to jump the fence and be savagely taken down by a K9 dog and cuffed by an officer that I had an epiphany.

I am 29 years old, I am wearing a neck tattoo that says "I heart the doctor" and I have 30 pills of ecstasy in my pocket. Probably best not to do anything stupid. On top of that, I am in San Diego with the 5 most attractive girls I know. What the FUCK am I doing?

And like that, I abandoned my mission and took a cab back to Gaslamp. Sometimes you just need to cut your losses.

But was it a loss?

"Come to Bang Bang," was the text I received.

It sounded clubby and since I was wearing a black t shirt I made on the internet, pink swim trunks and flip flops I assumed I was hastily be told to go fuck myself. But maybe because San Diego is so laid back, the bouncer smiled at me and ushered me upstairs where my group of girls was in the midst of a 13 course sushi dinner.

"This is a night club?" I asked.

"Not yet, it's a sushi restaurant until 9pm, but we can't leave or we'll have to pay the $60 cover."

It's the same move I used to pull when I was underage in college, pop in for lunch and just stay.

So we ate sashimi and sake for a couple hours and waited. As they slowly began taking tables away from what I realized was turning into a dance floor, the sake and happy pills began to take effect. The turmoil and conflict from earlier in the day melted away. By the time Jamie Jones started his set, I was sufficiently lit.

What followed is hazy, but I remember a night of dancing and fun. I have photographs of a Ryan Gosling themed bathroom, a text message describing a three mile journey to fetch a joint and faint sharpie on my left arm that reads "If found, return to Marriott room 1409."

I ended up at The Renaissance the next morning for reasons I won't get into and at 8am, our trip was over. We were crammed into a VW en route to LAX to drop our friend off so that she could fly back to Florida.

And while it may have seemed like we didn't accomplish much on the trip - we had literally driven five hours for dinner and a show - it was one of the more enjoyable trips I have taken lately.

Sure we fought the entire way down, missed the fest and only really made it to one bar, but life is about the journey. I step back and realize I also went with these people to Downtown LA on Thursday night, did a BYOB dinner in Venice on Friday and road tripped Saturday. Sometimes it's not about what you do, it's who you do it with.

Sometimes I complain about the way things are going for me. I'm bored, in a rut, I need to spice things up a bit. COME TO EUROPE WITH ME. But really everything I need has been in front of me the whole time. My last few trips have really hammered this home to me. I don't need to do crazy shit every single weekend to make people jealous on social media. All I need are a handful of people to share with me in this experience called life and everything should work itself out. It doesn't matter if we're in Park City, a grungy night club or my living room.

Now don't get me wrong, I still want to see the world. I still want to go everywhere, but an adventure doesn't necessarily require you to leave your backyard…and all it took to teach me that was a few Ryan Gosling posters and some fun people.