"It was a Sunday, the last day of the first weekend of Coachella, and it also happened to be my birthday. After catching Empire of The Sun and Darkside on Saturday night, I stayed up partying with my friends and my sister at our campsite until the next morning.
As I waited in line to go past security and enter the festival the next day, I was delirious from no sleep — and still also tripping off the molly and mushrooms I'd taken the night before.
Coachella has a zero-tolerance policy for weed, but everyone somehow has it. My plan was to smuggle in the 30 joints hidden in my backpack, so I thought I was okay.
Of course, I'd forgotten that I had a few loose joints at the bottom of my bag, which the security guy — a 30-year-old trying-to-be-tough guy – quickly found.
He made me take off my shoes and shirt for a full-body cavity search and then flipped my backpack inside out. A glass pipe fell out. Oops. I tried to reason with him telling him that today was my birthday and that I had a medical marijuana rec card anyways. But because Coachella is a private event, my medical marijuana card "didn't mean shit," he said.
He cut off my wrist band and told me that two other festival workers would escort me to my car because I was being expelled from the event. I walked with them for a bit before bolting the fuck out of there. I zig-zagged through the campgrounds until I found my campsite, wherein I dove underneath my car and stayed there until I felt that it was safe to come out.
My sister and friends then spent the next hour scouring the festival to find someone that was leaving early, off of whom they could buy their wristband for $50.
They eventually found someone, and two hours later, I was back in line (this time at another security entrance), wearing a different outfit and a different hat per my "disguise." I got through without a problem and was able to see Naked and Famous, Calvin Harris, and Arcade Fire. And, best of all, during a lull between sets, my sister orchestrated a mass crowd rendition of "Happy Birthday" for me. So not a terrible birthday, after all."
Comments are closed.
