I stood on the floor of Dodger Stadium surrounded by 52,000 sweating, screaming people. I had taken mushrooms and drank a room-temperature tequila soda in the Uber, so I couldn’t feel the pain developing in my lower back from dancing. I felt weightless and euphoric, like I would never need to sit down again. Lady Gaga was onstage, wrapped in a shining chrome sarcophagus, and all 52,000 of us screamed in unison: “I don’t wanna be friends / Want your bad romance.”
After the concert, Lady Gaga’s fans flowed like a river of sequins down Vin Scully Avenue and onto Sunset Boulevard. They were ostensibly looking for rides home, but, really, they were burning off the high of the concert. The bars were bursting into the street. Every phone played one of Gaga’s songs, the night a glorious mash-up. One of our friends made out with the Uber driver so he would allow six of us to pile in on each other in his sedan. That night in Echo Park was the most spontaneous outburst of collective joy I’ve experienced in years.
