So… I camped out to see Zayn Malik.
People have this idea that New York is just a parade of crazy shenanigans happening all the time. If you are one of these people, you are mistaken. I have been living here for a little more than half a year, and while I have seen a few truly strange things, the craziest thing I’ve ever seen was something I inflicted upon myself. For a whole week after, and even now more than a month later, I still cannot believe what I did.
Let me set the scene. I have this one friend (Victoria) who absolutely LOVES One Direction, and I will admit, I love them too. What’s not to love? Good looking boys singing fun songs in tight pants. Every girl’s dream, right?
I dream of Harry Styles every night… Anyone who thinks he’s unattractive is obviously blind.
Anyway, Victoria was (understandably) heartbroken when Zayn betrayed us all and quit the band, but even more excited when he decided to release his own solo album.
I was interested to see what he would produce, but I was nowhere nearly as excited as she was. She freaked out when she found out that Zayn would be in New York the entire week leading up to his album release party, which would also be held in New York. He had a bunch of events leading up to the album release and the party that went with it, and the only way to get tickets was to win them. So as the good, and dutiful friends we are, we helped her enter as many competitions as we could, all in the hopes that one of us would win her the tickets.
Yeah, that didn’t happen.
So, the next best thing was too (of course) track his movements around the city and try to bump into him. Unfortunately, this is a, very creepy and stalkerish, skill we don’t have, so that plan died before it was even made. By Thursday morning, Victoria was downtrodden and completely accepted the fact that she wouldn’t meet Zayn. We’d just have to have our own listening party in the dorms.
So Thursday, March 24, 2016, we (Victoria, our friend Allegra and I) set out to have a great day in Greenwich Village.
At around 9 PM that night while we were browsing books in Strand Book Store (a definite must for all your book needs), Victoria got a Twitter notification that iHeart Radio was giving away tickets to the Zayn listening party for the first 40 people to make it to the iHeart Radio Theatre, 15 minutes away from us by subway. Obviously, we dropped our books and made a run for the nearest station. When I look back, I like to fondly refer to this as mistake number 1.
So after the longest 15 minutes of our lives collectively, a lot more running than was advertised, chants of ZAYN to keep us motivated (I’m not even joking), we made it to the theatre and we were numbers 9, 10 and 11. By this point, even Allegra and I were excited, I mean, we were going to see Zayn perform live for FREE (every college student’s favorite word). We’d only been there for about 10 minutes when one of the girls in line informed us that we’d only be getting the tickets if we slept there until the show was due to start at 7 PM the next day.
Let me give you a moment to let that sink in. It was probably about 9:30 PM at that point, and they wanted us to sleep out there until 7 PM the following day. That’s nearly a full 24 hours. Outside. On the concrete. Now, I know what you’re thinking. It is absolutely insane especially since we weren’t even remotely prepared for this. I was thinking it was insane.
Now, this moment right here, is a moment I fondly refer to as the moment I realized that I was an idiot.
I looked at Victoria and even though she was in a skirt and it was cold out, I could see that she was going to stay no matter what. I looked at Allegra and she knew exactly what I knew, that we were going to spend the night on the street all to see Zayn live the next night.
No tents. No blankets. No pillows. No chairs. Not even scraps of cardboard to sleep on.
The night goes something like this:
10:00 PM: We’ve decided to stay, and start making friends with the people around us. Everything’s still okay and at this point I genuinely think I can do this. Clearly, I’m delusional. The people that stand out are two girls in their twenties who have work tomorrow but have decided to skip for a chance to see Zayn. A 14 year old (whose mom spends the night in her car across from us) and a girl she met, and befriended, earlier at Zayn’s hotel. Because that’s totally safe and normal. And an 18 year old who has met basically every star you can think of multiple times and has the Instagram account to prove it.
11:00 PM: I’m still wondering if I could really spend the whole night on the street, but one of our friends has brought us coats and a laptop to charge our phones. The energy is still pretty high at this point. We’re all hyped up and snapping and tweeting and just generally having a good time.
12:00 AM: The album is officially out and we listen to it so we can sing along the next day.
1:00 AM: At this point I’m not doing too badly. We’ve eaten the heart shaped pizza provided by iHeart Radio and we’ve had coffee and hot chocolate. It’s definitely gotten colder. A black SUV with tinted windows shows up, could it be Zayn!?
No.
It’s just his friends who come bearing gifts from Zayn in the form of skittles, popcorn chips and donuts. I proudly proclaim that I can now tell people that Zayn bought me a three-course meal. Suddenly, everyone’s awake again. All silently (some not so silently) hoping that the man himself shows up.
He doesn’t.
It’s freezing now and the urge to quit is strong within me. (I can just hear my parents wondering if this is what they sent me to America for). The security guards try to keep our morale up with jokes and stories. We laugh for hours.
5:00 AM: I’m woken by a light drizzle. I’m not entirely sure how I slept, just proof that I can sleep almost anywhere. (A skill I shall now add to my resume). I’m freezing and sore. The two girls with work left while we slept. Smart choice. I can still leave. Except that I am apparently not smart and it’d be stupid now that I slept on the concrete. I drift in and out of sleep, thinking about my bed.
8:00 AM: Everyone’s awake and miserable now, but the consensus is that leaving now is stupid. The difficult part is over. At some point, we’ve become united. My friends and I are the only ones who don’t do this regularly. We listen to stories of camping out to meet other celebrities, showing up at their hotels, apartments and at the airport. How do they know all this information? I seriously don’t want to know.
11:00 AM: I ache more than I did before, and the stories of celebrity encounters are growing less charming. I feel gross, but at least we get bagels and more coffee/hot chocolate (the sarcasm here is heavy). Everyone’s excited again because Zayn is expected to show up for sound check at 1 PM.
He doesn’t.
1:00 PM: Zayn’s not here and there’s a sudden downpour that leaves us plastering our bodies against the side of the building so we don’t get wet. It doesn’t last long but I’m officially done with this whole thing. We’re all incredibly bored and with the influx of people on the streets, we’ve become a spectacle answering endless, “What are you waiting for?” inquiries.
3:00 PM: Bored and hungry. I guess no more food for us. People don’t care about being discreet anymore especially now that a line of people has formed behind us, hoping to get in. There’s a line beside us of people who won tickets online or over the radio. They’re all overly excited and unbelievably annoying. Probably because of how tired and cranky we are by this point.
5:00 PM: They announce that we’ve officially secured our places in the super intimate album release party. We can leave if we want to but if we’re not back by 7 PM, we lose our spots. I almost hate myself at this point. It sinks in that I slept on the cold, hard concrete with nothing but a winter coat and all to see some boy to whom my existence is insignificant. Still, I’m proud of us for doing it and still being friends at the end. We now find the girls we spent the night with annoying and possibly crazy. Okay, definitely crazy. I’m a little afraid to be honest. There’s a girl who’s spent $1000 to buy herself and her friend plane tickets to New York to see Zayn. She doesn’t have tickets to the show but she shows up in the hopes that she’ll get in.
7:00 PM: There’s a cacophony of screams from behind the building. The show’s supposed to start now but Zayn’s only just arrived and he brought Gigi! He still has to do sound check. We realize that by the time this is over, we’ll have been here for a full 24 hours.
8:00 PM: Finally! It’s time to go in. The room is extremely small and we’re almost right by the stage. I can see the stage and I’m only 5’1, that’s how close we are. His band comes on, and all doubts and regrets I have evaporate. His band is all female and they are as electric as the atmosphere. Zayn steps on stage and everyone is screaming and shrieking and singing along. They all know the words even though the album hasn’t even been out for an entire day. He is as beautiful, if not more beautiful, in person and his voice is amazing.
This is it! My Snapchat is blowing up! Everyone I know is so envious! Zayn himself is great! Victoria is happy! This is what I waited for!
He goes backstage!
The CD is playing now, it doesn’t matter. We still sing along!
He doesn’t come back…
He only sings three songs before disappearing and leaving us to sing along to the album.
Yup. We sat out there for 24 hours to watch Zayn sing three songs. THREE. I walked away with a free iHeart Radio t-shirt and that’s about it really. I slept for a full day after that. I can’t say I regret it. It was fun, spontaneous and admittedly hard, but now it’s a great story. It was undeniably a test of our willpower and a test of how well our makeup could hold out. Shout out to e.l.f. for amazing setting spray.
I definitely won’t be doing that again. Unless Harry wants to go solo or maybe for Troye Sivan.
Nope. I’m lying. I can’t do that again.
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