Things could have greatly fallen apart last night. Friends flaked, whittling the group down to two – Brooklyn and me, obviously the more devoted Pumas in the bunch. The line to the Great American Music Hall’s entrance stretched to the end of the block. Brooklyn and I were clearly the only ones who printed out our tickets instead of picked them up at the store. Also, it was really cold.

Everything paid off, though, and shall be forever heralded as one of the Best Tuesday Nights Ever.

As we stood out in the cold and I missed two opportunities to take a picture of an E-40 Ball Street Journal promo van, we made friends with two girls standing next to us. By the end of the night, we had exchanged numbers and invited them to our upcoming super birthday bash. (More details on that later.) (If you’re taking notes, the girls’ numbers were the only forms of communication we exchanged last night.)

When we walked in, there was a girl DJ (Represent!) up on the stands. She had cream-and-teal headphones on, very hipster-punkish, which seemed to describe just a portion of the rest of the crowd. Lots of hipsters for Steve Aoki. Lots of… just very strangely dressed girls for Lady Gaga. And lots of hip-hop streetwear fans for Puma. There were also a couple of oldies, which I generally disapprove of, but what can you do? “Mom,” a middle-aged Asian lady with a blinged out purse and a knee-length dress over a pair of pants didn’t bother us. And “Grandpa,” a senior citizen White man wearing a plaid shirt under a Burlington Coat Factory jacket stayed tucked away by the column near the wall.

The music was great. Ranging from Shiny Toy Guns to M.I.A. to Danity Kane (I know – What?), it was a surprisingly perfect mix of everything upbeat. The Hall turned into something I didn’t really expect. After all, we went there for a show, so I expected a standing crowd of concert-goers. It ended up being more of a spacious club than anything, filled with fun-loving people – the type of people who line up in the cold for a free show on a Tuesday night.

And where there is good music, good dancing should follow.

And O, there was great dancing to be had. Neither Brooklyn or I are big on getting suffocated at the fronts of concert crowds, so we hung out in the back with our new Friends from Tracy. Magically, a circle formed right where we were standing. And where there are circles and good music, it is the hope that b-boys will follow. Behold, my favorite person pic of the night:

I don’t know this guy’s name, but he was the only actual skilled breakdancer in the crowd. And! And, and, and, he danced to “Damaged” with me. I don’t even like that song! I don’t know how it happened, but when you’re hearing all this good music and then some Top 40 disaster like Danity Kane comes on, you kind of just have to suck it up and represent for the women, pushing all other female dancing failures out of the way. Even though I hate Danity Kane, I couldn’t let the hipsters (WHO WILL NEVER BE GOOD AT DANCING) ruin the song even more. So B-Boy became my dancing partner, and it was fabulous.

Just for comparison, here is a picture of bad dancing hipster bitches.

See that? See that ugliness? Ew, stop. Everyone is laughing at you and you are wasting space. Please go take your sparkly American Apparel elsewhere.

Unfortunately, there were no Puma freebies handed out last night, but that much is expected when you go to a free show. What was actually somewhat disappointing was that Lady Gaga never showed up. WTF. Free show you promote on your site and you ain’t there? Lame. We had all lost track of time because the music was good and the dancing was fun, but it reached 11:30 and there was nary a break in music to allude to artist arrival. But wait – there was a break – and really dramatic music – and wow, maybe Lady Gaga does make really big entrances – oh wait, that guy looks like a Japanese Jesus.

Oh, it’s because Japanese Jesus = Steve Aoki. I actually liked his opening a lot. It was a technofied version of a very famous, oft-used in apocalyptic film trailers classical piece. (Cannot think of the name or composer at the moment. And yeah, Diddy sampled it for “You Can Hate Me Now.”) After a while, though, things became a little more rave than it was sneaker head/hipster. Considering that we had had a great night already, Brooklyn and I headed back to the East Bay and called it a night.

Epilogue
So what made this Tuesday night so much better than other Tuesday nights? First off, two friends were not deterred by being just a duo going out. Second, there were no overtones or undertones of meeting people – platonic friends from Tracy or good-looking b-boys aside – we just went out. Third, despite the unmet expectation of there being a Lady of Gaga in the house, we got more than we asked for. Trading breathing and dancing room for a warm-up act is an even exchange. Fourth, the Puma photographer totally took a picture of my shoes because they are the bomb.

It was just a great, carefree night. I suppose I should come to expect that from hanging out with an Aquarius. With my Capricorn stubbornness (We are going to this show and we are going to enjoy it, dammit.) and Brooklyn’s Aquarius free spiritedness (Okay, we’re going to this show.), it was a great reminder that even though I’m not completely satisfied with where I am in life right now, I still know how to live life.

Also, Brooklyn gave me a Puma ninja hat. Almost as cool as this guy’s fur:

Update: Apparently Lady Gaga arrived at around 1:30 a.m. and played a 20 minute set. Says YouTuber paxil957: “Awesome performance. So fucking cute with her little disco stick”