I saw the Red Hot Chilli Peppers twice in one week. In what was supposed to be a 'quiet weekend in' turned into an impromptu trip to London, that required an almost 3 hour drive in a beaten up Renault Clio. We bought the tickets last minute and drove down with two friends and whilst they slept in the back seat, the driver (my boyfriend)shouted abuse at the standstill traffic on the road, leading up to the canary wharf skyline. After getting lost a couple of times, we all arrived in one piece, and in exchange for the drive, we set up our belongings on the floor of our friends all girls uni house in Surrey Quays. I soon got to know these house mates during this exchange as we interrupted what looked like their morning/mid afternoon ritual of smoking rizlas and playing on the Xbox in their living room, lined with polaroid's, plants, posters, and handwritten notes to one another.
We made our way to Soho on the new, overpriced, 1/5 billion Elizabeth line, to pick up the tickets for the gig from sister ray records and found it was on Berwick street, which just happened to be the oasis album cover for 'some might say'. We stood outside in awe and were amazed by how in this city, jam packed with culture, we always seem to stumble upon these great surprises.
After eating in a pub, where we were its only guests and they unironically played girls aloud at the highest volume, we found ourselves outside of the comedy club we visited once and decided to see if there were any tickets left for that night's show. Of course, out of all of the seats in the room, we had to sit next to the woman with the loudest laugh in the building. So loud, so annoying, so painful, with so much force, that everybody was staring right at us in disbelief and her boyfriend felt compelled to put his hand over her mouth as though he was kidnapping her, in an attempt to reduce the escaping witch cackle. It's safe to say, my toes curled in the cringiest experience I've ever witnessed, praying that the ground would swallow me up.
In true tourist fashion, we rode the Santander bikes back to Surrey Quays and made our way back to the student house, prepared to blow up our bed for the night. Our friend's housemates soon arrived back from a 'couple of drinks' at Wetherspoons that seemed to have turned into a couple of otter substance's being consumed and were narrating tales of the night to us. I was intrigued by her stories and she started to talk about her experiences dating as someone who is bisexual and I was gob smacked to find that as a bi, twenty-something living in London, she'd never read 'women don't owe you pretty' or even heard of Florence Given. So, naturally, I went on to bore her about the male gaze theory and how women spend their entire lives caring how they look whilst they do anything, as she sat on the floor, with her buzzcut, cross-legged, expertly rolling cigarettes.
The pair had told us earlier that day about the 'macho frat boys' living next door in the Airbnb, who were painstakingly loud each night and so they decided to pester them over the fence in the garden and introduce us all, in a polite exchange. What was supposed to be a brief, drunken interaction, resulted in them helping us over the fence, balancing on deck chairs and a shopping trolley, to meet on the rather poetic' other side of the fence', where we then sat until the sun came up. We talked for hours about politics in their country, how frightening gun crime is, the severities of different drugs, abortion rights, what age they started drinking illegally, what bands and films they like, like a group of kids in a classroom, all talking over one another, putting in requests for them to say English slang terms in their south Carolina accents. I asked the two frat boys, now that they're settled, if they preferred British or American girls and the boy took one look at us; me sat in my leopard print pyjamas, another with her dramatic eyeliner and sheer 70's coat and the other in her CP company jacket and false eyelashes and said ' I've got to be honest, American girls'. Our mouths dropped, offended by his honesty as he went on to say " you guys have a lot of, what do you call them? 'chavs'".
They told us how much they love London with its multiculturalism and history and the housemates grilled them by saying " well you do realize you have chosen to stay in one of the roughest areas of London, nobody comes and visits South London". They had no idea, they just couldn't afford to stay in Soho.
As the sun started to break through the sky at 4am, it was our signal to leave, we knew we wouldn't get in until early hours after the gig the next day and needed any ounce of sleep we could get. We watched the Red hot chili peppers for the second time in one week and concluded what has been a mad month, full to the brim of experiences and more importantly, music.
