Let me elaborate.....
Angela and I both love Lucero. Both of our boys happen to love Lucero too, and we've seen them play quite a few times before. It just so happened that Lucero was doing a Florida tour the weekend that the boys went out of town for their Memorial Day camping trip! While the boys are away, the girls will travel to Gainesville (a place neither of us have been), shop, and see a fun band we both love! Win/win, right?! We did the shopping part to a tee, and didn't leave the mall until they closed.
The doors were at 9, but the show didn't start until 10, and we only knew that Lucero was playing, so we didn't see any reason to rush to the venue. We drove around downtown for about 20 minutes looking for a spot to park in, to no avail. Every street was crowded with cars, but they all said "tow away zone" and we did not want to take the risk! (see, we weren't in our car, we borrowed Ang's dads car.) We decided to just go back to where we thought the show was and park there. The tour bus was parked there, as well as a long line of cars just in the middle of the parking lot. No tow away zones in the middle of the lot! All along the fence line there were signs, but we figured it was a-okay because lots of other cars were parked in this line, and they didn't seem too worried about it.
We left all of our stuff (read: my 210 instax camera and our Forever 21 loot) in the car and walked a few blocks over to a pizza place. We tried sitting outside, but large roaches were crawling all over the joint so we went inside. Turns out, that wasn't so good either, because Angela found a bug in her pizza! Talk about being turned off from a place we'd never been before. Anyway, it was 10:30 at this point so we decided to head back to the venue. We checked and our car was still there, so we went in! We only had to sit through a few songs of the previous band then it was Lucero's turn to play! It was completely crowded with people except for the center/front of the stage, so naturally we moved up. Turns out that wasn't a good idea because this crazy group of people got in a fight with another crazy group of people and ended up punching a huge dude out, and he fell on us. Aside from a few other creeps, it was an amazing show. They played for at least an hour and a half, and played basically any song that someone shouted out. Nothing like a good sing-a-long and a little dancing to put you in the best mood ever. I think that's why my voice was gone the next day!
When the show was over, we made our way over to the merch table pick up something for our boys. Angela got a Florida poster (above) and I got Bean a shirt. Before we left we wanted to get pictures with Ben using my instax (because it's just easier when your boys aren't standing over you ;). ) So we headed back to the car to drop off our goods and grab the camera when Angela looks at me and says "it' not here." I proceed to laugh because I know she's talking about the car, but there is no way that just our car could be gone! Everyone else's cars were still parked in a line. So I said "no it's not, it's that one there on the end." Only problem with it was that the car was parked the opposite way of how we parked, so unless someone turned our car around, our car and only our car had been towed. We didn't let this deter us from the task at hand, so we went back into the venue and found Ben sitting at the bar with some other ladies. We politely excused ourselves to break in and asked for pictures on our phone instead.
We called the towing place and found out that it was going to cost 76 dollars to get our car back, and it was a mile and a half (in were not sure which direction) away from the venue. We started to panic because we had ZERO cash left. We had just spent our very last dollars on our Lucero merch. So we paced back and forth thinking of things we could do. A few among the list were: cry and maybe he will just give us the car back, return our shirt + poster, and hope that was enough, and ask the good ole people of Gainesville for money. We didn't think crying was going to help us. (And looking back, I'm glad we didn't, because he wasn't very nice!) We didn't want to return our merch because well, we just didn't. So that left asking people for money. We thought we would have a good chance getting a few bucks from everyone that would add up to our total. We rehearsed our story: "Hi, we're not from here and well, we've been towed. We're asking/hoping that you could spare a few dollars? Even a dollar will do, we have no cash left and we need to get home!" A few people we're generous and gave us 5 dollar bills. A few people thought we were doing something else with the money and refused to give us any. A few people were just so wasted they couldn't comprehend what we were saying. After asking almost every person there, we counted our money and we had a whopping 22 dollars. This.was.no.good. What were we going to do with 22 dollars? We were SO appreciative that we had gotten that much, but there was no way we would be able to get our car out with just that.
We knew what we had to do, but didn't want to do. We had to ask Ben for help. This was going to be both embarrassing and hard to do because he was surrounded by other ladies. We went back to the bar where we met him to take pictures before. We watched girls come and go. Asking for pictures, asking for hugs, asking to sign his chest, and asking if he wanted a slice of strawberry shortcake (this girl was past oblivion!) He glanced over at us and kind of rolled his eyes, like he was being overwhelmed by the amount of attention he was getting. So that didn't make us any more comfortable going up to ask for help. But we did. I said "Hey Ben, do you remember us, we just took pictures with you a little bit ago?" He said he did remember us, so I went into our whole sch-peel and added "if maybe you could just walk around with us and help us ask, people would be more willing to give money to you?" He said "so you guys need 54 more dollars, right? follow me," and we did. We followed him back to the merch booth where he looked at the girl and said "I need 60 bucks," which she responded to by handing him 3 crisp twenty dollar bills. He turned around and handed the 60 dollars to us. We were shocked and amazed at what had just happened. We basically begged him to tell us a way to repay him, but he said that we shouldn't worry about it. We asked one more time, so he told us his favorite whiskey! We plan on sending him a nice care package filled with a few of his favorite things, and of course the 60 bucks he loaned to us!
We ended the night by shaking hands and assuring him he would be repaid, ten fold! What happened in Gainesville we had planned to keep in Gainesville, but this story is too good not to share with everyone we know. We both feel so thankful and lucky to have been helped out. Also, we're convinced that even though Ben is super charming + seems like such a gentleman, he wouldn't just hand over that much cash to any old girl. Just us, because we're so adorable! ;) xo, Meghan + Angela
