Crowdsurfing
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
At just about any concert involving heavy metal, hard rock, punk, rap, or really anything else where there are way too many dancing and screaming teenagers to people in their mid twenties in a small area, somebody will eventually end up on top of the crowd, being passed along people's hands until they are unceremoniously dropped, usually without warning, and almost always causing injury. This practice is known as "crowdsurfing", and bears little resemblance to the kind of surfing done on water. While crowdsurfing can be a great rush, it is inherently dangerous for several reasons, most of which involve the fact that the crowd in these situations is generally in an altered state of consciousness and will drop a surfer seven feet onto hard concrete without a second thought.
In order to crowdsurf, one must:
- Find a suitable crowd, easily identified by loudness, high population density, average age, etc...
- Take a shot of hard alcohol, preferably whisky or vodka.
- Take another shot.
- Let the people in your general area know that you would like to "go up"1.
- Let them lift you and begin passing you along on everybody's hands.
- Give the people holding you up some sort of directions--if you don't, you are almost always sent quickly to the front and pulled down by a large hairy security guard and sent to the back of the crowd.
- Watch the crowd under you. If it suddenly dissapears, brace for impact. You will fall. This, incidentally, is why the whisky is important.
- Get to your feet immediately, or you will be trampled, and quite possibly seriously injured. There have been cases of death by trampling in these situations.