Flognonian: Lines this Halloweekend
According to a study by MIT professor, Richard Larson, the average person spends 2 years of their life waiting in line. According to a study by me, the average Brown student spent 2 years of their life waiting in line for Providence clubs last week (note: not an entirely scientific study).Halloween is one of those holidays that's always fun. When you're younger, it's an excuse to dress up and eat a ton of candy. When you're in college, it's an excuse to dress up and drink a ton of alcohol.But I hate gross crowded house parties, you say to your friend as you Google search funny costumes in the Sci Li, there’s too many people and the music’s never loud enough to have fun! Ugh, Brown. You switch from Google to Facebook to kill a little more time before starting your homework when you get a notification ---an invite to a club event in Providence? 100 of your friends are already going. And okay, so the cover charge is definitely a little too expensive (anything over $5). You can't remember if you've been there before or not because Ultra/ Lupos/ Fete have blurred into one freshman year experience. But you’re excited to go dance at a definite location, rather than wandering from house to sweaty house like you did last weekend.You have a great pregame until you hit that perfect drunk spot where you are ready to GO!
You pile into a slightly overcrowded Uber and as you pull up, you give the driver a 5 star review for his patience with your friend’s terrible singing and his selective blindness towards whatever you’re sipping from a water bottle. And then you see it: the line.100x worse than the Andrews pasta line, you’ve never seen anything like it. Do this many people even go to Brown? You came here to escape the hordes of sweaty freshmen! If only you could’ve known that you’d be forced among them, grouped into a swarm of drunken limbs with little to no plan. The bouncers inside the club, who love to stop people making out or touching the walls or engaging in other “dangerous activities," seem to not care about the mosh pit forming right outside the door. With no one to shepherd them into orderly LINES and no sign of movement for the last 10 minutes, your fellow students have descended into claustrophobic madness. It’s enough to make even a lacrosse house basement look inviting.
The night can now end one of three ways:
- You remember Principles of Econ and accept the Uber and/or ticket you purchased as a sunk cost and get tf out of there
- You wait in line for about half an hour until the bouncer tells you that they have “reached capacity” and you have to leave
- You miraculously see someone you spot at the front of the line, wiggle your way there, and get in only to realize that you’ve lost all your friends in the process
I get that lines are unavoidable. But if they were organized, the experience would be much less terrible. In addition, the clubs are never that crowded inside, which begs the question- why have this huge line at all? In the interest of fire safety? The solution is simple: don’t sell pre-sale tickets to more people than you can legally fit in the room. Is it to promote some kind of exclusivity? We all know these events are just about selling tickets!
It seems like the only way to beat the system is to either arrive early enough to avoid the line, in which case you are there ridiculously early, accompanied only by eager freshmen and the hosts of the event; or arrive late enough so that the majority of the line has given up and the club closes in like 10 minutes anyway. Or just not go at all.
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