Meeting 50 Cent the day of his Super Bowl performance
The Rams had just won the super bowl. And I was in LA. My first thoughts were obvious:
IT'S UP!! WE OUTSIDE!!
I felt like we had to go out. We were in the city of champions and the new champs had just won. A few miles away. It would’ve been ridiculous to stay inside. But some of my friends didn’t share the sentiment.
“It’s Sunday bro, can’t even do it”
“Yeah if it wasn’t Sunday I’d come, but I have to get up early tomorrow for work”
“I can't tell my boss that I went out to celebrate the super bowl win when I’m falling asleep on calls”
“I’m tired”
The whole time I’m thinking, WOOOORK??? Fuck that 😂
I did everything I could to convince them. I wrote their names on a bottle of tequila just to show them the bottle LITERALLY had their names written all over it. Didn’t work. I implored them to tell their bosses that they might be online a couple of hours late because they had the rare chance to celebrate a home-team Super Bowl win (only the second time in history). Didn’t work.
“They won’t care about that”
“I have to be online at 5 am”
I’m a degenerate and the circumstances of my employment at that time is a story for when I have enough money to guarantee I’m done with corporate forever. But in summary, fuck these jobs.
I tried to remind them: we’re young. We have to live. Life is about spontaneity. This could be one of the most lit nights we’ve ever had.
“Bro it’s a Sunday”
“We don’t even know if it’s gonna be fun”
“We don’t even know where we’re gonna go”
True, but it was Super Bowl Sunday. It could’ve been a whack night, but we would’ve never found that out from the bnb. And we had a spot in mind!
But either way, all of those were details. They were missing the bigger picture. It’s lit outside. So why would we stay inside?
Luckily, Nick and Jenn were thinking the same thing. So after trying to convince our friends to come, we threw back a few tequila shots and head out. The vibes in the uber were EBULLIENT. We already knew it was gonna be a great night.
My friend Dala was at a pub in Santa Monica and told us to pull up. When we got there it was packed. Packed packed. Line wrapped around the corner of the block packed. Body to body every square inch of the pub packed. No chance we were gonna get in standing on that line packed.
Nick and I went to the back. While we did that, Jenn went to work. She not only convinced a group of guys near the front to let her cut them but also convinced them to let me and Nick cut them too. Sorcery. And at the moment they realized they’d been bamboozled, we found out that one of the guys was from Jersey and studied industrial engineering at the University of Michigan. Guess where I grew up, what I studied, and where I went to school. He went from pissed to incredulous, quick. Small world.
When we got in, I made my way through the crowd to the bathroom. By the time I got out, Jenn had already gotten the guys from line to buy her drinks. She passed those off to me and Nick. Clutch.
We found Dala and I can not exaggerate how lit this night got from there. As soon as we found him, this random guy came up and bought all of us drinks.
“LETS GO RAMSSS. I LOVE YALL.”
This dude was inebriated. Gotta love it.
Everybody in this bar was elated. Dapping up and hugging strangers elated. I don’t even think they all fucked with football like that. But the excuse to party like WE ALL just won a ring was there. Glad we took it.
This whole time, Jenn was putting up a Matt Stafford-type performance. Me and Nick didn’t have to spend a dollar. Countless thirsty dudes were buying her drinks and she was just passing them off. Dimes.
And when I say countless I mean I really am shocked by how easy it was. We got drunk drunk. It got to the point where one guy came up to me and said, “I think your friend just finessed me out of a drink”. I was literally holding said drink, but I had to keep it together.
“Nahhhhh. Really? Why would you think that?”.
Then Dala told me he had the next move.
50 was having a private party at a hotel downtown. 50 that just performed upside down at the super bowl. In da club, bottle full of bub, 50.
We were all so drunk that we figured fuck it, no way they won’t let us in. We hopped in a uber and hit the hotel.
In the lobby they told us it was a private party and we couldn’t go up. Dala asked if there was any way around that and they said if we got a suite we could go in. We asked how much and while I can’t remember the exact price, I know it was OUTRAGEOUS. But then without a second thought, Dala said, “PERFECT, SEND US UP”.
We were in this elevator quiet. “Bro why’d you say send us up?? That price is OD” 😭
But it was really just quick thinking. Dala knew they would send us up if we said yes, so that gave us another chance to talk our way in without paying for anything.
We got the security table and they asked our names to see if we were on the list. We weren’t. Shocker.
But then Dala went full Denzel. “There must be some sort of mistake. This is ridiculous! We’re on this list”.
I caught on so I had to go full Will Smith. “That’s impossible, we know for a fact that we have tickets”.
And to this day, I still don’t know how he did it, but Dala pulled out a loading screen. Except the screen was loading nothing. Just a circle loading and he said it was our tickets, but that for some reason his service wasn’t working.
While they were staring at his phone I grabbed some wristbands off the table and passed them off to Jenn and Nick. Then after more than 20 minutes of insisting we were on the list, they gave all of us wristbands anyway and apologized for the inconvenience.
We were in. Free.99.
As soon as we got in, we grabbed some free food and started mingling. The people in there were mad cool. Then, in the second occurrence of small-world shit that night, I ran into a mutual friend from college. Probably just the universe confirming we were supposed to go out that night.
We couldn’t believe we had made it in. We were GEEKED. And as if we didn’t have enough energy already, dreams and nightmares came on and had me feeling like I still needed more. Yall thought I was finished??
On one side of the pool there was a roped off VIP section. But on the other side of the pool, no rope. I saw my chance and took it. Sat down next to the pool, saw the security guard not looking and walked right in. Jenn saw me, came in and got both of us kicked out the section. Then we went right back in the same way. This time the guard looked at us, shook his head and let us rock.
50. DaBaby. Actors and actresses from power. Michael Blackson. Now we really couldn’t believe where we were at. Jenn told me to go up and talk to 50. He was actually mad friendly. Everyone in the section really. Super approachable. Super friendly. And on top of that, there was even better free food. You know we had to indulge.
Still one of the craziest nights of my life. Thank you Dala. Thank you Jenn. Thank you Nick. Your spontaneity is infectious and you gave me a story to tell my grandkids.
Side note:
Thank you to my friends that had the self-awareness to say no to going out. It can take a lot to not fall to peer pressure. And when we told them what happened the next day they brought up an amazing point. If they had come out, we 1)wouldn’t have been as mobile, 2) they might’ve been pouting and dragged the night down early, and 3) they definitely would’ve said the 50 party was an impossible mission off rip. So the 2 morals are 1) be spontaneous and 2) don’t try and get people to do shit they don’t want to do.
