SuperVegan!

[promotional announcement]

For the past few months, my coworkers and I have been earnestly laboring to create the most awesome, amazing, fantastic, ginormous vegan website that ever crept upon the face of the world wide web. We call it SuperVegan!

SuperVegan blogs the most up-to-date info on news, events, and products of interest to vegans or vegan wannabes (available through LJ if you friend superveganblog). SuperVegan's detailed and curated web directory will help you find whatever vegan jollies you're seeking in no time, whether it's vegan booze, a vegan-minded podcast to listen to on your commute to work, or a vegan date.

SuperVegan is also home to the The Amazing Instant New York City Restaurant Finder, the city's best Internet restaurant search engine made by vegans for vegans (and people who just wanna eat like vegans). You can find restaurants to suit almost any need, based on location, price range, cuisine, availability of alcohol, and more.

I did all the database design and programming, so check it out and let me know what you think. :)

We love SuperVegan and we hope you will too. Join the SuperVegan mailing list if you'd like to be kept in the loop about site developments.

[/promotional announcement]

(Now back to your regularly scheduled me-squeeing-over-the-upcoming-PIG-tour).

Ugh

I went to Atlantic City this weekend to see Nine Inch Nails. Some thoughts:

* I'm over this whole "traveling alone" thing. It's so tedious, not having anyone to distract you from the fact that the line is long, you're thirsty, your back hurts, etc. And not having anyone to protect you from the creeps around you.

* Greyhound busses are repulsive--dirty, smelly, and cramped. They don't follow correct schedules, they're completely unreliable, and their barely-there staff is beyond rude. You don't treat adults the way they treated us; you shouldn't even treat 5-year-olds with such rudeness and condescension.

* Atlantic City is a shithole. Do you want to know the amount of time it took from me stepping off the bus for some skeevy guy to walk over and hit on me? 15 seconds. He literally saw me walk off the bus and made a beeline for me, and followed me through the bus station.

Speaking of the bus station, it was disgustingly dirty and there were no cabs or anything around, and I just wanted to get the hell out of there, so I decided to walk the 1.3 miles to the House of Blues. Bad idea. Every single person I walked past either stared at me like I was an alien or like he wanted to rape me and do disgusting things to my corpse. One man wondered aloud to his friend what it would be like to "do that," and they had a good cackle as I walked past.

* When I finally got to the hellhole known as the House of Blues, it was disgusting--I think it could give the Imperial Palace a run for its money. Dank and dark and sweaty and reeking of desperation--and cigarette smoke. I forgot they let people smoke inside in Jersey. I knew I shouldn't have bothered with this trip.

And the staff was as rude and clueless as you could be. No one could tell me where the spiral (fan club) entrance was, but I eventually found it (after ignoring the advice of many staff members who told me to "just get in the line"). When I got there, they lined us up in three parallel rows, and refused to let anyone out to go to the bathroom or get a drink. (Some girl who'd been waiting for hours left to pee, and when she came back to re-join her mother in line, the guards would not let her back in, even though she'd clearly been there waiting for hours, AND her mom had the tickets.)

Then they combined the three parallel lines in reverse order, so that everyone who'd been there first were moved to the back. People who'd been waiting since noon were behind people who'd just gotten there at five thirty. When we protested, we were lectured and told that they could not be responsible for "babysitting" us.

* So we finally got inside, and I was standing in the center with about five rows in front of me. The opening band was a rapper (WTF?) and then there was a loooong wait. This was growing increasingly intolerable, as I'd been travelling since noon and standing for several hours and hadn't eaten since breakfast and I'd been scrunched into this tiny Greyhound seat with this huge guy taking half my space and blabbing on his phone the entire 2 1/2 hour trip and I was in NO MOOD to stand for freaking hours in a tiny cramped sweltering mosh pit.

And then the fire alarms went off.

Naturally, no one moved, but they turned on the house lights and the fire alarm lights were flashing. We stood for about two more hours; NO ONE came out to make any kind of announcement about what was going on until about an hour and 45 minutes into it. The fire department showed up and went onstage (waving to the crowd, who cheered them), and finally we were told that the smoke from the smoke machines, plus all the people smoking, plus the heat from the crowd, had set off the fire alarms in the casino, and the show couldn't start until they checked the entire casino for a fire.

Lovely.

* So finally the show started, and the pit SUCKED. All these huge guys who'd just gotten there tried to shove their way up to the front, in the process crushing the people who'd been waiting for hours and hours. I know this is normal for mosh pits, but I've never been in one this unpleasant. It was just a really ugly, unpleasant asshole/frat boy type crowd.

After about two and a half songs, I couldn't breathe, I was gasping for air, my chest was being crushed, and I knew I had to get out of there or die. So I turned around, and had to push my way out/pretend I was actually fainting so that people would let me through. Meanwhile, the girl in front of me realized that I was trying to leave, and latched onto my arm, begging me to take her with me. So I had to struggle my way out of the pit carrying my purse, my coat, and this other girl attached to my arm. We finally staggered out, stood in the back, caught our breaths, drank some $3 water, and then enjoyed the rest of the show from the back.

They played "Burn," my favorite, and "Wish," and some good stuff, but really nothing that special. And I couldn't sing along because I couldn't catch enough breath to sing.

This is the first time I've ever had to leave a mosh pit. I'm not a wuss. This crowd *really* sucked. As we stood in the back, we saw a progression of people who'd been standing near us up front, staggering their way out or being carried by their friends, in increasingly worse states of health. I'm so glad I got out early.

* And then I had to catch yet another hideous Greyhound bus at midnight to NYC, got home at 4am, had to take a shower to rid myself of the stench of Atlantic City, and slept for a very, very long.