‘Have you ever do crowd surfing?’ asked me a girl at Burgerama this year…. ‘Me? Noooo! and I am too old now!’ I replied and she laughed, but she was not mocking me, she was nice and was admiring the crowd surfers having the time of their lives.
Crowd surfing has become so common these days, at least where I live, in Los Angeles, people do it all the time, even when the music is not punk, they do it at any occasion as it seems to be part of the Southern California culture, a way for kids to express themselves, to have fun while taking some risks… yeah it is not safe at all. I have been to the west side where big signs saying ‘no crowd surfing, no stag diving’ still exist in certain venues, but on the east side, at the Echo, Echoplex, Regent, El Rey… everything goes. And of course, in Orange County, it is a wild world over there, it’s hardcore country and it’s more ferocious than ever.
There was actually a study done on crowd surfing – Who is at risk? And they found that 60% of the injuries occur to people in the crowd rather that to surfers. Not really surprising, meaning that, not only they put themselves at risk but they also risk to injury a lot of people in the head, neck… some rare people have even died, but I don’t want to get too morbid… what amazes me the most is the abandon these people are ready to succumb to when they do it, they don’t care about their valuable items, they lose driver licenses, credit cards, glasses, wallets but they don’t seem to care when they do it for the fun of it. I have never seen so many stuff and broken things of all kinds on the ground than after Refused’s set at the FYF fest, it was insane, I was walking on a layer of clothes and broken stuff.
No matter you think about crowd surfing, no matter if you consider it as a culture, a way of expression, even an art form, or a lawsuit-in-the-making, here are some of my best pictures of crowd surfing taken at Burgerama, the FYF fest, Echo Park Rising, among other locations. And I hope to catch many more in action in the future.
