Scared I Don’t Belong Here: My First EDC Las Vegas Experience

Electric Sunrise in the Desert

Here is the story of my first EDC Las Vegas Experience.

The dusty neon glow bled into the dawn of a new sunrise.

I tiredly sat down on the bus after walking around for the last two hours looking for the place to catch my ride-share back. The faint melodies of the last set of the night still echoed from the same direction as the lights. My eyelids started to drop as the bus crawled along in stop-and-go traffic.

Unlike when I closed out clubs in Seattle or Tokyo, everyone else wanted the party to keep going while I longed for rest.

The first time I went to an EDM event I was a struggling college student. Now, as a struggling adult, I finally made it to my first EDC Las Vegas. When I was younger, I still had a tiny bit of optimism that I could turn things around. As a jaded adult, I found it wasn’t easy to forget about all my worries and sit in the moment.

It had always been a dream of mine to come here. This didn’t feel like it was supposed to.

Before making it to Vegas, I had lived an entire life in Japan. But life seemed to be like a hamster wheel. I’d come full circle and wasn’t far from that struggling college kid. I was still that same broke nerd living in his parents’ house, just ten years older.

It’s cute clinging to a starry-eyed dream in your twenties. In your thirties, it’s not cute anymore; it’s pathetic. There was one thought on repeat in my mind.

“You don’t belong here.”

EDC Is Longer Than the Weekend

I was unaware that prepping for Electric Daisy Carnival Las Vegas is a process that can start almost a year before you ever step through the gate.

The ticket was a birthday gift from my sister, so I had no idea how rare EDC tickets are. If you showed up to EDC Las Vegas with just a ticket, you’d be woefully unprepared. There is no infrastructure in the immediate area. And because we’re out of state, you’re looking at flights, hotels, meals, transportation, and of course, your vices. With support from my sister and her friend group, it was something I didn’t have to brave alone. Nothing could have prepared me properly, or maybe I was just dense and hard-headed?

From my perspective, the entire EDC Las Vegas experience just fell into my lap.

For a POS like me, it was really too much; I felt guilty.

Things like this are earned?

Did people like me even deserve moments like this?

Pre-Preparation

My sister gave me primers on what to expect at such a large festival. I was a little arrogant about receiving it; hubris got the best of me. I had gone to Tokyo Auto Salon and other large music events in my life. It couldn’t be that different, right?

My sister warned me about scheduling my flight, what to bring, cell phone service, and the intensity of the crowds. With the event months away, I couldn’t really see the immediate consequences of my casual attitude and poor preparation.

Big events like this aren’t exactly optimal for ADHD brains, are they?

The list of items to bring was simple enough:

• Lunchbox clear backpack
• Hydration pack
• Electrolytes
• Cash in small bills
• Clutch loop
• Hearing protection
• Read About Stage Information
• Preplan Lineup

Procrastination at its Finest

Like a favorite playlist, my sister kept the information on repeat. She would poke her head in and remind me of the bullet list while I was gaming, cleaning, relaxing, or watching TV. At the end, she would always say, “You’re gonna be at EDC,” and start dancing to music blasting in her memories. I’d dance along with the fake music in our heads. It was a nice little bonding routine.

What started as months shortened to weeks, then days. Before I knew it, I was on Amazon last-minute shipping a clear backpack, electrolytes, and a hydration bladder. To my surprise, even the online retailer was selling out of hydration camelbacks.

She did warn me.

I thought to myself, before deciding, I would improvise by sticking a hydration bladder inside a larger backpack instead.

These Things Aren’t Meant for Peasants

After around two or three hours of last-minute packing, I headed to the airport at around five in the morning. Still groggy-eyed, it’s not like I had a flight leaving that early. Truthfully, I didn’t have a flight at all. Technically, I possessed a ticket, but standby buddy passes have no dedicated flight. I was at the mercy of the wind, an allegory for the rest of my life. My best hope of getting to Vegas was to spawn camp every flight going to Sin City.

Still sleepy, I hugged my sister as she dropped me off and dragged my nearly lifeless corpse past security and in front of the gate of my potential flight.

Looking at the sleep-deprived leaderboard, my name was first on the standby list. I was still unclear about the standby process, so I asked the attendant about how it worked.

“How can I help?” she asked as I fumbled around for an answer.

“It’s my first time flying standby. Can you tell me how it works?”

While I consider myself competent, learning a new procedure is like trying to cook without a recipe. My heart sank a little when, instead of getting a helpful walkthrough, she let out a sigh and said getting to Vegas was going to be tough that day. I might have to wait until tomorrow. When I looked at the board and saw myself first on the list, I was assured I’d get to Vegas by the end of the day. It was the first flight of the day; surely someone was going to oversleep. There had to be at least one seat available.

Pay to Win

Lying down with my duffel bag as a pillow, I began a warm comfortable nap. Learning to sleep on Japanese commuter trains was becoming quite a useful skill. I woke up and peered over at the list to find my name had plummeted down the leaderboard. It was as gutting as watching my OSU! Rank tumble. I was in the top 12,000 at one point, with my friend John being in the top 2,000. Now I was 20th in line . . . and unranked in OSU! My position in line plummeted as more names were added to the list.

Alaska’s standby buddy flights are ranked based on rewards programs, employee seniority, and other airline mysteries. I was not wealthy or powerful enough to understand. Here I thought it was first come, first served.

No, that would be too fair.

I won’t begrudge the world for being unfair for too long, though. Fully aware that real life was a pay-to-win MMO, I thought back to posts I saw of Coachella. Those with power, wealth, and influence had the red carpet, whilst those without those passive buffs suffered.

The Feeling of the World Leaving You Behind

It would take a miracle, but I stopped believing in those a long time ago. Flight after flight left while I shuffled from gate to gate like a zombie ronin. My name stayed around twentieth place; if this were F1, I would have been out of the points.

I had made a friend during all the wandering, but as our hope of catching a flight faded, they lost patience. My new friend ended up dropping nearly three hundred dollars for a Southwest flight. That was a luxury I couldn’t really afford. Hell, I couldn’t afford the trip as it was. If it weren’t for the generosity of my family, I would have been sitting at home making music alone behind a computer.

Another gate closed as ravers made their way to Sin City without me. Dejected, I shuffled toward the gate attendant, who let me in on a little secret.

“The next flight at the gate on the other side of the terminal has like forty open seats. If you put your name in now, you might get one.”

I regained my composure and made my way to the gate where I would finally leave the green of Washington behind for the blood-orange desert of Nevada.

One-Week Friends

I sat down on the plane as a lone traveler.

Traveling alone was exciting about eight years ago. After seeing my fair share of planes, trains, and buses, it was just another day in the office. When I first traveled to Japan, I naively thought I was traveling to greener pastures. What I found was people around the world are more similar than different. Still, all present experiences carry nostalgic undertones of all those before it. By some miracle, the first time I flew overseas alone, my flight was filled with Japanese college girls. I was twenty-two at the time, so I couldn’t have been happier.

I still remember sharing the long flight and some conversations with a girl named Saki. Would it be the start of a budding romance? You would think it might be the way things started. We shared some laughs, broken conversations, and she even slept on my shoulder for part of the flight. This is a great plot to a cheesy romcom if I’m ever in the need of one. When we landed, we exchanged LINE, on an account I later lost access to, and went our separate ways.

Back then, I thought every human interaction was eternally important.

To some extent, I still do.

In our attention-hungry, fast-paced Western lifestyle, the ability to be fully present in the moment with someone is rare. But I no longer treat people like I’m going to know them for the rest of my life.

Friends come and go

Having small talk with people you’ll never see again is a friendly gesture I look forward to. The gold of short interactions is that there’s almost no downside to embarrassing yourself with a bad joke. Clumsily fumbling over your words or awkward silence is less intimidating when you realize that you’ll probably never see this other person in your life again.

I sat next to two girls about three or four years younger than me. One of them was eating snacks and playing a mobile game. Seeing the gameplay, I immediately recognized the title: Mobile Legends: Bang Bang.

While I had never played that game, as a League of Legends player, I understood the genre. She was intensely focused as her friend and I watched and reacted to the action on-screen. As a ranged attack damage carry, she was her team’s win condition. I was invested in the back-and-forth momentum of the match.

As the plane got ready to take off, I heard a sigh as she had to disconnect. Because the game was multiplayer, she couldn’t continue playing once the plane started moving. After her team surrendered, we all sat quietly for a second.

Can’t Win Em All

Everyone sat in silence, seemingly disappointed in the anticlimactic ending. I was no stranger to awkward silence, it was where I existed most of the time.

“Hey, are you going to EDC?”

“Where are you from?”

I learned that they were Chinese and of course, here for EDC. They offered me some of their snacks as the plane slowly rolled towards the runway. After more chit-chat, friendly smiles, and laughter, I leaned my head against the window and fell asleep.

Friends weren’t always forever.

Whether it was a week, day, hour, or minute, it was worth smiling and making friends for a short time. In a way, that limited time carried its own significance. Without the emotional weight of forever, it made it easier to be yourself. Also the value in some things was their lack of abundance.

After landing in Vegas, I wished them well and found myself alone again.

A Fish Out of Water

I felt more lost in Vegas than I did in Haneda or Narita. Walking out of the terminal, I scratched my head.

How do I get out of there?

Should I take the bus? A taxi? Just walk? Visiting a new location, even one that used English, was like visiting someone else’s house and trying to find things in their kitchen. You know they probably have the thing you’re looking for, you just don’t know where it is. I must have been crazy moving overseas all that time ago. It was a miracle I even ended up in the right place for my ALT orientation.

I should be able to end up at the right hotel in Vegas, right?

I climbed into a taxi and told the driver what hotel to go to. Would they drop me off in the right place? I wouldn’t end up like the Courier in Fallout: New Vegas’s intro.

Taxis are safe in Vegas, right?

When I was sixteen, I went to Vegas with my family. I thought visiting after turning twenty-one would feel like a high-stakes thriller. It was supposed to be about winning big, not feeling financial sting. Instead of Casino Royale it was Slumdog MillYenaire.

A Step Behind

Because I wasn’t able to catch the flight I wanted, and taking more time off work would have led me to financial ruin, I found myself running late for the festival.

I was supposed to meet up with a group of my sister’s friends, but by the time I made it to the hotel, I arrived at an empty room.

I was exhausted, only wanting to pass out on the couch and sleep for the rest of eternity. Instead, I willed myself to change clothes, take a quick shower, and arrived at the pickup spot for the shuttle service. Even though it was my first time at EDC Las Vegas, I thought I understood what a massive festival meant. I didn’t. My brain still wasn’t able to comprehend the scale of it.

These shuttles have to be booked months in advance. Without one, you’re paying absurd Uber prices each way for three days.

A Less Than Deserted Desert

When EDC first started, it was in a small warehouse. Since then, it has exploded to the point where the venue sits out in the middle of the desert. Normally, when I head to a racetrack, fewer than a thousand people watch cars burn gas and rip up tires. Heading toward a desert racetrack with a city’s worth of people for a music festival felt odd and commercial.

You’d figure they would have it somewhere with more infrastructure, civilization, and support.

The long drive to the middle of nowhere was good in some ways. I ended up meeting another five-minute friend before passing out and getting some much-needed R&R.

Learning to sleep on Japanese trains was really paying off.

I’ve Had This Feeling Before

Before the bus pulled into the venue, the sound of electronic music began permeating through the red, hazy dusk. Lights and lasers cut through the dusty air like digital lightning, further infusing the night with a neon forest of rhythm. Dismounting the bus and walking toward the stadium, the sound of the bass became a feeling. Adrenaline poured into my bloodstream as my heartbeat began to sync with the nearest kick drum, which grew louder with each step.

Walking through the tunnel and seeing the whole venue was so overwhelming that I had to step to the side and take it all in.

The sheer number of booths, rides, stages, and people left me in awe. I sat and scanned the horizon. There were two stages immediately within my vision and a field with people relaxing on blankets. Pillars of flame, fireworks, lasers, and drones danced like cybertronic fireflies.

I walked around mesmerized, bewildered, and confused as various totems, outfits, and trains of people made their way around me like I was a rock in a stream.

I looked at the twenty-dollar drinks and decided I’d enjoy myself happily sober.

Everyone Has a Plan Until They Have No Cell Service

My initial plan was to show up and follow my group like a lost duckling. Instead, my first night slowly turned into an EDC Las Vegas solo experience. I couldn’t tell one stage from another and was being carried along by the flow of things.

I had enough patches of service to get the EDC app working and began to get familiar with the layout of the festival. There were only a small handful of artists I really wanted to see. Looking at my list, The Chainsmokers were next in an hour or so. When I made my way to the stage, it wasn’t difficult to move toward the front. I was four meters from the rail when my ears and claustrophobia reached their limit. Hearing protection was something I hadn’t crossed off that list, but it’s something you needed. An artist I didn’t know was performing, so I sat patiently and waited.

Musical Journey

When The Chainsmokers arrived, they started playing music I had been hearing for years. Out of everything in my EDC Las Vegas experience, this was one of the first moments where the festival actually connected with the version of me who used to dream about being there. I hadn’t thought about my lonely college days in my small apartment in a while. I remember overhearing “Closer” played at frat parties next door. A loser like me was never invited to those things.

The girl I had a crush on at my first post-college job, the person I had my first kiss with. Years later, I played one of their songs live at an open mic. I fucked up that performance, btw, not much I don’t ruin.

The lyrics and melody were somber despite the energy of the song. The organic instruments blended with distorted electronic synths and sadboi vocals. While I was lost in my own head, I was also part of the collective experience, swaying with the music, singing, and jumping to songs I knew.

Before I knew it, my next artist was going to have a set at a different stage.

It wasn’t too hard to get into my spot, so it shouldn’t be too hard to leave, right?

Roller Coaster Train

I turned around to find that the sparsely packed Kinetic Field stage had experienced a major influx of people once The Chainsmokers started playing. While it had been no trouble getting to my spot and having personal space, leaving was going to be a test of will and patience. It took me three times as long to escape the crowd that extended two football fields’ worth of friend groups, totems, and moving human trains.

By the time I reached a place where I felt like I could breathe, I was exasperated.

Lucky for me, Quantum Valley, where Gareth Emery was performing, was right next to the main stage. It had side entrances where you could avoid the majority of the crowd but still enjoy the music. Feeling a little out of it, I also lucked out and found that the water dispenser was right by Quantum Valley.

Warm water had never tasted so good in my life.

After that, I shifted to the Adventure Club throwback set, which brought me back to a better time in life. Ten or fifteen years ago, I didn’t have everything figured out either, but at least I was more optimistic about the future.

Now, Optimism is just the name of a brewery that went out of business in Seattle.

Cattle

The last artist I really wanted to see that night was Porter Robinson. I had seen him before in Tokyo, but as a big fan, his shelter video was one of the reasons I started making music. Though my thirty-one-year-old body called it quits halfway through his set.

Did an old broken soul like me belong here?

Finding the exit was easy enough, but I had no idea where the bus was supposed to pick me up. Like a lost sheep, I walked around with no idea where I was supposed to go. Because I didn’t.

Even when I asked people, they pointed me in different directions. I thought I was supposed to go to the EDC shuttles, but because I was using a separate rideshare, I was supposed to be picked up by the taxis.

Dude I’m not a Cow

The most annoying part was the chain-link fences set up everywhere to herd people like cattle, because the organizers didn’t trust people to walk and cross streets like adults.

I ended up walking around the whole track twice before finally finding the right place.

By the time I found the right spot, two and a half hours had passed, and the sun was coming up. Making it to the bus, it was nearly five in the morning. At that point, everyone else was trying to leave too, so it took nearly another two and a half hours to get back to the hotel.

My legs burning, I collapsed onto the couch and passed out.

Part 2 Here