Last night Kevin and I trekked down to MSG to see Iron Maiden for the second time. Our seats were up in the 300 section, but on the side of the stage so they were surprisingly close (although you wouldn't know it from the few crappy iPhone pictures I tried to take). The closeness did also mean that we were pretty deaf for much of the rest of the night.

The concert was really good. Dream Theater opened the show and put on a great performance. Iron Maiden was non-stop energy. We really enjoyed the show until the encore when super wasted drunk dude started bothering the crowd.

This dude came out of no where and started talking to Kevin and then grabbing him. Kevin was trying to gently tell him to move along, and I stepped in and pushed him off of Kevin and yelled "go away!" My hope was the drunk dude was still with it enough to not mess with a girl. The dude then started dancing and enjoying the music. Then he kept trying to grab Kevin's arm and raise it in the air. Then he started messing with two dudes in the next section, who were less gentle and gave him a little shove. The dude kept sitting down on the steps and then laying down. Then he'd get up and sway for a bit. The two guys from the next section went and complained to security, who did nothing. The drunk dude started messing with some other people who tried valiantly to ignore him, and then went to complain to security. The drunk dude then tried to start messing with these two emo teenagers (not sure why emo teens were at an Iron Maiden concert); the emo teens were there with their super cool mom who went into total mama bear mode and start yelling at the dude to get away from them. The drunk dude started to grab at the woman and the two guys who had complained and shoved the guy previously, yelled at him and when he pushed the woman, the bigger of the two guys shoved the drunk dude as hard as possible. Drunk dude flew into the people in front of us, then sat on the steps for a bit. Then he started messing with the girl in front of Kevin (and the girl's boyfriend was just as scared of him as the girl was). The drunk dude was standing, swaying with his eyes closed looking about 3 seconds from vomiting everywhere. At this point, I was fed up and went and complained to security. By this time, the entirety of two sections are warily watching this dude and not enjoying the show. The security jerk said that they were aware of the situation and keeping an eye on it. Apparently a drunk and disorderly about to puke dude is not sufficient to get security to intervene. The security guy seemed more concerned with standing next to a railing than doing his job. Fortunately the dude moved a bit away, but it totally ruined the end of the night for at least 20+ people.

Hopefully in two weeks when we return to MSG to see Tom Petty the crowd will be more sedate.