When I was home from college one summer, a high school friend invited me to a Snoop Dogg concert in New Hampshire. It was at the Casino Ballroom, on the sleazy part of the boardwalk by the beach. My friend was a lifeguard for the summer, and he and all the other lifeguards rented a shack on the marsh, walking distance from the beach. Every high tide, the shack would flood.
We got to the show early. The warmup DJ was not very good but was very loud, so we decided to stand outside on the back steps for a bit. Just outside the venue, two drunk women were in a full fistfight. One had ripped a tuft of hair from the other, and they were rolling in the street, screaming in thick Boston accents and throwing haymakers. Their boyfriends were very encouraging. One of the boyfriends chugged his beer and threw the empty can at the brawlers. They were directly in front of a police station, but no one seemed to be coming out to break it up.
The show was starting, so we went back inside. When Snoop stepped on stage, a single cloud smoke rose from the thousands of joints in the crowd, as if choreographed.
Afterwards, we went back to the lifeguard shack on the marsh and drank a concoction made from a tube of cheap frozen lemonade and a bottle of cheap vodka. I slept on the couch.