#same with nick really.. yeah it's random how they dropped the youth center lol

[flythesail]

Everyone can obviously feel how they want to feel about it but I've always felt the paths the drew crew decide on in the finale are reflective of their arcs

[jonwongton]

KCON LA 2019 Recap

Wow what an insane three days. My expectations were pretty low from KCON NY but I was really impressed by some of the events they had at the convention.

I'm just gonna use everyone's real names in this because it's too hard to remember everyone's handles.

Thursday, August 15th

After work, I went home, made dinner, packed up, and then went straight to the airport. The flight from San Jose to Burbank is literally an hour gate to gate (45 minutes of flight time lol) so it was a super short flight. The only pressing thing was that some of my discord buddies were doing karaoke in ktown so I really didn't want to miss out on that. My mvp sister came to the airport to pick up all my stuff and I ubered straight to the karaoke place to see everyone (I forgot to take pictures though :(). Jordan started me off with Rough and after they sang a ton of other girl group songs, I did Red Flavor and Energetic. We didn't want to go too hard before the convention even started so we all decided to meet at the convention before noon. The izone fanclub meeting was at noon and the fromis_9 fanclub meeting was at three, so I definitely wanted to go to both (all six moderators for the two fanclub meets are in the group I went with).

Friday, August 16th

I woke up at like 9 and I went with Cyn to go get Trieu Chau noodles, which tasted even better than I remember.

Everyone wanted to get lunch in between the fanclub meetings but I don't trust eating in big groups and I'm pretty good at not eating for long periods of time in case anything happens.

I got to the convention at around noon, but it took me around half an hour to check-in because my dumb ass was so lost. I'm super glad the lady that gave me my wristband let me tighten it myself just so I could take it off freely between the three days. I also went to the merchandise pick-up and got my two fromis_9 slogans and a loona slogan. I ran over to the izone fanclub meeting right after.

There were a ton wizones there and they played three rounds of games through kahoot guessing these random ass facts I don't even think a hardcore wizone would know. We then did the Violetta and La Via En Rose fanchants and it ended there. After that I walked out with Nick and Danny and we went to the mob so they could try buying their izone and itzy hi-touches.

So the mob in LA was batshit insane and the hi-touches were marked up SOOO much higher than I ever would have guessed. An A1 pack is $170 and it comes with one hi-touch, two audiences, and a red carpet pass (ignore the red carpet pass I don't think anyone cares about that). Stray Kids/Ateez hi-touches were easily going for $300, and I heard someone got really desperate and dropped $700 for her Ateez hi-touch. Out of the nine hi-touches that happened (should have been ten but rip Chung Ha) my feel for the prices went something along the lines of (+ their average price from what I saw)

Stray Kids ($350) > Ateez ($300) >> Izone ($200) >>> Itzy ($150) >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> SF9/Mamamoo ($100) >>>>>>>> Momoland ($75) >>>>> N.Flying ($50) >>>>>>>>>>> Verivery ($40)

Yeah people are insane. And with the audiences I'm pretty sure you have a solid 7/9 chance to make a huge profit. If you posted in the Facebook group and did the "dm me your best offer" I'm pretty sure you'd be able to sell your Stray Kids hi-touch for $600+. People were even buying Stray kids audiences for $100 like are you serious...

The supply and demand was also super polarized. We waited for almost an hour and not even a single person had an itzy/izone hi-touch for sale, yet there were probably at least 10 people willing to drop a nontrivial amount of money for anyone that came up. If you're willing to pay this much money to touch a few groups, diamond doesn't sound that bad anymore (all-access hi-touch, plat only gets 2).

I stood around and talked until like 2:30 until making my way to the fromis_9 fanclub meet. I think loona was at star square at the time so the turn out was even smaller than New York imo.

(decorating the stage with my signs)

We played two kahoot games and I actually won the guess the song after only hearing one second of it. There were nine questions and I legitimately knew seven of them, but they used the same questions in New York so I knew the last two were Youth (Hayoung's cover)/From Now (Jiwon's and Nakyung's OST song). That won me a medium size KCON LA 2019 shirt, but that was just a consolation prize. fromis_9 hadn't even left Korea yet so there's no way we could get signed merch. We then did the Love Bomb/Fun/Love Rum Pum Pum fanchants. I didn't go that hard on Love Bomb, but MVP Danny helped me hold my phone so I went full blast on Fun and Love RumPumPum. Ngl the Love RumPumPum fanchant was literally impossible unless you already knew it because the timings are so strange and no one can actually read romanized Korean fast enough (the subs didn't have the hangul). I'm kinda the fanchant guy so I really wanted to drop all that Korean practice at this opportunity.

After the fanclub meet, I finally got a chance to walk around the convention. This was my first KCON LA, but I heard in previous rooms they only got half the expo hall but this year they got the whole thing. Everything was spaced out pretty well and there was a ton more to do than in NY.

I walked around for a bit, took some pictures, and then sat on a bench to hang out with Danny for like an hour since all the others went to go line up for KCON Rookies (there had to have been at least 1.5k people waiting).

(that’s half the line)

All memes aside, it's nice to actually get to know some of the back stories behind some other friends. Danny and I realized we both ulted GFriend and fromis_9 and how willing we are to just throw money at both groups lol. I gave the extra fromis_9 slogan towel I ordered to my new friend and he left for Rookies since he was plat and had priority entrance. I made one more lap around the convention, said hi to an old friend, and then called an Uber to get dinner with my sister and two college friends.

It was a pretty fancy Japanese dinner that was definitely not worth it, but we got Salt and Straw after and that was awesome.

We walked back to the apartment of two other people that joined us, and I left for Dan Sung Sa to meet up with the rest of the group after Rookies. I finally got to see my buddy Alex (he got diamond so he was busy milking the perks the whole day), ate some good food, and I drank a bit more than I should have.

After dinner #2, I ubered back to Cyn's and planned to wake up fairly early to go to LAX.

Saturday August 17th

fromis_9 took off on their flight from Incheon at around 8pm our time, so they would be landing at around 10am PDT. The izone artist engagement happened to be at around the same time (11am, a ton of people in the group at hard core wizones), so only a few of us decided to go to LAX. I took an Uber to the airbnb and then we all went to LAX together. We also heard Stray Kids, Mamamoo, and Verivery were on the same flight, so we'd coincidentally get to see a ton of idols. At the airport, I met some fans from other discord servers and we just sat around waiting for them to come out of the special exit.

A lot of the group went on Thursday to greet loona/izone at the airport, but a ton of them didn't even get to see them because they were waiting at the wrong exit. I kinda piggy-backed off their experience and made sure I was sitting at the right one.

After standing around for quite a bit, everyone formed two huge lines waiting to greet them. I wanted to stick out my hand for them to touch, hold up my Jiheon sign, and try recording it at the same time, but I only have two hands. I ended up placing my phone in front of the Jiheon sign and keeping my right hand free. They walked out super fast, but Jiheon pointed at me and laughed at my sign. It really only lasted 10 seconds, and I felt pretty mission-accomplished knowing Jiheon saw my sign at least once. Jiwon lead the line and I keep forgetting how smol she is. (I’ll post the video I got eventually).

The next artist that came out was Stray Kids, and they were super nice and waved at us. All hell broke loose When Mamamoo came out like I'm genuinely surprised the fans there were that crazy. First of all, they are SOOOOOOOOOOO short. I've seen pictures of Mamamoo standing next to GFriend and while they all tease Eunha for being 5'4", she's still taller then Solar/Moonbyul/Hwasa. The fans chased after the van and started screaming Mamamoo for a few minutes before dispersing. At this point, most people left, but out of no where, N.Flying also exited the airport. Ngl, I thought it was gonna be Verivery but when I only saw four members I made the connection. I was looking at the footage I recorded of fromis_9 that I couldn't record N.Flying coming out fast enough. There was nothing left to do so my group just ubered back to the LA Convention Center. Tbh at this point, this trip was already better than all of KCON NY minus what happened at Washington Square Park because I already got to see fromis_9 in person. They made 0 appearances at the NY convention and the day I went to the airport, they weren't even flying out so at this point, the trip was already worth it.

It was around 12:30pm when we got to the convention, and I was with all three fromis_9 fanclub moderators, so they got to go through the staff entrance while I wanted in the pleb line. Once I made it into the convention center, I rushed over to the KCON beauty station where loona was having a meet and greet (started at 12:40pm). There were SO many people and even on my tiptoes I could only catch the top half of the screen, though if I held my phone up I could record what was happening.

A few people moved out of the way and I could kinda see Haseul's and Choerry's faces but there were so many orbits. I couldn't really hear what they were saying, but every time Chuu said something, the orbits there were roaring (she is undisputedly the most popular member among the crowd). They ended up just talking about some beauty tips and how they do their makeup, so I kinda knew what to expect when fromis_9 were coming tomorrow.

The meet and greet ended on time around 1:10pm, and at this point, I was starving since I hadn't eaten the whole day. We were gonna go to the food trucks to get food but we got the inside scoop that izone was going to be making an appearance at the Olive Young booth. A huge wall of people were already forming, but I decided to wait on the left wing where there were still cameras but much fewer people. I ended up recording the entire segment. We were trying to not be obnoxious yelling their names when they were doing something, but the entire crowd would call a member in unison until they did a little dance for us. Chaeyeon really won my heart with her fan service and Yujin gave us a ton of attention too. The cameraman there actually told us to cheer for them louder so he could record us LOL.

It was around 2pm now, so we waited around for more people to gather and we all headed to the food trucks. The street food they had was obviously overpriced but pretty good compared to the normal food they'd have in the convention center.

There was nothing interesting left on the schedule for me, so I just walked around the convention center looking for something to do. I heard some screaming around the KCON stage, so I sprinted over and caught N.Flying's appearance. They were presenting the winner of some Cover Star K award, but the more interesting part is that they sang a snippet of Rooftop for us.

Kyla tweeted that she'd be at the convention center, so a group of us walked around to places we thought she'd be at, but we didn't end up finding her. I walked back into the convention center and saw another mob at the Star Square, and it turns out N.Flying was reading off horoscopes and taking pictures with the fans that won their meet and greet.

After that, I stood with James in the middle of the convention, and literally just so happened to bump into a group of maybe 30 people trying to meet up with Kyla (they nominated one person to DM Kyla on twitter). I followed this group around and we ended up moving to three different places until we found a spot that was fairly empty. I had a feeling Kyla was coming soon, and I made sure James and I were standing closest to the entrance. Kyla appeared with some other friends and when we formed a line get a picture with her, James and I were in front lol (I went second). She recorded a video message to a fan's friend that couldn't be there, and I told her she was amazing and such an inspirational figure in the kpop community. I got a hug and a picture with her.

It was like 5pm now, so I broke off from everyone and sat at a table to drink some water, recharge, and plan out my schedule for the rest of the day and for tomorrow. At around 6pm, I walked over to my friend's hotel a block away from the Staples Center, and we sat around just hanging out before the concert. Nick showed me his izone lightsticks (yes multiple, apparently wizones customize a lightstick for each member) and Brian showed me his entire kpop photocard set (there were so many holy shit). Since we were all seated tonight, we just left the hotel at around 7:15pm and got in around 7:30pm for the preshow. The free ticket I got was part of a set of three, so the two people I was sitting with were also friends of the person I knew.

The view I got was also amazing, I'm surprised at how good P2 was (I would have taken this over P1 because P1 is kinda lower than I'd like). I'm not really invested into AB6IX, Ateez, or SF9, but when Loona came out I lost my shit oh my god they were amazing. AND I FINALLY GOT TO SEE LOVE PAINT LIVE. One of my favorite songs of all time performed by OT5. I was kinda sad Nu'est did real love true love instead of look because look is my #2 song by them, but I guess they couldn't repeat the set list from NY.

After the concert, we split up into Ubers and went to BCD, which had a ridiculous wait because we were definitely not the only ones going after the concert. Everyone was starving and tired, but I'm pretty sure izone and loona knocked us all off our feet. 

We planned to line up for P1 GA at around 8am and all parted ways. I was already super tired at this point, but Saturday was supposed to be the easy day compared to Sunday when fromis_9 would be appearing

Saturday August 17th

I got up around 7:30am and ubered back to the convention center, though I was late as hell and had sprint to join my friends standing in line. Actually I was so late that I had to make up some excuse of going to the bathroom and returning to my "spot in line". I got 596, but my friends that did GA yesterday said they had 400 and still got an amazing view.

I wasn't too worried about it since I wasn't going to camp out overnight and I had buddies that knew what they were doing. It was around 9:45am, so David gave me his convention pass so I could get staff entry into the convention (he was going back to his airbnb to grab some stuff).

We had enough passes to go around so I think five of us entered the convention early and went to the KCON message board to write some nice things. I wrote something super similar to what I did in NY, and then wrote something for GFriend somewhere else.

(shoutout to Anh for spelling Gyuri’s name wrong)

While I was finishing up my message for GFriend, I saw people sprinting into the convention center and Jordan started screaming my name to come over. I followed my instinct and sprinted towards him, and we got front row seats at the KCON beauty station. There were around 20 other people sprinting too, and I was actually pushed to the side by two girls that got there first. I had no idea people would come three and a half hours for fromis_9, but I think it's because people figured out how to do it with Loona. I befriended the two girls next to me since we'd be stuck together for a while, and I realized they were angels.

I even got to push down other people's stuff so I could make room for Danny and Alex to sit front row with my group since they were plat/dia but didn't get early convention access. At around 11:30am, I left with Stephen to go get food, and I really got to know his back story too. It was mainly just sitting around until 1:30pm when fromis_9 would make their appearance. During our wait, we all signed Alex's sign which he was going to try and hand off to a member during the concert.

To fromis_9,

Thank you so much for coming to KCON LA 2019. Starting from last year until now, listening to fromis_9′s songs or watching your videos have given me a lot of strength. That motivated me to teach myself a new language and inspired me to always be a better person than I was yesterday. I’ll always cheer you on and love you. Shall we be together until the very end? Fighting!

- American Flover Jonathan

1:30pm eventually came around and fromis_9 made their appearance. I recorded the entire segment here, front row and dead center :). I was shaking before they came out, but if I hadn't seen them as close as I did in Washington Square Park, I think I would have been shaking even more. Saerom walked out and waved at me, Jiheon walked out, saw my sign, gave me the same reaction as she did at the airport (lol), and I was able to get waves from all the other members (Nakyung, Jiwon, Jisun, Gyuri, and Chaeyoung for sure). Throughout their entire appearance, we were calling them by their nicknames during their downtime, flashing hearts at them, smiling, and these nine angels did the same back to us. At the end of the performance, I jumped out of my seat seeing if I could hi-five them, but Nakyung waved at me, Saerom waved at me, I asked Hayoung if she remembered me from New York (she did!), and told Gyuri she was beautiful for Ice (and for me because she's gorgeous). Honestly, the convention could have ended there, but we still had a concert to go afterwards. It was around 2pm and people wanted to go get food, but we heard Mamamoo was going to make an appearance at 2:50pm so we stood around waiting for 50 minutes. They showed up, I once again confirmed they were super short and everyone left to go get something to eat. I already ate earlier and had no plans of eating for the concert, so I actually broke off from the group to go to a panel.

I was definitely chasing idols this weekend but there were some panels I was interested in. The one I wanted to go to at 3:30pm was the "how to study/work in Korea", so I recharged by myself for around 30 minutes and went there.

I asked the presenter a ton of questions (she was super nice), and then left a bit early to join a few others at the Verivery fanclub meeting (we had nothing else to do).

I tried meeting up with the guy which I reserved a banner from, but I couldn't find him around the convention anywhere. It was around 5pm, so I left the convention once and for all and went back to my friend's hotel to wait until the GA concert queue up at 6pm. At this point, I was tired as hell and somewhat scared my phone battery was gonna die because I was at 44% (I used 20% to record the 25 min fromis_9 appearance). Luckily he had a charger so I got up to 55%. We just chatted about how excited for the concert we were and where we were gonna sprint to.

At 5:50pm, we left to the GA entrance and tried cutting in line, but got caught because some girl snitched on us lol. The first security guard told us "we should go to the right place in line" but just left, but then his supervisor was the actual person that kicked us out. We had to go through security and get three additional wristbands before we could actually start sprinting toward the stage. The 10/10 spot we wanted was taken, but I was really happy with the final spot we got because any closer and I wouldn't be able to see over the stage.

The concert was absolutely amazing. I was familiar with every group that was performing so there was almost no song where I wasn't super hype. Miroh lived up to the hype and I think the entire stadium was shaking and yelled stray kids together. I did the entire Fun! and Love RumPumPum fanchants so loud people in the pit pushed my forward to the barricade and the guy next to me offered to hold my camera so I could finish off Love Bomb (my recording). Seventeen was also insane, we got Good To Me (I don't think non carats knew the song that well but I lost my shit because I loved it way more than Home), Adore U, Clap, and the infamous Aju Nice (which was insane). I think the third encore was a little unnecessary, but we were all losing our shit because it was so fun.

During the encore stage, I was waving my Jiheon sign, and Chaeyoung walked over and saw it. She had to tap Megan for a solid 5 seconds before she also noticed but I was already super content because they had seen my signs three times (LAX, at beauty, and at the concert). Once we gathered together, we all jumped on Alex because Jiheon had taken the sign we all wrote messages on and then took a group picture.

We were all super shook outside, and I was kinda ready for my KCON experience to end here so even if they wanted to go out to eat, I was ready to Uber back to Cyn's and call it a night. I said my final good-byes to everyone (everyone got a super tight hug) and headed back.

---

I can’t believe I got to see fromis_9 twice in a year. I’ve been a pretty big fan of kpop since 2015, but I’ve never materialized this hobby until fromis_9 summoned me to KCON NY a month ago, and there was no way I wasn’t going to LA to see them again. I already had some regrets not going to LA last year and seeing how much fun they had in their behind the scenes videos, so I wanted a story of my own. So I guess my identity as a fan is really as a fromis_9/GFriend ult now, but I still refuse to pick a bias (I was probably asked like thirty times who my fromis_9/GFriend biases were this weekend...). They really are angels, and while it wasn’t perfect (no artist engagement, messed up some recording etc.), I’m still so happy I got to meet them.

On a side note, loona is amazing. They were so sweet in person, their performances were incredible, and that’s really a reminder that I need to go through the rest of their pre-debut tracks I haven’t listened to yet.

I also did some math and I’m pretty sure if you like the groups on both days, platinum is definitely worth it (diamond if your thing is touching all the artists, but it’s hard to get your full money’s worth giving how fast everything goes and how bad KCON is at announcing everything).

Platinum was 1121.48, and if the regular GA is 462.98, the convention ticket is 36, KCON rookies is 45, the random swag they give you is 50, and the hi-touches are around 141.50 on average (use the 9 numbers I quoted above with Chung Ha’s being $50), then that only leaves 294.50 on the cost of the ticket. That buys you a dedicated pit so you don’t have to camp out overnight, getting to cut all the AE/entrance lines, and getting into the convention early (probably more worth it for NY since it’s two days and stuff actually happens Saturday, getting in Friday for LA doesn’t matter much, but then you could just have the staff pass). To be honest, the peace of mind that buys already sounds worth it to me, so if the line up is good enough, I’d definitely go for plat if I could get my hands on it.

We also realized we had been spelling 플로버 and 프로버 the entire time (confused the spelling with 프로미 which doesn’t have the extra ㄹ). I realized what I wrote for fromis_9 in NY has a typo and I made the same typo in LA. I fixed it on the sign before Alex handed it off, but I take that as a humble reminder that I’m still a foreigner and need to study a lot harder. :’) All kpop memes aside, some people are here just to chase after idols, but in addition to being a fan, I’ve been trying to embrace a new culture and language along the way. I’m still working really hard on vocabulary right now, and I still have every intention to pass TOPIK 5 by next year.

I’m also so glad I went to KCON LA with a group. Going alone would have been a terrible idea because you’d have no inside scoop on what’s going on, no one to switch off spots with, and no one to hang out with during all the down time. I’m really thankful to how much the discord group helped me out this weekend. I’m sure we’ll meet again.

To close it off, here are some of my favorite pictures with the friends I went with