My adventure in New Jersey begins under a dreadful hot weather, hopping on and off three different trains and waiting endlessly for a cab to deign to come to the station -why in god's name am I doing this?! Oh yeah, it's because of Jon Bon Jovi. Finally the cab arrives, so I can chat a little: what are you doing here? All the way from Italy FOR A CONCERT?! And what's your job? Who do you teach Italian to, in Italy? Don't they speak it already? Your English is perfect, by the way! Don't forget to come and see me too, one of these days I'll be playing in the stadiums too! Yeaaahh, sure... whatever. Finally I get to my apartment hotel, in a suite with stadium view and the highway all around, which means I can't leave this place other than in a cab. Perfect. Therefore I shut myself in the room, try to hand-wash my t-shirts -and successfully manage to!- and I make a sandwich. The sandwiches are already cut, awesome. Then I cook a pasta for dinner, and I realize that here they don't use normal burners, but hotplates which turn fire-red when hot... it took a while, before I realized I wasn't supposed to wait for a flame.
My first night goes by in a dreadful cold, thanks to the crazy thermostat. The day before the concert is dedicated to visit Perth Amboy, Jon's hometown, where I take for granted I will meet him, since he will be certainly there to rest. And indeed... my breakfast at the station is made of a traditional local Donut and an also traditional local watery coffee, after which I buy a newspaper to read on the train. Perth Amboy is very nice, it looks just like Wisteria Lane: cute houses with their gardens, the wooden stairs, the porch and the American flag in the patio garden; the beach on the... well, the canal, smell of saltiness in the air. My iPod plays Bon Jovi's songs, which in some way gain a whole new meaning, in this context. After walking along the canal, I resign myself to not meeting Jon while he's walking his dog and I take a seat at local restaurant to eat something. Which means, for just $10: icy cold water, blue cheese salad, crab cakes with lobster sauce, baked potatoes, dessert that I don't have, choosing an espresso instead... full of cinnamon, what the hell. Right when I was enjoying the cakes, the unforeseeable happened: a black sedan approaches from the road next to the restaurant, signals and turns... Jon is driving, with his headphones on, beautiful as ever. In the end, I was right. I can hardly eat anymore, of course, so the waiter asks me if he has to pack what's left for me to bring home... oh no, God forbid! I go back to the station, take the chance to go down to the beach and wash my feet in the water -icy cold, it's always an ocean after all- and I walk past through the worst neighborhoods. I'm ready for the concert.
The first thing to hit you is the absence of any fee meter on the cabs, because the fee is negotiable. Or rather, it's fixed. Whether you go to the station or across the street (the highway in my case) in just about 5 minutes, you still pay the same. It's boiling hot, what was I thinking when I bought a long-sleeves Bon Jovi shirt??! The stadium is huge even from the outside, and for those who have followed this band for a while, it's a dream come true: the old Giants Stadium, next to it and already half demolished, is a memorabilia in BJ's history. I arrive while they're still rehearsing, therefore I hear some hints of the songs they're going to play. Finally they open the gates, I take my seat and stare at the 3 rings of this "home of the Giants and the Jets!" which will host the Super Bowl too. I can count about 100 thousands seats, and some of them are way TOO high. As they usually do here, the seats on the field are numbered as well, which is good to prevent crowding and illnesses, and also to give to the people the opportunity to sit down. The seats are provided with drink-holders, and they're also very slippery. Those sitting next to me are an alcoholics' family with bottles of wine everywhere, and on the other side two typical extra fat American ladies. Unlike what I was told, the Americans are all but cold at concerts, on the contrary. After the opening act OneRepublic (the ones playing "Apologize"), the concert begins, with a jingle "this is our house" followed by two of my favorite songs, "Who says you can't go home" e "We weren't born to follow". The concert lasts three and a half hours, and when Jon thanks us for our loyalty, because he wouldn't be there if it wasn't for us, I think that I should thank him instead, because I wouldn't be here if I hadn't had those tickets for months. Now I know that a new phase of my life is beginning, without regrets and no more "I wish I was there", because I'm here now and I want to live every second to the best. For all the BJ lovers, here is the setlist: Who Says You Can't Go Home, We Weren't Born To Follow, You Give Love a Bad Name, In These Arms, Born To Be My Baby, Just Older, We Got It Goin' On, Raise Your Hands, When We Were Beautiful, Superman Tonight, Captain Crash and the Beauty Queen from Mars, Bad Medicine, It's My Life, Love's The Only Rule, Lay Your Hands On Me (Richie Vox), Livin' in Sin / Chapel of Love, I'll Be There For You, Something For The Pain, Diamond Ring, Sleep When I'm Dead/Jumpin' Jack Flash, I'd Die For You, Work for the Working Man, Someday I'll Be Saturday Night, Keep The Faith, Dry County, Wanted Dead or Alive, Livin' on a Prayer.
Once outside the stadium, I try to call for a cab but it's too late to get one. So I resign myself to sit on the crash barrier together with other unlucky guys, to wait. There's a guard in the middle of the street, trying to stop the approaching cars with a flashlight, to warn them to do a U-turn because there's a traffic jam and it would take more than one hour to go through, but nobody gives a shit about him: "I hate my fuckin' job!" Finally a cab arrives, after almost an hour, and I share it with father and son from Indianapolis. It's time to go to sleep, and to begin a new phase of my journey.
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