A Phish fan's bid for stoner glory at a 4/20 concert earned him a burn that spans some of the country's biggest arenas, but he'll always be able to claim he was the first — and maybe the last — to hit a bong rip to Sphere.
Weeks ago, Instagram user @acid_farts, who refused to share his real name Rolling rock, uploaded a video of himself blowing a stack of smoke inside the $2 billion Las Vegas venue before a set from the jam band on what many consider a weed holiday (not that your typical Phish head is cutting back on his consumption in one day a year). It was his third and last night seeing them play that week, he says, and he didn't want to try to bring the bong — bought in town — on his flight home to the West Coast. So he lit up once more to cheers and applause from his section of the audience and later put down the glassware. “I didn't want to walk around Vegas with it all night, so I threw it out on the way out,” he explains.
Of course, by the time @acid_farts appeared from the psychedelic show, his clip was already going viral in the online Phish community. He had also tagged the official Sphere account to let them know about his trick. “That was maybe, maybe a little oops,” he says. Having lost his Wi-Fi signal shortly after posting it on Instagram, he didn't realize how widely the video was circulating until it was too late to do anything about it. The 187-concert veteran of Phish, who has caught the Vermont band live from the age of 13 until his late thirties, remembers thinking, “Well, I guess I'll just have to live with this decision.”
Despite the Sphere's “strict enforcement”. ban of smoking, including e-cigarettes, anywhere on the premises, @acid_farts faced no immediate consequences for his actions. In fact, as he made plans to see Dead & Co. playing the Sphere on June 6 to celebrate a friend's 40th birthday, the pair agreed they seemed to be in the clear. However, @acid_farts thinks it was the Dead & Co. ticket purchase. last weekend that prompted a June 3 legal notice delivered by FedEx to his home as he prepared to head to the airport.
“I opened it and there was this letter saying you are banned from the Sphere,” he says. “I was like literally leaving for the Sphere right now.” The letter from the venue manager Madison Square Garden Entertainment, which Rolling rock has independently confirmed as genuine, also @acid_farts bars from NYC venues Madison Square Garden (a perennial stop for Phish, known for spending New Year's Eve there), Radio City Music Hall and the Beacon Theatre, as well as Chicago Theatre. However, @acid_farts says there are other places to see Phish and he has “no regrets” — well, except for one: “I'll never see the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall,” he jokes. (Representatives for the entertainment company declined to comment on file for this article.)
However, @acid_farts believes his mishap raises the issue of privacy in live entertainment venues. Venues, promoters, ticket sellers, and even artists have ramped up their data collection efforts in recent years to the point that the average concertgoer may not always realize how their behavior is being tracked. In particular, Madison Square Garden Entertainment has come under fire for using facial recognition technology to identify lawyers whose firms are involved in litigation against the company, and for security to remove them from shows — including, yes, the Rockettes.
Sure, notifying a venue that you're breaking their rules makes for a completely different case, though @acid_farts nonetheless likens it to “lions chasing flies” and sees it as a “bad business model,” as do other contributors at Sphere shows openly posting themselves taking hits from vapes and dab rigs. He also says he had a “weird vibe” the last time he saw Phish at MSG in 2017, after which he decided “I don't think I want to go back. I'm on the West Coast. It's an East Coast show. It's like, “Oh, I can't go to MSG in the winter anymore.” I'm okay with that.” He's open to appealing the ban if that's an option, though if not, he'll settle for Phish members to autograph the ban letter.
“I really wear it as a badge of honor,” he explains, and already has an idea for how to make the most of the incident: sell a T-shirt, perhaps reading “Free @acid_farts,” with the proceeds going to Divided Sky Foundation, a new rehab center founded by Phish frontman Trey Anastasio. Either way, he notes, his story “is in the Phish pantheon now,” and fans are free to run with it.
And for those wondering what strain @acid_farts has had on Sphere, he reveals that he's “an acid diesel man for life.” What he won't share is exactly how he smuggled that big bong into the arena in the first place. “That's not a comment,” he says with a laugh. “This is a trade secret.”
from our partners at https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/phish-fan-sphere-ban-bong-rip-1235034436/
