It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Share some of your most entertainingly bad Evo experiences, but keep in mind that this is not an Evo bashing thread. We’re just talking about bad experiences that happened during or around Evo (unfortunate road trip incidents, hotel horror stories, etc.) that you can either look back on and laugh or shutter.
This is going to be my fourth Evo. Of all three of my trips, despite the fact that the event itself was incredible, 2009 had to be the worst thanks to a certain someone we took with us. I’ll just call him M. I didn’t know M very well but I did know that he was into fighting games and was a generally nice guy, so my friends and I invited him to Evo. He even offered to drive us there. Due to circumstances beyond our control we winded up having to rent a car which M’s father offered to do for us. However M and his father “surprised” the day we were to leave by telling us he rented a Dodge Charger which eats up gas like a motherfucker.
So we winded up having to fork over a large amount of cash ($20 more and we could have bought plane tickets) to cover the rental fee and the gas. Now this I could have dealt with except I learned the hard way that you don’t really get to know someone until you’ve either ridden in a car with them for 4 to 5 hours or you’ve stayed in hotel with them. In this case, I had to deal with both. First off, he talked for the entire 4 to 5 hours. If one of us tried to go to sleep, he woke us up to talk to them again. Topics ranged from how “hungry” we were for Evo and repeating jokes that I had made hours ago. So needless to say, it was a pretty bad car ride.
Now, I could have let most of this go by the end of the weekend, but then it only got more annoying when we tried to practice. My friend is a hell of a lot better at SF than I am but M decided that he was a lot better than me too and would constantly belittle me when my friend would try to give me advice. (And believe me, he had no right to brag.) But it only got worse. M was planning to get up extra early to practice and offered to wake us all up. No problem there. Except that he insisted on practicing 1:00am while we tried to get to sleep. It took some pretty nasty glares to get him to shut the game off. And then he didn’t wake us and as a result, we woke up 10 minutes before the first matches were scheduled. Sleeping in happens all the time, but what infuriated us was his reasoning for not waking us up. It was because “we all looked so peaceful.” The rage continued to build.
The final straw was when M gave us yet another “surprise.” He got a call from his father telling him that we all had to be back home by 5pm because he had school the next afternoon. Now my friend and I were bother several years older than him and long past the age when we needed a curfew, so add that to the fact that we were going to miss the finals because of this and you have two very angry large black men with a grudge the size of a small galaxy. However, my wonderful buddy who drove to Vegas in a separate car did the unthinkable and offered to let my friend and I borrow his car so we could drive back late that night after the finals were done while he and his companion rode back with M. His reasoning was that he wasn’t interested in seeing the finals anyway. (Bless his soul)
So we filled up his gas tank for him and before the three of them took off, we asked for our share of the gas money back from M since we weren’t riding with them. He refused. I’ve never socked anyone in the face before but God damn was I tempted. It took every ounce of energy between my friend and I not to pound his ass into submission. But we decided to just blow it off and enjoy the finals. (which were fucking awesome by the way!
And that’s where the story would have ended, except we later found out that M asked my two buddies for gas money on the way back. In the end, we were conned out of about $60. Needless to say, I don’t hang out with M anymore. And while I’ve long since gotten over hating him, I prefer to keep my distance as not to be tempted to add assault to my blank record.