Surf Those Metal Waves… But Be Careful

I work security for a music venue, and since I’m one of the older guys, I usually get to roam the floor, but this day was different. I was stationed in the barricade between the crowd and the stage. The crowd started funneling in and filling up the space by the barricade immediately. I noticed that the crowd seemed to be older metal fans, so we didn’t expect it to get too rowdy.

The first act went on and the crowd was headbanging and lightly mosh-pitting along. Well, that didn’t sit well with the singer, so before the last song, he told the crowd to kick it up because security were his friends and they needed to earn their pay. Immediately, a guy crowd surfed to the front. I caught him and let him go.

The singer commented, “That’s what I’m talking about!” and then started their last song.

My coworker and I were almost overrun by crowd surfers, but we kept up until halfway through the song when a crowd surfer with no shirt, slick with sweat, came over and got shifted to the right at the last push of the crowd, and thus, we were out of position to catch him. He proceeded to fall through my coworker’s hands and hit my knee and bend it a little backward. I screamed, fell forward, hit my other knee against the barricade, and fell to the ground. Before my coworkers could help me out of the way, I got my head stepped on by a crowd surfer.

They wanted to try and stand me up, but I made them pull me out to the side. Once I calmed down a little, I noticed my knee didn’t hurt, so I tried to stand, but my right knee wouldn’t hold and I fell back down.

An ambulance was called, and the poor paramedics that showed up couldn’t lift my rather large self onto the gurney. I pulled myself up with the barricade enough to get the gurney under me and was wheeled out of the venue, to the cheers of the crowd. That was the first time I ever had a crowd cheer for me.

I ended up missing a week of work due to a hyperextension/sprain of my right knee, and then I was put on light duty for another week. But the venue changed their policy on crowd surfers to where you can once, but if you are caught again, you are kicked out.