Opium Takeover: Destroy Lonely’s Pop-Up Shuts Down Los Angeles.

Earlier this month Destroy Lonely had a popup at the Complex shop right on Fairfax next to the old Supreme store. This popup was to support his new album “Love Lasts Forever”. I have to say when I first heard about it I was a little skeptical. The words Destroy Lonely and Fairfax do not seem to mix well together. When it was announced I immediately thought of the “popup” if you can even call it that, that he had last year around the same time. Yeah that night was fucking insane. Out of nowhere one day he had posted on his Instagram and address on Fairfax right next to the Hundreds store. No information about what was going on or anything, just an address and a time. So me and my homies being a fan of his music decided we should go check it out. It was at night which most popups are not, it was different for all of us. When we got there the line was super long as expected. All the way from the door down the whole block it felt like. Luckily, we had some friends in line so we could kind of cut but not really. While we were waiting for the doors to open which felt like forever I saw Tate filming some interviews so I had to go say what's up and get in on that. After what felt like forever they finally let the first group of people in. And that is where it started. The second they opened those doors everybody started pushing and shoving to try to get to the front. A line that was somewhat single file had now turned into a massive pit of people all pushing to try to get in. And we still don’t even know what was inside to this day. It all just turned into chaos. At the time of this event I was a registered security guard so I was trying to use my credentials to maybe get inside but it didn’t work at all. I had made it all the way to the front by the doors and I was being crushed what felt like to death. I had to get out of there. Tate was also up front with me getting footage and it was so crazy. Suddenly out of nowhere a mosh pit opened up in the middle of the crowd, no music no nothing just kids jumping around for no reason. When I got out of the crowd I noticed that there was a cop car parked across the street just watching everything happen and that was only a sign about what was going to come next. All of a sudden the security guard who was outside the door went in and closed the door and locked it. Basically canceling the popup for the day. Out of nowhere a dozen cops rushed the building with batons and riot shields. They were just standing there waiting for something to happen. There was still a huge crowd by the door while all of this was happening. Then the helicopter showed up and started telling us to leave but of course nobody was listening. Thats when the cops rushed the crowd by the door and the people who were right against the door pulled down the stores barricade and basically sealed themselves in which was fucking insane. I actually had a homie who was in that barricade and he said he could barely breathe. It was so compact. Eventually the cops shut the whole thing down and got the people out by the door. They shut down the roads and kept telling us all to leave and that it was canceled. People started heading to their cars including me and my friends and out of nowhere Destroy Lonely showed up and it got even more fucking crazy. He was walking down the road and there was a huge crowd of people following him and it seemed like crushing him. At a point he actually started full sprinting to his van which was parked down the road. That was crazy. I have never seen someone run away like that because he knew shit was out of hand. When he finally got to his van he opened the door and said hi to people and yelled something like “I heard they tried to cancel this shit”. His van was completely surrounded by people. It was going nowhere. People even climbed on top of the van as well. Eventually the van just started driving and obviously then people moved cause nobody wants to be run over. And then he was gone. The street was still shut down and day 2 ended up being canceled. I don’t think anybody saw that coming. So remembering all of this Lonely having another popup on Fairfax honestly kinda frightened me. I went to day 2 of the popup hoping to avoid some of the chaos and from what I heard from security at the store they really held it down. Day 1 went smoothly. They said nothing out of the ordinary. Day 2 was super chill. There was barely even a line when I got there. I got in, looked at the displays, bought some merch and I was gone. He was not there unfortunately, security told me he drove by earlier. So at the end of the day it seemed like Destroy Lonely redeemed himself on Fairfax and I am sure he will be back on the block sooner than later.