Your favorite interaction with a stranger at a concert?

Inspired by a Rorie Story (TM) during Extra Life, have you had any fun times with randos at shows?

My favorite is from an Australian Floyd show (fairly well-known Pink Floyd cover band that gets major venues often) at Red Rocks, Arizona. When the band finally came out and the show was just about to start, the guy to my right stood up and loudly exclaimed "The 70s!!!!!", while wearing his tie-dye t-shirt, in perhaps the most joyous outburst I've ever heard. He then proceeded to, in true 70s rock spirit, offered to pass his pipe for a quick hit!

I mean, I was obviously stoked for the show as is, but this little interaction elevated the night to one of my favorite shows of all time.

Would love to hear about some fun people you guys may have come across in your travels.

I was at the Oregon eclipse festival, and as Opiou came on, I was wearing a tshirt that said "Shut the F*ck up and Dance"
and the guy in front of me saw it and was like "That's a seriously unfriendly thing to wear at a global gathering dude" and I just pointed at the stage - one of Opiou's songs has a guy literally yell out "Shut the fuck up and dance!" - it was a band tshirt.
Anyway, I got in front of him and pointed at it as it played and the guy's face lit up with joy and shame. Got a hug out of it :)

I saw Violent Femmes in 2003 and there was this one total asshole that must've been high on the stuff; he came out of nowhere -- honestly like a mass shooter -- with his arms fully extending, literally spiraling through the crowd slapping everyone with his fists. It was like a cartoon, like something out of The Simpsons. It made everyone really uncomfortable, not sure he actually hurt anyone. But it just kept going, spiraling endlessly. Arms fully extending, hands balled into fists.

The guy in front of me was comically tall and his girlfriend was comically short. What an odd couple. When this asshole came near us, this tall dude just calmly locked his arms around the asshole's fully extended arms, lifted him off the ground (arms still extended and locked). He literally walked this dude all the way to the door. The band stopped and everyone cheered. Such a weird interaction but it made everyone's night.

@lonelyspacepanda: lmao holy shit, I just don't know if this thread can top Windmill Fist Guy.

I've met amazing people at shows over the years. I met a dude at random at a Nonpoint show in Joliet, Illinois in 2011. I got to the show early to catch the opening bands and ending up sitting next to these two dudes in front of the bar, who were actually brothers, and we all started chatting and making fun of how lame one of the openers was. We hung out for the duration of the show, talked about music. The one brother, Shaun, his favorite band was Nonpoint and he had seen them dozens of times over the years. The show ended, we said our farewells, and I added Shaun on Facebook so we could keep in touch

Nearly exactly a year later, Nonpoint played another show at the same venue. Shaun and I hung out again and caught up on the last year of our lives, and we also both met a couple of other guys for the first time who were also die hard Nonpoint fans. Not too long after that, Shaun invited me to take a trip down to Springfield to catch a show. Fast forward a decade, Shaun has been one of my best friends for years. He now works for Nonpoint directly, and also helps run a hugely successful fan group with the two other dudes we met at the show 10 years ago. Shaun and I still love shitting all over bad opening acts to this day, and we're also planning on launching a music podcast next year, mainly just so we have more chances to talk and make each other laugh.

Also, December 2018, I had just moved to Atlanta 2 months prior. Sevendust was playing a trio of hometown shows downtown, the final one being on NYE. I went to all 3, but during the last show I went to check out merch booth shortly after I arrived. I'm just standing there, deciding what I want to buy, when I hear a voice next to me say "which hoodie design do you like more?" I turned to see where this voice came from and saw one of the most drop-dead beautiful women I had ever laid my eyes on. We hung out until 4 am and bonded over Sevendust being our favorite band, walked around the city and got lost for awhile, but had an amazing time. Unfortunately, she was only in town for the shows; she actually lived in Denver. Despite that, we met up for a lunch date the following day before she had to leave. To keep the story short, we ended up in a long-distance relationship. The distance was brutal but we made it work, or I should say, I made it work for over 3 years. Sadly we ended things earlier this year, but I still look at going to that concert as an absolutely pivotal moment in my life. Despite the heartbreak, I wouldn't change a thing.

Concerts can be an amazing experience for a variety of reason, with the music sometimes being secondary. I've been to hundreds of shows over the last 18 years and have plenty of encounters with random assholes and weirdos and temporary friends. I've even met some of my idols. Nothing will ever top those two shows though.

At a Warped Tour Flogging Molly was at, myself and some rando were helping lift people for crowdsurfing in the pit. Me and that guy put together drunk at a new years party, two years later, that we were both there; the rando was my boyfriend's little brother.

This isn't quite "interaction with a stranger at a concert," but is actually more fun, I think.

I was living in Chicago (for grad school) circa 2010 and had plans to go with my roommate and his girlfriend to see a Trans-Siberian Orchestra concert. The girlfriend ended up getting sick, so my roommate and I went by ourselves. While we were waiting for the train, a stranger approached us, a middle-aged white guy, probably fifteen or twenty years older than my friend and I. His given name was "Friedman," and he explained that he was a native of Germany who was in town for business, but his flight back had been cancelled due to weather, and did we have any suggestions for fun things to do in Chicago for the night?

My friend and I just sort of looked at each other and smiled in mild disbelief. It was too perfect. We had the extra ticket that nobody was using, so we just invited him along to the concert. We refused to take any money from him for the ticket since it was going to waste otherwise, but he insisted on buying us dinner, which suited us fine. So we went to the concert and had dinner and had a grand old time with this random German national stuck in the city for a night. In the end he gave us his card and told us to look him up if we were ever in Germany. Good times!

@lonelyspacepanda: ugh hardcore slam dancers are the worst

One time at a Hold Steady concert, a drunk guy put his arm around me.

OK, admittedly, that's pretty tame compared to the rest of these stories.

One time walking back from a hockey game, waiting at an intersection to cross the street, a drunk guy exclaimed "Woah, cool beard!" and reached over and grabbed it. (At the time I had a goatee that was about a foot long, but I haven't grown it out like that for over a decade.) I just looked at him and kind of raised my eyebrows. After about ten seconds he realized that probably wasn't a cool thing to do to a perfect stranger and stammered out an apology.

Sitting next to a couple at a comedy show who turned out to be amateur comedians themselves and ended up making the night even funnier with their jokes and banter. It's always great when random encounters like these can turn into positive experiences!

Not at a concert, but a buddy and I drank with a bridal party at a bar with a band doing live music all night. We were college kids and they were from out of town. It sounds like the beginning of some wild night, but it was mostly just a lot of fun. Dancing, pool, late night walk to Sonic with the bride wearing a veil and a plastic tiara. Stupid stuff like that, but hands down the most fun I've ever had listening to live music.

Dude old enough to be my grandpa passed me a blunt at the deep purple concert.

At a TC gig at the now dead Playground club in Helsinki things were getting very hectic at the front of the crowd where I was being slammed into the DJ-booth by other people dancing. It's all good I'm used to it, but TC saw this and pulled me into the DJ booth to chill with him and his crew. We shared a smoke while I watched the condensed sweat drip from the low ceiling onto the DJ equipment, us and the crowd. That was a good night.

I went to the Projekt Revolution tour in 2004. The order of acts throughout the day were: Less Than Jake, The Used, Snoop Dogg, Linkin Park, Korn.

So you can imagine how early in the day the lineup began.

There were so few people gathered in the pit and the surrounding amphitheater grass at noon-ish that the lead singer of Less Than Jake made direct eye contact with me easily a dozen times during their set, for lack of audience members to do that with. I felt kinda bad for him, and at one point just shrugged and grimaced when he looked at me, as if to say "sorry I'm not a pretty girl, man."

It filled in during The Used, and was jampacked from then through midnight or whenever it ended.