Joanna Hunkin: It was Rhythm and Vines 2005 and close to 10,000 fans descended on Gisborne's Waiohika Estate to ring in the New Year with the biggest band in the country: Fat Freddy's Drop. The event was a sellout with nearly twice as many people attending the event from the previous year.
Unfortunately, that meant twice as many people using the facilities and it didn't take long for the toilet block to become a vile wasteland of unmentionableness. Pipes blocked, the floor flooded and in the scorching summer heat the smell was outright torturous. Fans were forced to relieve themselves elsewhere, with many heading to the surrounding hillside. But as night fell - and darkness shrouded the hill - the night air filled with squeals of horror as the warm trickle of those further up the hill descended on those (mainly girls) balanced precariously lower down the slope.
Strangely, and disgustingly, it wasn't the last time I was peed on at a concert. Nine months later as U2 played Mt Smart Stadium, history repeated, thanks to the cretins in centre field who decided, rather than give up their spot to relieve themselves in the nearby portaloos, it was acceptable to simply piss on the ground and their surrounding concert goers. To be fair, it serves me right for going to see U2. Never again.
That time we got needled
Gracie Taylor: I got needled at Big Day Out. Let's set the scene. It's 2009 and I am nearly 18 years old, loving life and enjoying the freedom of being a semi-adult. I'm sober. It's been a long day in the sun with my friends and we got to Mt Smart Stadium at 10am sharp because we wanted to get the most out of the festival (we were still young and not disheartened by how evil and gross festivals can be) so we decided to stay until the bitter end. Which happened to be in The Boiler Room around 10.15pm when The Prodigy took the stage. Epic! Or so we thought.
The Prodigy.
We were probably about two or three songs in and I felt this sharp stinging pain in my upper right thigh. It was dark and sweaty but I knew what was hanging out of my muscle - a freaking syringe and needle! I instantly shook it out and it fell to the ground. I looked around immediately to see who was near me and my friends, but it was all too dark and dodgy to notice any particularly seedy faces. (Everyone looked seedy at this point in the night).
I still don't know to this day if someone had targeted me, or maybe they were trying to shoot up in the crowd and accidentally jabbed me. I grabbed my mates and showed them the hole in my leg that was bruising up instantly, and we ran straight to the St John's tent onsite. They told me I needed to get blood tests ASAP so I went and got them the next day. Results came back clear but the doctors said I was lucky and they had had a few cases that year of similar things happening. Either way, it was really gross and made me very wary of mosh pits and festivals in general.
That time we saw a used condom
Siena Yates: Coachella 2014. Highlights include: The guy next to me throwing a used condom (or so he boasted to his friends who thought it was hilarious) into the crowd as some god awful sick "joke". It hit some guy in the back of the head and kind of got stuck so he had to get it off (as it were) with his bare hands.
Also, the moment I realised girls were forming walls around each other so one of them could squat down to pee in the middle of the crowd and we were all just dancing in a field of piss - at best.
And the moment the Do-Lab got ruined. The Do-Lab is a stage with misters and water guns and a giant hose to cool everyone down. Everyone's dripping wet, water's coming from everywhere, everyone's dancing, so the girl in front of me barely noticed when the guy behind her threw up in her hair. But I did. And I can't unsee it. Watch your back out there.
Chris Schulz: My story also includes vomit. But first, an explanation as to why I was at a Black Eyed Peas concert. It was for work. Promise. It was 2004 and I'd just moved to Wellington to be part of an exciting new internet venture - online news, who knew that'd become a thing? - and I'd been asked to cover it. So I went along with the best of intentions. I was still sort of a fan, despite the addition of Fergie to the group, and Where Is the Love? becoming the absolute worst thing they'd ever done. Here it is again, just as a reminder of just how truly terrible that song is.
The show was in the Queens Wharf Events Centre, now known as the TSB Bank Arena, and I was in the moshpit. Well, it would have been a moshpit had the music deserved being moshed to. If memory serves correctly, Fergie was in the middle of a verse when someone next to me power-chucked all over the floor. It was brief but brutal, with astonishing power, and so much volume. An area next to the stage quickly cleared out to avoid the slippery, chunky catastrophe.
But those behind us couldn't see the orange splatter all over the floor. All they saw was a gap at the front of the stage. They wanted to be closer. They needed to be closer. So they ran towards it. Fast. And I got to spend the rest of the show laughing at Black Eyed Peas fans who would run into that gap, slip over, then continue slipping over as they tried to stand up, all because of someone else's spew.
There was no love that day. Just vomit. Lots and lots of vomit.
That time our friends embarrassed themselves
Bailee Wilson-Yates: We spent two hours pushing our way into prime position at Rhythm and Vines one year. While waiting for acts to arrive on the main stage a friend of mine, Sian*, announced that she needed to go to the bathroom. We are all terrible people so we did what came naturally and told her to "hold it in like a winner".
Hours passed and our group slowly broke off as we got more intoxicated. Sian and another friend of mine, Sam*m were left to themselves and continued to party near the mainstage. Once Sam had soaked up as much bass as she could she turned to Sian and told her she needed to go bathroom too. It was three hours after Sian's initial emergency. Sian wasn't moving much and without any reservations or shame said: "Oh, I went about an hour ago".
Sam looks down and is disgusted to find not only had Sian had gone number one ... but she'd thrown a number two in there for good measure and everyone standing around her got to share it.
Sian, unashamed and possibly high, took her pants off, flung them at a bystander who earlier told her she smelled, and walked off half naked.
