Photos by Jack Fitzpatrick
ASU students and Phoenicians filled the streets of downtown Phoenix wearing Lady Gaga-inspired outfits while awaiting her concert Saturday night at the U.S. Airways Center.
As part of Lady Gaga’s Monster Ball Tour, the concert sold out the over 18,000-seat stadium.
Local radio station booths surrounded the plaza outside U.S. Airways Center, each with separate contests, performances and games to entertain fans before the show began. Some people came solely for the pre-concert festivities.
“I came here just for the Lady Gaga costume contest,” said Laura Janowiec, a Phoenix-based nurse.
Janowiec hoped to compete in a costume contest sponsored by Mix 96.9 and CityScape that offered a $1,000 CityScape gift certificate as the grand prize.
“If I win, I’m heading straight for Urban Outfitters,” Janowiec said.
Though Janowiec did not win, she was one of the five finalists chosen from the crowd. The winner was chosen by audience reaction.
“We want them to strut their stuff in the most Lady Gaga way,” said Carina Ianauzzi, event manager for Mix 96.9 and organizer of the contest.
The winner of the $1,000 gift card was Rachel Stelwagen, a business sophomore who said she didn’t even know about the contest before arriving at the plaza.
104.7 KISS FM gave out perhaps the biggest prize of the night.
Five teams of two people were given a roll of caution tape. One partner had to wrap the other in the tape as fast as possible until the entire roll was gone and the team that finished first won backstage passes and a meet-and-greet with Lady Gaga.
KISS FM also gave out CityScape gift cards, including some to the Arrogant Butcher, one of the possible prizes on the radio station’s “Wheel of Meat.” The prize wheel was inspired by the meat dress Lady Gaga wore to the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards.
Though there weren’t any meat dresses on the plaza, costumes ranged from “Telephone”-inspired caution tape outfits, bubble dresses similar to the one Lady Gaga wore on a 2009 Rolling Stone cover and a sea of painted faces with skeletal make up similar to the music video for “Born this Way,” her latest single.
While some people gathered various items they already had to make their costumes, others purchased material and created their outfits themselves.
Sarah Blanchard and Lauren Marcelo, two Phoenix-area students who will be attending ASU in the fall, made matching sunglasses with cigarettes glued to the lenses similar to the ones Lady Gaga wore in her “Telephone” video.
“We came up with the idea an hour ago,” Blanchard said.
Nicole Jones, an elementary education freshman at ASU, said she dressed in costume to fit in with everyone else.
“You just have to go nuts,” Jones said. “That’s what Lady Gaga is all about.”
Contact the reporter at omakinso@asu.edu
