How to Smuggle Alcohol (Or Other Contraband) Into an Outdoor Concert

Summer concert season is heating up like the armpit of the guy standing right behind you in the subway, and with outdoor summer concerts come big crowds, sweaty conditions, weird echoey soundsystems, and the nagging feeling that one day you'll be too old for this. Hardly circumstances you'd want to face sober, but who can afford music festival drink prices in a buy bulk Mad Dog at Costco economy? Not you. That's why, when faced with the "sober or poor?" conundrum, you boldly choose "neither" and smuggle your own alcohol in. Here's how.

First, let me go right ahead and disavow responsibility for your ass getting kicked out of an outdoor concert when a security guard catches you spiking a $6 shaved ice with some rum you took out of a flask you were keeping in the space between your boobs. And drugs are both illegal and naughty, so I double extra can't be held responsible for your getting caught with a bindle of cocaine wrapped in a plastic bag and stored in your buttcrack. If security isn't sort of turning a blind eye to rulebreaking, then don't even try to involve drugs or alcohol in your evening. You know what's more annoying than being sober at an outdoor concert? Going to jail. And if you're going to get drunk and act like an asshole and ruin it for everyone else, just stay home and get drunk by yourself.

That being said, sneaking things into giant outdoor music festivals is, for the most part, not difficult. It just takes a little creativity and planning and sometimes giant boobs.

Because of terrorism, most outdoor venues now feature bored-looking people in yellow or orange tee shirts who stand next to tables and rifle through your purse before you're allowed inside. They kind of cup your bag, wiggle their fingers around like they're looking for cancer, peek around to see if there's anything gun shaped inside and then let you go on your merry way. This means that it's tough to sneak, say, a small flask filled with the alcohol of your choice in undetected in your purse. Unless, of course, you use an alternative flask.

The favored failproof alternaflask method I used to employ in my youth (so, like, 2 years ago) is the empty suntan lotion bottle trick. You just have to make sure that you've thoroughly, thoroughly washed and rinsed an empty bottle of sunscreen. Run it through the dishwasher a couple of times. Then fill it with rum. No overworked, underpaid security guard at a concert is going to unscrew the top of a lotion bottle to make sure it contains SPF, so I never got a second look. This method isn't perfect, though. You can't fill the sunscreen lotion with chilled alcohol, because a sweaty bottle in a purse arouses suspicion. And you can't guarantee that when you finally partake in your spiked beverage, it won't taste a little like sunscreen. So it's a sort of an amateur hour trick.

I've also read that you can pump oranges and the such full of booze if you use a syringe, but that seems like too much borderline-pathological hassle.

If using a non-flask isn't an option, you can always try hiding a real flask somewhere on your person. If you or someone in your party is wearing long pants with room around the ankles, you can shove a flask in your sock and trust your garment to hide the fact that you're smuggling. If you're paranoid, you can tie or tape it around your legs. Another Jezebel staffer has used her enormous boobs to her advantage, putting a flask in the space between her bra cups. If you're wearing a skirt, you can strap a flask to the inside of your upper thigh. And for shameless drunks, there's always The Wine Rack fillable bra, if you can stomach the piping hot temperature of wine that's been sitting against your body and in the sun for hours.

Smaller contraban is easier to smuggle, but risky. Packs of cigarettes are obviously easy places to hide things that look a lot like cigarettes. A friend of mine takes the ink out of the middle of opaque Bic pens, stashes a joint ("marijuana cigarette") in there, and replaces the resealable end cap. He's never been caught, but that doesn't mean he'll never be caught. And if you're dealing with really pungent weed, sometimes security guards can smell it. You might just be better off relying on the secondhand smoke or pot-induced kindness of others.

Of course, the easiest way to smuggle booze or contraban into a concert is to just show up already blitzed. That way, by the time you get home, your too-close-to-speakers headache won't be compounded by the effects of a developing honest-to-goodness hangover.

Whatever you do, have fun, stay safe, and don't be that 6'5" guy with giant curly hair who stands in the very middle of everyone crossing his arms and not dancing. Please don't be that guy.

Image via Sinisa Botas/Shutterstock