Beyoncé at Soldier Field

You’re pretty sure it’s going to be a fun night when, as you walk up to your friends’ apartment, you run into a couple more friends also going to the show.

And then you eat some dinner and play some games and drink some drinks and head down to the show unbelievably early because it’s at a stadium, after all. And you catch the train and ride it two stops and then even more of your friends enter the exact same train car , unplanned. And now you know it’s going to be a great night, and everyone’s already wearing sunglasses.

And then the show, when it finally begins long after scheduled, is just incredible. The best planned performance you’ve ever seen. From the vocals to the dancing to the engagement with fans, Beyoncé is perfect. Utterly iconic.

She lets the fans sing out Love On Top for several key changes before she takes the song back and it’s a sequence of amazing acts. (The intermissions are a story and spectacle on their own, and the vogueing dancers put it into a whole other tier.)

And then, dragging yourself away from the stadium and back through downtown, walking for over 3 miles to cross the river to catch a reasonable ride home, you walk into a hug from two more friends in the middle of an empty bridge (also coming from the show). And now it has been an impossibly fantastic night, and it is better than a movie, because it doesn’t end, and we are not acting, and I am not making any of this up.