If you are not obsessively on TikTok or religiously reading TMZ, let me be the first to break the news: Someone peed in the pit at the Sabrina Carpenter show at Chase Center this weekend.
The basic facts are fairly clear, thanks in large part to the numerous social media testimonies from other attendees. On Saturday, at some point before Sabrina came onto the stage, an individual in the show’s pit pulled down their leggings and urinated on the floor in the middle of the crowd. Some fans allegedly were the victims of splashback; the person then exited the pit.
But save for a storytime or two on TikTok, the precise timeline of Pissgate is a bit vague. So I reached out to several witnesses for a clearer picture.
PEE PIT IS ACTUALLY INSANE ??? pic.twitter.com/ZHtR1jMt3k
— chris 💋 moved to @BUSYWQMAN (@HOLLYWOODGQDS) November 10, 2024
(Before we proceed: I have some qualms about shaming a person who was seemingly “not all there,” as one witness put it — and also I, as a human, know what it’s like to have to pee very badly. But we’re talking about the Chase Center here, which, for all its flaws, is well-equipped with bathrooms, not to mention indoors. The fans in the pit were reportedly polite enough to save spots for people in the general admission section who needed to go. All of this, to me, makes peeing on the floor beyond the pale.)
One of the witnesses was Archana Kumar, a 31-year-old Elk Grove resident who’s been a Carpenter fan for the better half of the last decade. She went to the show solo, but befriended a bunch of people in her immediate vicinity. Kumar was posted up on the left side of the stage near the barricades — which happened to be right in front of the girl who tinkled.
“Before the incident went down we were all talking about concert etiquette and they even held my spot for me while I went to the bathroom, and I did the same for the others.” Kumar told Gazetteer SF via Instagram DMs. “So it made what happened even funnier to us.”
Allison Suarez, a 26-year-old concertgoer who was in the pit, said she saw the pee-er crouch down before Sabrina came on.
“We assumed that she was squatting ‘cause she was tired as Sabrina had not come out yet,” Suarez said.
Suarez didn’t see “the stream of pee,” she said, but saw a puddle of liquid and “the pee-er standing alone on the puddle.”
“She tried to play it off as if she had spilled her drink once she realized people were getting alarmed, but the smell gave it away,” Suarez added.
Shortly thereafter, a man started shouting and pointing at the person in the crowd “with the guilty look on her face,” according to Kumar. She added that the yelling man had gotten pee on his shoe. Another young girl nearby got pee on her leg. Both were understandably upset; the young girl burst into tears.
Kumar was in disbelief. No one would do that, she thought. But people around her confirmed that they’d witnessed the person pulling their leggings back up. (This detail was also mentioned in a viral TikTok from someone who says she saw the whole thing.) Then, Kumar made eye contact with the alleged pee-er.
“I looked that girl in the eyes and she looked so guilty … But also she was not totally there,” Kumar said.
What happened next is unclear. In the minutes leading up to Sabrina entering the stage, Kumar turned around to tell another group what had gone down. When she turned back to check, “the pee girl was gone.”
Mariah Kilgore, a 21-year-old Napa resident and Sabrina stan, told Gazetteer she saw security escorting the girl out of the pit from her seat in the upper bowl. (The viral TikTok, however, claims the girl ran off before security could get her.) It is not clear if the pee-er was ejected from the show or left of her own volition; a representative for Chase Center did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“After that,” Kumar said, “there wasn’t much else to do but laugh.”
That and make “phone signs”: In an attempt to get Sabrina Carpenter to notice them, a group of attendees near the front typed on their phones, in large text, “I got peed on in the pit to see Sabrina.” They waved their phones at Carpenter, but to no avail.
According to all three attendees who spoke to Gazetteer, there were several other instances of chaotic behavior that evening. Someone threw an object at Sabrina while she was onstage, and several unrelated fights broke out in the crowd, leading me to wonder what the hell was in the water that evening.
And yet, the atmosphere didn’t ruin things. When asked how the show was, Kumar responded, “THE SHOW WAS GREAT!”
