It’s no well kept secret that Joe Jonas will be performing with his new band DNCE tonight at Local 506 in Chapel Hill. Tickets for the sold out show were only $15 a pop and were quick to sell. Unfortunately, my fellow Tar Heels were quicker than me and I was unable to get a ticket.
I thought I was left doomed to a luckless life without ever being in the graciously swooning bad-boy presence of Joe Jonas — at least until my friend , junior Will Schoeffler, shared with me that he just heard that Joe Jonas was on Franklin Street in front of Granville Towers (2:20 p.m.).
Ten minutes later, another friend, Frances Cayton, shared a copy of a screenshot shared in a GroupMe that allegedly shows Joe Jonas on Franklin near Bevello. She also shared with me that she heard he was now at He’s Not Here. Packing up my laptop and study guide on the fifth floor of Davis Library, I decided studying for my midterm tomorrow morning could wait — momma had a lede.
Upon my arrival to He’s Not at 2:43 p.m., I was greeted by a pack of girls standing outside typing on their phones and eagerly looking in through the fence. After discovering all the doors to be locked I decided to camp out at a picnic table hoping that Joe was inside sipping on a blue cup filled with SweetWater Blue and would soon exit from the upstairs level — what goes up, must come down.
At 2:47 p.m., the herd of girls outside the fence had doubled in size and I heard some of them saying that Joe had just been seen at Biski’s down the road. Only a few of them left to go find out if this new rumor was true so I decided that meant that many of the girls did not trust the source and if they didn’t then I shouldn’t either — momma didn’t raise no fool.
Just three minutes later, a man who appeared to be an employee at He’s Not was entering the building. When I stopped to ask him if Joe Jonas was inside his response was, ironically, “He’s not here." At first the girls and I (we soon became good pals) did not believe the man and heckled him for more answers but it eventually became apparent that his answers were sincere — cue heartbreak.
Unsure of where to look for Joe next and with a looming midterm weighing heavily on my mind, I got some YoPo to soothe my soul and slugged back to campus to begin studying.
But I’ve never been one to accept defeat and my creeping skills should be classified as a lethal weapon. It wasn’t long before I had found Joe’s personal Snapchat name and his snap story put all the Franklin Street rumors to rest.
During the time that I spent searching for one of America’s favorite heartthrobs on Franklin Street, he was actually in Raleigh meeting with local radio stations like G105.1 and Pulse 96.1. I was devastated and then angry that I had lost a large chunk of my potential study time.
But if Joe has been in Raleigh all this time, where did all these rumors of him being on Franklin Street come from? I decided to return to the Snapchat I had been passed along earlier in the afternoon for answers.
Two of the three girls in the photo were identified as UNC students Claire Burns and Sophie Whelchel.
When asked to talk about what it was like to see Joe Jonas on Franklin Street today, Claire said that the photo was not Joe Jonas — her friend just wanted it to seem like it was since they had been searching for him.
There’s no way to confirm that this Snapchat was the spark that started the Joe Jonas on Franklin Street madness that swept through our campus this afternoon, but in this day and age news travels faster than you think.
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