Goddamn I had a blast. Sucks to be you guys. Ninety-plus bands, some of my favorite musicians (MMW, Buckethead, Primus, Gomez, the Bad Plus) and some all-time kings (Dylan, Dead, David Byrne). Couple that with the bizarre hippie socail order where laws do not exist yet everyone is friendly, and I had 5 days of hippie utopia bliss. There's something to be said for walking past a Public Safety offical with a bowl in your hand (okay, mouth) and 4 bottles - each - of Guinness and Harp in your shorts so you can stand in a muddy field later making half-and-halfs while watching a favorite band play.
Also, spotless Porto-potties, amazingly good food (ever had an Arepa or Sweet Leaf brand tea?), a trailer full of beer, readily available Things Different From Beer Of a Very Good Quality, free water - remember that at next year's HFStival - showers, and a guy selling the best hats ever. In related news, I have a new hat.
On top of that there was a comedy tent (Louis CK, Todd Barry, Jim Norton, and others), a cinema tent where I watched three straight hours of Chapelle's show on a theater screen, then checked out some Dukes of Hazzard before they ran such films as Fear and Loathing, Friday the 13th, Stripes, UHF, Elf, and in the grandaddy of all movie tent maneuvers, they ran the complete Lord of the Rings trilogy starting at 9pm Saturday night through to 6am Sunday.
So, rather than detail a highlight/lowlight list since most of you wouldn't have had fun anyway, I figured I'd drop a few details. John would have enjoyed it for the novelty of the social structure and the general air of respect for other people, Rick would have enjoyed the encouraged public intoxication and the rampant nudity. Roy would have been disappointed in the unabashed public drug use and because, on the surface, Buffett would seem like a good fit for this festival (but don't worry, he's not). Pat would have been drunk and asleep rather than deal with the 100 degree weather - that makes him smarter than me. Chad would have, I believe, turned into the Incredible Hulk and smashed thousands of hippies into little patchouli-scented fragments.
Bottom Line: some of my all-time favorite musicians, 5 days of partying, 90,000 other people and, as far as I know, not one incident of violence or theft. No place I would have rather spent 5 days. Hope you had fun at work. Ha!
Posted by Chris at June 14, 2004 02:10 PMJust to clarify...comedians, movies, etc., were all free with admission. Food wasn't, but was priced better than any event I'd ever been to (and we had an RV full of food) and all vendors were 24hrs.
Posted by: Chris at June 14, 2004 02:15 PMi would have enjoyed bob dylan and david byrne, and i have no problem with public drug use.
Posted by: roy at June 14, 2004 09:22 PMI could have down without the deaths, but otherwise it looks fun. According to that CNN article, the town's jail is too small to hold all the people that were using drugs, so they just handed out citations.
Posted by: Rick at June 15, 2004 11:27 AM