The Sublime: a hippie festival
The Ridiculous: hippies organizing a hippie festival.

We got to the Vibes campground around 11pm on Thursday night, after a frustrating 45 minutes spent circling downtown Bridgeport, tapping furiously at our cellphones. The website promised signs off exit 27. There were no signs. Fucking hippies.

The Sublime: a general 4-day suspension of “law enforcement”
The Ridiculous: “law enforcement”

I mean, of COURSE they’re going to search your car when you drive in. At festivals past, my travel companions had suffered the indignity of losing mushrooms and a cracker, (at IT and Big Cypress, respectively) and I had no wish to repeat the experience. While our car was free from illicit substances, I was nonetheless amused when one of the security guards approached the window and whispered “hey – if you’ve got anything, stash it in your pockets. we can only search your car, not your body. you know?” Thanks, dude. good job looking out.

The Sublime: a sunny summer Friday
The Ridiculous: a total lack of trees

I stayed up all night on Thursday, I didn’t even try to sleep. At dawn, Sabs, Katsu, Fred and I took a walk down to the beach, and after that I relaxed in the shade of our tent, working my way through the New York Times Crossword. The later it got the hotter it got, and the hotter it got the more miserable I became. By 1pm, I’d sweat through my tank top, stripped to my bra, slathered on three layers of sunblock (yes, I still burned a nice shade of lobster-red), and was vehemently cursing the sun, which, by this point, had heated the atmosphere to a sweltering 90 degrees. Sabominator, for her part, spent several hours sobbing into the wheel well of a Rav-4, shattered with loneliness for her husband, her puppy, and her air conditioner.

The Sublime: people at the festival
The Ridiculous: people at the festival

Thursday night, we made friends with our neighbor, Just Chillin’. He travels from festival to festival carrying a homespun jellyfish umbrella, spreading love and high-test party favors. He lit up our evening with a mix tape of Squarepusher and Air, which he blasted through a speaker mounted atop his truck. Friday afternoon, Katsu and I attempted to nap under a solitary tree and found ourselves adjacent to a group of gold-chain-wearing, MGD-guzzling white dudes who entertained themselves with such classics as Metallica’s “Nothing Else Matters”, Limp Bizkit’s “Nookie”, and a remake of “Smooth Criminal” that literally made my ears bleed. While sleep was not forthcoming on either front, at least the Air was nice to listen to, whereas Katsu had to physically restrain me from surreptitiously filming the douchebags responsible for ruining my rare afternoon nap.

It almost worked.

More to come. The yin and the yang are so much at the forefront of Festival existence, I could go on for hours.