Whether it's your first Bonnaroo or you’re a music festival veteran, we welcome you to Inforoo.
Here you'll find info about artists, rumors, camping tips, and the infamous Roo Clues. Have a look around then create an account and join in the fun. See you at Bonnaroo!!
Let me go ahead and post my complaints/highlights of my first Roo experience. For starters, I opted to go as a volunteer. I'd love to see other volunteers post on here to see if it is worth doing it again.
1. Dust: You can control the amount of dust by using water trucks. Yes, I relize there is a drought in TN (I live here). But, it was close to being unbearable. 2. Security: There were a lot of overbearing individuals. Having a purple shirt that says Fess Securty doesn't make you God. 3. More on security from a volunteer standpoint: Being a volunteer had it's perks. Minimal search at check in, I could go in and out like VIP's. I could even shortcut thru the VIP camping area. Then came Sunday, it seemed like everything changed. I was being searched going into Centeroo and I couldn't shortcut anymore thru VIP. It was like, okay it's Sunday and we are done with you. 4. VIP: There is no way in hell I'd opt for VIP. I worked VIP check-in. There was at times a 2 hour wait to get out of the Holiday Inn parking lot. You'd think for the VIP price the logistics would be better. 5. Prices: My God, 2.50 to 3 bucks for a bottle of water. Food and beer, I can deal with.
Okay, enough bitching. Time to hit the high points. I am 44 yrs old and halfway expected to get treated a little different. Not once did it happen. I worked with young folks that treated me very well. I made 3 very close friends in the employee camping. We even talked about getting together and doing it again next year. Melanie, Noah, and Leslie I love you guys. There were no fights I seen (except for one between two security folks, go figure). When you can get 80,000 folks together add booze, heat , and dust and there were no fights, that blew my mind. I enjoyed Tool (which I thought I would hate), White Stripes, Ralph Stanley, Junior Brown, and Elvis Perkins. These were my favs, there were more I seen and none of them were bad. As I drank my last beer Sunday night a tear rolled down my cheek. I felt as if Bonnoroo was a girl I met over a weekend, I fell in love, and had to leave her until next year. The whole experience was spiritual for me. Now, I am back home and realizing how much my life sucks outside Roo. Thank you all for this forum. It helped me prepare for the trip both mentally and physically. May God bless all of you. David
Post by augustwest on Jun 18, 2007 22:20:46 GMT -5
There is a section in your guidebook about this. It was to prevent people from camping all day in front of the stage, that area is cleared out after every show and you have to queue up to get in before a show. It was not for VIP exclusively. Just whoever cared to queue up beforehand, or had read that little section in their guide book
Reading that makes me feel much better, I didn't try to get up close for anything on the main stage until the RatDog show on Sunday, so it came to me as quite a shock, esp. because there was a ton of room out there, but it actually sounds like a pretty good idea, it sucks having people all around you who don't care about the show that is currently going on, and making a lot of unnecessary noise. Does anyone know how long the wait was to get into that section?
2. They also provided bigger/more tents for food, but that made the place hardly air condidtioned, and the quality of the food was worse. I also saw a few red and yellow bracelets snagging meals in there. 3. Rv and Camping was mixed, and though we didn't mind too much some people were stuck listening to generators running all day and night. 4. Another problem was security. One of the perks to vip is NOT being searched. On the first couple days (especially with the whole tool and no cameras/flashlight crap) they were searching us as throughly as GA. 5. The biggest problem was check in. I think they changed it around so that the people arriving for check-in wouldn't cause traffic for the town but after check-in trying to head to camp was INSANE. I partly blame the state troopers for this...they were everywhere but it took them 3hrs to figure out there was a problem and even then there were only a couple who were trying to fix the problem ...I certainly saw all their cars but where were the officers themselves!?
3. I think the younger high school/college crowd were to blame for a lot of the rudeness. It seems it's really cool to be into music right now, so i can only figure a certain % of kids were there because it's cool and their friends were going, not because they are passionate about the music. Plus a lot of young people are rude in general.... I'm 21 and can't stand most people my age or younger because of this.
So all in all, I think security/staff problems created the most complaints, but we still had an amazing time. I love 'roo for the life style it creates. When I leave, i'm left pondering my own life and searching for ways to make my everyday life as great as it is when I'm at roo.
<b>god, what a whiner, why didnt you go taddle on the people stealing food from the VIP tent? Its crazy to think that you can complain about the rudeness as you complain about "thieves" in VIP. If you want better service you should drop the VIP pass and bring your own food, and a maid. Some of you VIP cats just dont get it.........</b>
Since when did this become a board for flaming people? I'm basically a board troll but I had to smite you for that anyways! Very un-Roo like. Didn't sound too much like "whining" to me so much as a observation while your response sounded, well, rather "rude".
Anyways,
My impression of 'roo this year is overall a positive one. Although it did have some let downs from my previous experience I will be patiently awaiting next years line-up with all intentions of going again:
Highlights -
~ Line-up... Absolutely awesome shows, aside from some hiccups with gear (typical for a festival) and some acts I thought would have had better time slot, overall no disappointments and many awe inspiring moments were had by me.
~Atmosphere... haven't been disappointed yet with the 'roo life. Shows like The Flaming Lips where the crowd is absolutely charged make it worth everything to me (much like Radiohead last year). Additionally, most (and I stress "most") people were polite and as outgoing this year as I had experienced last year which can make or break your experience a lot of the times.
~BonnaRouge/ Art of Such & Such ... My favorite addition (Bonnarouge) and I hope a permanent one after this year. I am a huge fan of the vaudeville scene and seeing burlesque shows, fire performances, and other late night side show goodness was top notch for me.
~ Weather.... Yes it was hot and dry (dust lung is terrible) but with all the all weekend long thunderstorms talk I was happy with just hot and not hot, with incredibly high humidity, and "6 deep mud.
~surprises... It always strange how something unexpected and positive always seems to happen at 'roo. Atleast for me and I hope the same occurs for the rest of you.
~ Only 1 fatality that I have heard of. I know this is odd as a highlight but I when people mention deaths at things like this it gets largely blown out of proportion. For 4 days Bonnaroo is the ~3rd largest city in TN. If you think that globally about every 8 seconds someone dies then you would expect in a major city to have a certain number of deaths per day. IMHO, 1 death in 4 days in a city that large is, however sad and unfortunate, impressive on that scale.
Lowlights-
~VIP check-in logistics - I knew before hand that they had expanded VIP and except for the reduction in tent only did not see it as a problem. However, once I got to the Holiday Inn I saw a major problem. The process took us ~ 4 hours from the time we pulled into the parking lot until the time we exited. 60% of this time was spent trying to get-in and out of the lot.I never really got upset about it but based on my previous VIP experience of ~20 mins of check-in and being set-up and in centeroo in 2 hours total it was a let down for the VIP ticket investment. Since I spent such a large amount time gridlocked I observed only to 2 motorcycle officers directing traffic for the wal-mart side 'roo entrance, the Holiday Inn Entrance and the intersection right before the I-24 overpass. They would clear one then drive down to the next and by the time they got the 3rd moving the 1st once was locked up again. Having enough officers present would have cleared up the majority of this.
~Atmosphere... Although, the majority of people were great I did get the impression that there were a lot more "party" people at 'roo this year and also a lot of people that seemed to be "out of their element" at a festival like this ( i see the police and tool playing party to this as they seem to have pulled in a lot of what would have been single day ticket holders had this been coachella or the like). Also, I saw many sad sunburned children and way too many over-partied passed out teenagers. Seeing both made me sad as I see neither as appropriate for a festival.
~ Staff issues... This caught me out in left field. I had not expected to experience so many rude and ineffective staff members at a festival of this size. I had also not experienced this at all last year. I personally was present when staff members cursed, insulted, and overall abused some patrons this year. Additionally, when staff was needed they had no idea what they were doing and even appeared to agitate situations. Typically, when one failed more and more would come to their aid to also fail. I fully understand most of the staff are volunteers but coordinators need to make sure the staff is trained and qualified "enough" to fulfill the basic purposes of their roles.
~Shakedown... The suppression of shakedown was sad. If you want to crack down on certain issues this was a bad place to start. Shakedown streets are a element of festivals everywhere and shouldn't necessarily be embraced by promoters but should be left alone. The key here is if you patrons didn't want them they wouldn't be there. By suppressing them you are exposing your patrons to even shadier and more dangerous elements. My point being is that shakedown is typically about the glass for most folks and glass which seems to be on a Bonnaroo's "no" list is for most purposes legal and up to the user themselves to use in such a way as to make them illegal. What I experienced was not being able to purchase legal glass while still finding many many illegal things widely available. I understand that vendors could pay to have tents and such but $2000 for a glass vendor is a LOT of glass unless they are charging hippie shop prices which they cant and compete. Oh well, hope it improves next year. --- end of shakedown rant
~Lack of inforoo people.... I ran into 2 inforoo people throughout the entire festival and never heard a single "Corncat".
I am sure i could keep rambling on, i am long winded and that is precisely why I don't post much, but those are my main impressions of 'roo 2007.
- Check in was a perfect storm of a younger VIP crowd who all showed up as they've been taught right at 10am or before, a larger VIP area, more artists needing to check in for Thursday (i.e. more buses) and issues with the Airport Shuttle buses and entering VIP peeps colliding. Certainly not like previous years and likely to not happen again. It sucked, I wasn't happy, but after I bought a watermelon from a local while waiting in line, my anger faded.
- VIP was larger. It also included a second set of showers, a (thankfully) separate tent for drinks. But it also suffered from a lack of coordination as the parking pass debacle gave way to the RV/tent mix, and mixed signals meant false starts for early entry to What stage area.
- I still like doing VIP. Is it as amazing as last year? Eh. Probably not all told. But we were on top of our RV latenight and had a great time with all passing by.
- Amazing. Simply. Amazing. From the less-well-known (Dixie Dirt, Whigs) to even Tool (dedicating a song to David Cross, etc) there were surprises, jams and more. Thursday night wore me the f_u_ck out. By Sunday I was a mess. I'm not sure that the new Thursday setup will survive- I'm not sure it was worth the trouble (money to pay the bands, setup, expectations) in light of the masses who exited early, completely drained. And for those who think it was just the Tool or Police fans who left early- compare the size of the crowd of hippies for Ziggy to those for Weir (seriously, the latter was kind of embarrassing).
- The crowd was... well, a crowd. The heat amplified many drugs and I did see more rude hippies than ever (the two who barged into our nearly 12-hour camp-out for The Police were a mess). Was it really worse or better than any other year? Probably not- just a product of the weather as much as the size.
- For all of the constant discussion about musical direction, Superfly sure knows their crowd. Regina Spector seemed an unusual choice for the large Which Stage but she had a ridiculous turn out. Even small acts had great, appreciative crowds (Alexa Ray Joel was clearly stunned at how responsive everyone was). Watching Mavis Staples delight several thousand with a gloriously long "I'll Take You There" was like church.
- The Police were awesome to watch. Regardless of what you think of them or that particular performance, that sh_i_t was important.
- Security may have been slower, but it didn't feel any worse. Number of arrests were just as low as previous years (Only 73 in a festival of 80k? That's pretty incredible.). Everyone seems surprised that Thursday/Friday was worse than others-- that happens every year and is a classic behavioral technique by any kind of authority. Does it suck? Sure. But we can't keep being surprised. And if it cuts down on the aforementioned idiots "still totally rollin' balls bra'" than I might live with it.
- My Father's Day was tough without my daughter, although the grin-inducing "So Lonely" by the Police the night before helped. But seeing that my Father's Day message to my own dad was published in the Beacon was a real, true treat.
- I can't believe they took the classic games out of the Arcade Tent. However, I can't believe how awesome the late night Arcade Tent was. 'Tis a paradox!
- BonnaRouge was a really cool idea that was executed pretty well most of the time. I hope it sticks around.
- Props to Lala.com and Newbury Comics for an organized, not quite as price-gouging experience for buying and signing than previous years.
- Shakedown: the mini-shakedowns are always forgotten by Monday-morning quarterbacks. I'm not saying that there isn't room for some complaint, but this year if you wanted something, it was there to buy. They just didn't always put it in the same mini-mall.
- A fabulous Roo. I am far more worn out on many levels than in previous Roos.
- While the disfunction at the VIP gates made it impossible to group, many of us found eachother anyway. Having a "Corncat" moment with Hookah in the HIE parking lot Wed. night was an early highlight that would give way to lots more meetings.
- Nowhere near as large as expected, but just as resilient, 3 brave Inforoo'ers and their amazing friends guarded a nice chunk of What Stage real estate for optimal viewing of the Mardi Gras Indians, Ziggy Marley, Ben Harper and the Police!
- Brunch was fun, even if everyone spent most of the time trying to remember what everyone was like on the internet
- I wish there had been a little more cohesion in larger groups, but all of the people I traveled with were singing Inforoo's praises and were eager to join the boards now.
Post by christopherm on Jun 19, 2007 0:27:01 GMT -5
This was my first Bonnaroo and it was an amazing & wonderful experience. I can't wait to come back again next year. I'd probably even buy early-bird tickets without knowing the lineup -- I got to hear so many great bands I hadn't even known about this year that I know the same will happen next time. I'm not normally an outdoorsy person, so spending four days camping, dancing, and lying around the fields was pretty intense and also pretty wonderful.
A few people have complained about people who were there more just to "party" than for the music, and I agree, but I'd put it a little differently. I think most of us are there to "party" in some sense -- that is, it's not JUST about hearing good bands, it's about hearing good bands with other people, and dancing in an excited crowd, and walking around seeing crazy fun things, and staying up late, and playing around with our mental states (by drinking or through other means) in a (relatively) safe, happy place. That's all good, so I wouldn't say that people wanting to "party" is the problem. Rather, what annoyed me was specifically the people who treated every show like it was the blow-out end-of-semester kegger at their frat house, or else the nitrous party on top of their high school buddy's double-wide. This kind of thing was almost funny sometimes just because it was so incredibly inappropriate for the specific show going on. I seriously wonder whether the guys at the Flaming Lips show shoving other people out of the way so they could be the ones to hit the giant balls into the air actually ever listen to the Lips's lyrics, which are almost uniformly about everyone loving and helping each other? And the people making devil-horn "rock on" signs at Michael Franti? Someone needs to print out this article from the Onion, entitled "Metal Council Convenes To Discuss 'Metal Hand Sign' Abuse" (http://www.theonion.com/content/node/42365), and hand it out with the info booklet at the entrance next year.
I also thought it was a little too hard to find things within Centeroo. More water tunnels would be nice, but at the very least it should be easier to find the ones there are. It's not that hard -- just put a sign at every crossroads pointing the way to the nearest water source.
I didn't have a big problem with the searches at the entrance (they always just looked into my backpack, never took anything out to open it) but the wait to get into Centeroo through the main entrance was ridiculous at times. This is not a hard problem to solve -- it's easy to predict when the big influxes of people will be, and it would not cost all that much to add 10 or 20 more security staff for those times.
Anyway, my complaints are minor compared to the fun I had. The highlight was Saturday night, Sasha & Digweed spinning until dawn. So, so beautiful.
1. DUST.....absolute hell on the lungs, which are already abused during the festival
2. Nitrous definitely was hard as hell to find. I encountered 1 dude the entire time and he had a mini tank and kept having to move from camp to camp and stay low to fill the balloons.
3. Security - A$$HOLES
4. Bonnaroo STAFF - I never really encountered any problems with people being rude about searching me, most were pretty cool and helped you out with getting anything into Centeroo.
5. Bonnaroo Mounties - TERRIBLE......I don't know about you guys, but Fri and Sat around noon I saw people dropping like flies at the arch and the mounties werent doing a damn thing to help. They're on gigantic horses that could crush any human with 1 stomp, and yet they couldn't clear a path to help someone dying of a heat stroke? At one point, I encountered a situation where the mounties refused to come help someone that had passed out from the heat; they insisted that the people come to THEM instead of the other way around.
6. Mule Show.....MOTHER OF GOD. By far my absolute favorite show of the entire festival. This had a &$*ing SICK setlist, and Moby Dick with JPJ was NUTS, I danced my ass off at that show.
Bud/pieces were so hard to find. I had better luck being offered sacks than seeking them out. I usually just waited and someone would come through the camps selling some headies.
ALSO....did anyone else notice the abundance of blotter? You couldn't walk more than 10 feet down 3rd/shakedown without hearing "doses"...doesn't seem too Bonnaroo-ish to me
There is a section in your guidebook about this. It was to prevent people from camping all day in front of the stage, that area is cleared out after every show and you have to queue up to get in before a show. It was not for VIP exclusively. Just whoever cared to queue up beforehand, or had read that little section in their guide book
Reading that makes me feel much better, I didn't try to get up close for anything on the main stage until the RatDog show on Sunday, so it came to me as quite a shock, esp. because there was a ton of room out there, but it actually sounds like a pretty good idea, it sucks having people all around you who don't care about the show that is currently going on, and making a lot of unnecessary noise. Does anyone know how long the wait was to get into that section?
We waited in like about 2 minutes to get in for John Butler Trio and that was a friggin awesome show. I liked this idea a lot.
General thoughts: 1. Most of the security folks were really cool, I only met one asshole who insisted on taking everything out of my camelbak and wallet and pockets and laying it about on the ground.. he was also pretty rough with my stuff and wasnt very friendly at all. He reached into my cargo pocket and "Ohhhh! whats this BAG buddy?!?" "Dude thats a bag of cigarette butts(I pull it out) would you like to confiscate it or can I go see my show now?"(The other dudes called him an ass as I walked on) 2. There was a LOT of dust!!! It didn't bother me at all really, but it seemed to bother a lot of people. I did see staff wetting down the roads to try to keep it down.. 3. The shows were beyond awesome 4. The mounted patrol guys were pretty damn cool.
ALSO....did anyone else notice the abundance of blotter? You couldn't walk more than 10 feet down 3rd/shakedown without hearing "doses"...doesn't seem too Bonnaroo-ish to me
-The crowd to me seemed a little different this year. More people there to party who didn't really seem to be into the music as much. I just felt like the atmosphere was a little different. I also saw a lot more children...PEOPLE...PUT SOME SHOES ON YOUR KIDS. I won't even go shoeless at 'Roo. That made me sad
I noticed both of those things also - many more rude people, I got shoved, kicked, stepped on, and pushed with no apologies. Also the shoeless and sunburnt kids made me mad. If you are going to take your kids, then they should be taken care of properly.
OK I GOT ONE FOR YOU! In my camp area i think Camp Q, this lady let her two kids play in the run off water from the water area!!! It was fucking gross, that run off had spit from people brushing their teeth, shmegma from people washing off their goodies, all sorts of other bodily fluids that kids should not be playing it. I was appalled, grossed out and pissed! The medic tent was right there and instead of telling her hey your kid can get Hepatitis get them the fuck out they just watched with their mouths open! Sick sick sick
As my Inebriated buddy walks out of the Porto, he yells out, "Dude...I love this place...bonnaroo thinks about everything...they even put beer holders next to the toilet!"
Had to break it to him that that was the urnal. Good times good times!
Overall, Roo was awesome! I got to see almost everything I wanted and I met some great people.
Camp Inforoo = Great Success! Sorry to those folks who were unable to find it!
Thurs: As some of you already know, I had one eighth and a glass stolen from me by security upon my first trip into centeroo on Thursday! I did not realize I had it in my pocket and he felt it in my cargo, palmed it, and waved me through. I just kept moving, what are you going to do? The worst part was that the glass wasn’t even mine, I had borrowed it from Ziggy….That was the biggest negative for me all weekend.
The dust was just outrageous! BUT….when they would bring the water trucks around, the water was so rancid that I would almost rather have the dust.
The heat, I didn’t think, was that much different than it usually is.
I was glad to meet everyone that I did at Camp Inforoo over the weekend.
1. 4 hours of sitting in traffic 2. an obscene amount of dust and a wet hacking cough on my first day back to work 3. STILL, the best weekend i've had in a really long time! )
I could definetly do without the aforementioned white trash/wigger/gangster/greaseball population who are there to primarily party. Alot of those obnoxious pricks deprived me of sleeping in with there moronic banter and carrying on at 5 in the morning. Not all of us are "still totally rolling balls bra"!!
were you in camp star wars? those guys/similar guys kept me up too on friday morning. i got about 1.5 hours of sleep that night thanks to them...
Post by roolacksreality on Jun 19, 2007 8:47:07 GMT -5
On a different note....
The Somethin' Else tent was so cool. I saw Stanton Moore's trio and Mago there and I loved it. It was great to see such a small, intimate atmosphere in such a macro festival. I hope they do this again next year. Also, the sound quality was great.
The real Shakedown St. was behind Third Avenue over by POD 9. It was a bit of a walk, but once you got there......Well...Let's just say you knew where you were ;D! I was disappointed to see how they are trying to keep stuff like that from plain sight, but I guess it isn't exactly good publicity. But, who knows?
Post by infamousguest on Jun 19, 2007 9:39:49 GMT -5
Well, I've had mixed feelings leaving this Bonnaroo, thankfully the majority were good and I believe I'll return next year. First off, the bad...
1. The hot/dusty days and nights, and the freezing mornings. My girlfriend is still home sick today because she can't breathe, and we've been home since Sunday midnight - so 2 days out of work because of illness via Bonnaroo. We woke up every morning by 7 am because of how freezing we were. Everynight we were still hot when we'd go to bed, so all of our wind flaps were open on the tent, and we were dressed in minimal clothing. By early morning, it would be quite chilly out, and we'd wake up with teeth chattering.
2. The Police. I thought they had a great set, but they were scheduled for 2.5 hours! What happened to that last hour? They didn't even play my sister's favorite song, "Don't Stand So Close to Me." What the hell was up with that?
3. Certain security. I'd say the majority of security was cool, but there were assholes on a power trip. One morning when we were walking to the "new shakedown" (right off Bushy Branch Road), a person's service dog was running around - right near the group of people he was with, and security comes plowing through on their golf cart, have to swerve because of the dog, and tell the owner that they need to get that dog out of there or they were going to lock him up. The people start yelling that he's a service dog, and security flips them off as they are driving off.
4. People that were extremely fucked up, and their friends were nowhere to be seen. I can't count how many times members from my group had to go help out people, because no one else was. On Saturday there was a girl at the back of the What Stage that kept stumbling around, until she hit the ground and stopped moving. We rushed over to her, and ask her if she needs help. No response. My sister tells her friend to get a medic, and at this point the girl perks up, says "No Doctors!" and starts to try and run. She makes it 4 steps before she drops to the ground again. We tried to get her to drink water, and she asked "Is this more beer?" When we tell her it's water, she throws the bottle (thanks for wasting $4), and demands more beer. Finally her friends see her, after 10 minutes, pick her up, and take her back to her tent. Sunday when we were watching North Miss AllStars, another kid keeps swaying, bumping into people, and hits the ground. We offered him one of our chairs to rest in, and he passes out. An hour later at the end of the show, his friends find him, try to wake him up, no response for a couple minutes, and after he releases a big blob of drool onto our chair, gets up and goes somewhere else, hanging from his friends.
5. Food. We easily spent $400 on food/drinks this weekend between my girlfriend and I. We killed ourselves Friday morning walking around and finding where everything was, so the rest of the time when we got to Centeroo, we stayed. Those lines for the water stations just got to be too long at times, so we'd end up buying water/drinks.
The good...
1. The line to get in. When I went my first time, in '03, we waited in line for 7 hours, and considered ourselves lucky. We heard of people waiting in line for up to 14 hours. This time we spent 3.5 hours in line after getting to exit 122 (where the line started) at 12:30 PM on Thursday. Security did not tear our car apart. They looked in the coolers for glass bottles, and that was it. Search took 3 minutes. We ended up getting a great camping spot 10 minutes from Centeroo.
2. Security into Centeroo. We made the mistake of going through the main entrance one night. We did not make that mistake again. Differences between main and side entrance near ferris wheel...The main entrace would normally take 20-40 minutes to get in, heavy searching, and pretty rude. Side entrance never took more than 10 minutes (most of the time maybe 2-3), if you had all your stuff out of your pockets, and your bag open, they'd peek in the bag, and tell you to have a good time.
3. The bands. Everyone that I saw I liked. The Roots, The Police, and North Mississippi All-Stars stood out as my favorites. Unfortunately I missed Michael Franti and Spearhead which I heard was the show of the fest.
4. The Glass! Sorry for everyone that couldn't find it, but you really missed some nice things if you knew where to look. Most of the vendors were on Bushy Branch, or the side street right before the Church. Thursday I saw two incredible Mike Fro pieces prices at $600, but then didn't see that vendor for the rest of the fest. There were equally crappy deals, but you just had to sort through to find true quality. My sis ended up getting a pretty cool mini sherlock bubbler, but the damn thing didn't draw! I told her we'd find her some quality stuff, just wait till Sunday. She ended up getting a teal/blue spoon that really fits her. I overpaid for a spoon on Thursday just because I needed something. Well, not overpaid in relation to a smoke shop, but overpaid compared to what I eventually saw at Bonnaroo. However, I did get to meet an awesome glass blower that I eventually bought 3 pieces from. He's going to be featured in next month's Skunk magazine, so I might have lucked out and got some nice collectibles to boot.
He does some crazy marble and dichro work. This first piece I call the "steal of Roo." This pipe is some of the thickest glass I've seen. He actually said he was going to sell it cheap since there was a "crack" in the pipe. He had the pipe a year, it cracked the first month after it was blown, and he fixed up the crack, held on to it for 11 more months to make sure it wouldn't recrack, and decided to sell it to someone at Bonnaroo. Pipe works perfectly fine, can't feel the crack at all if you're rubbing your fingers over the pipe. You can still see the crack in the very last picture, but it's pretty invisible to the naked eye. At $20, I think this piece was well worth it.
This last one is truly the headpiece of my collection. Have never really seen this yellow/cream/white as the base color in a pipe. Tons of marble work. In the one picture you can see the mushroom that was blown into the marble. The one marble is damn hard to capture, it's a double dichro with a blue dichro spiral in the backdrop and purple dichro flecks on the front. Loved everything about this pipe and had to have it at any cost - $400 - which I consider a steal compared to what this would cost in most head shops.
Security....Bonnaroo needs to work on thier attitudes. But to defend those guys, did you know they worked 12 hour shifts? !! am to 11pm. Hot sun with little shade. Shade tents should be at each entrance, for sun or rain. If they treat the help with more respect they would be better with us. I WAS VOLUNTEER LAST YEAR....NEVER AGAIN!!!!
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Post by Sköldpadda on Jun 19, 2007 10:49:24 GMT -5
I never really felt like the security was bad, myself. I always figured it was normal for them to search more thoroughly the first couple of days, and then just give up as the weekend went on. There are always a couple of guys that take it really seriously, but I didn't think it was terrible.
It was still Bonnaroo, and still fun...hopefully next year the Bonnaroooooooos will carry. I miss it going across the entire campground.
Well, I was a Roo virgin, and I have to say, I had no idea what to expect going in. Honestly, I was prepared to be miserable. I've never camped before, and for good reason. I'm also borderline hypoglycemic, which I thought would have put a drain to any good time I might have.
How incredibly, completely, inexcusably wrong I was.
It was without a doubt one of the most memorable experiences of my life. My friend and I checked into VIP with absolutely no trouble, around 8 PM Thursday, and made our way into our campsite. The only time we even stopped was to get directions from the people with the flags (a note about them...why can't they wave the flags in a DIRECTION? Waving it about in a lazy arch in front of you really doesn't tell me much. I'm tired and it's dark. Freaking point.), and we were camped and inside Centeroo within the hour.
I can't describe (but I'm sure I don't have to) the overwhelming sense of content, happiness, and excitement that washed over me as I wandered around Centeroo, being shown around by my best friend (a three year Roo vet)--a normally stoic guy, dragging me around everywhere he could think of with the biggest excited grin on his face the entire time. I've never seen anything like it.
My whole experience is much too huge to write here, but I do have a few negative notes that I wanted to bring up.
1. I came into Roo very cynical about young "hippies," or what passes for them nowadays. From what experience I'd had with them, they tended to be self-righteous, elitist bandwagoneers. If you asked me Friday what I thought about them, I would have laughed, stoned out of my mind, and told you how much I loved hippies. Still, it seems that sometimes first impressions are completely accurate. I like to think of myself as very open-minded (that seems a little contradictory given my prejudice against hippies, but disregard that for the moment). There are practically no people who I would ever shun without first at least attempting to have a conversation with them. Over the course of the weekend, I tried to strike up many a conversation with a Birkenstocked child of the earth, and almost 100% of the time, I was snubbed. Why? I'm quite friendly. I'm very talkative, and hell, I'm even funny most of the time (especially in altered states of mind...or at least I think I am...). But I'm not a patchwork skirt and halter top kind of girl. Most of the weekend found me in jeans, a band t-shirt, and black converses. For some reason, not only did this make me some sort of social outcast among the more eco-friendly crowd, but it drew hostility in some cases.
For instance, on Sunday, I was in Centeroo looking at some handmade djembes. Out of nowhere, I'm accosted by this hippie girl. "Look around you, it's people like you who are bringing all the trash and bad vibes and hostility to our festival! You come here to see your band and you destroy our happiness!" I could only stare blankly at her. This bitch didn't know me from Eve, and yet somehow, I was to blame for whatever problem she seemed to be having with Bonnaroo this year. (I didn't know what she was talking about with the bad vibes--I had been perfectly happy all weekend despite the heat, dust, and what else have you.) Then I realized that I was wearing my Nine Inch Nails tour shirt. And apparently that meant that "my band" had to have been Tool. I'm not really a big Tool fan, as a matter of fact--my main attraction had been The Roots. But I digress. She kept yapping. "Why are you even here?" she asked me. I had had just about enough. "I'm here, if you must know, because I'm a musician--a percussionist, actually, and I'm looking for a new djembe. I'm sorry if I've intruded, and these drums that you apparently have dominion over are reserved for drum circles." She explained (not very politely that she hadn't been talking about that particular stall, but the Roo in general. I just walked off. Another highlight of the hippie experience for me was the mother of a months-old infant, walking around in the hottest part of the day with her baby. She was talking to someone about the nutritious diet she had her baby on. Apparently she only fed her baby the finest raw organic vegan food, no formula, no Gerber, not even breast milk. Just soy and carrots and blah blah blah. It was the saddest thing I'd ever seen. This poor baby was screaming at the top of its lungs. I mean, it was hot and you couldn't even breathe without choking on dust at that point. For one thing, she was endangering this baby by simply having it out there, and for another, it was the skinniest damn baby I have ever seen. She may have had the best interests of Mother Nature in mind, but in the meantime, someone needs to call Child Protective Services on her before she kills her child.
The absolute height, though, was Saturday night, near Which stage if I remember correctly. There was a girl wandering around a tree, all alone and looking sick and scared out of her mind. There was a crowd of "hippies" nearby, watching...and LAUGHING. I was furious. I stormed by them and went over to her with my friend. Between the two of us we managed to get her calmed down and had her drink some water. After we had gotten her to the medics safely, my friend had to physically stop me from going back to that area and hunting down the group I had seen.
I don't know if my observations were accurate in even the slightest. When you think of what percentage of 80,000 people I was able to actually meet in four days, there is probably no way I could get a clear picture of what the social structure was really like. All I know is that for the most part, I was treated as though I was some idiot metalhead girl, bringing corporatism and MTV and the cops and Satan himself (or possibly W) hot on my heels into some hippie country club outing. And all because of a few t-shirts. Just because I like NIN and The Blood Brothers doesn't mean that I'm there for the booze. If any of the hippies I encountered over the weekend had bothered to talk to me (like almost every single one of the plain old regular Joe types did), they would have found out pretty quickly that I was a musician, that I respected all music and loved almost all of it, and that I was there because there is only one thing that make me happier than playing live music. And that's experiencing it. But no. Instead I get some dirty stoner looking me up and down after I smile at him, and saying to me, "Wow...you're not a very good hippie." F*ck you. Luckily, my good time was not that easily ruined.
So I guess I just wanted to say that while I had an amazing time, I'm sorry that I apparently ruined Bonnaroo for everyone this year. /heavy sarcasm
2. Is it just me, or did people seriously get ruder as the weekend went on? It seems like Friday afternoon, I was hanging out with a couple of great guys in the comedy tent, then meeting a gigantic crowd of the funniest Canadians I'd ever met at the Roots. I think I even remember them letting me get in front of them. And in fact, I think I remember every person within eyesight of me just dancing and having a great time, and what's more--I don't remember ever getting shoved aside so someone a foot taller than me who showed up an hour later than me could get up front. Yet, it seems like Sunday, during the White Stripes, I had been standing about 10 people back from the front for nearly two hours, when all of a sudden, a lot of what must have been Incredibly Important People began to trample me in order to get as close as possible (or impossible, in this case). I've survived a lot of pretty brutal pits. I'm a rough and tumble girl as far as all that goes. But even in the worst of them, I have never experienced out and out rudeness like I did that afternoon. All of a sudden, 5 minutes before the Stripes went on, hundreds of people with the largest sense of entitlement I've ever witnessed began to make their way in front of me and others around me using any means possible. What was a perfect view of the glory of Jack White was now a perfect view of a 7 foot Amazon woman wearing the most ridiculously large hat ever conceived by man, and her equally tall and ridiculously hatted husband.
And when I tried to excuse myself from the crowd with as little disturbance as I could manage, I found myself up against people who for some reason were determined not to let me pass them. To get behind them. I finally managed to get past the densest part of the crowd (not without one of my many "excuse me"s being greeted with a sneer and an "Excuse ME" from some girl in Paris Hilton sunglasses....doubly f*ck you), and made it to the bleachers. While in line, I had to contend with a bevy of idiots charging up the side of the stairs not occupied by the HIGHLY CONSPICUOUS LINE. I accidentally, though not regrettably, clotheslined one of these assholes. I was just putting out my arm to rest on the other handrail, and this idiot is in such a hurry that he runs straight into my arm and crushes his throat against it. He tried to start a fight with me, a 5' 2" 20 year old girl, after that (especially since, even after his little accident, I still didn't move my arm), but luckily the two guys behind me took care of him pretty quickly. I finally got a seat near the rail, on the floor of the VIP bleachers, a few minutes before the second half.
When "We're Going To Be Friends" started, I had almost fully regained my good mood...or so I thought. I realized that I could no longer hear the music, and instead could only hear inane conversation coming from somewhere behind me. It was a couple of middle-aged, slightly yuppie-looking people, a man and a woman, chattering as loudly as they could about the drive up and their plans for the drive back. You know, important stuff, far more entertaining than the concert we had all come to see and were now in the process of trying to watch. Meanwhile, they were ruining the show for everyone around them, and they seemed oblivious. After exchanging glances with a couple people around me, I tried giving them that significant movie theater glare. I even made eye contact with the lady, and I'm pretty sure my expression was clear.
Ha. They couldn't even be stopped by a who-knows-how-many-watt PA system, as though they could be stopped by a glare. They kept talking and talking and talking. Finally, I had had enough. I had been nice all weekend, but this occasion called for a little confrontation.
I turned around, planning to subtly get their attention and ask them if they could please hold it down a little. They just ignored my attempts to get eye contact with them. Apparently that peeved me, because my plan seemed to go out the window.
"Excuse me..." I said loudly, snapping my fingers in front of them, "excuse me....HEY!" I slapped my hand onto the boards in front of them. "Do you realize that no one can hear a god damn thing?"
Well, I can't regret being mean, because it worked, and the rest of the concert was amazing.
Other than all of that (which is a long story, but not a long list), Bonnaroo was one of the best weekends I have had in my entire life. Even though I'm still coughing up dust, and every piece of clothing I own is dirtier than it' probably ever been, it was more than worth it. And even the assholes couldn't put even the smallest of dents in the experience for me.
Post by augustwest on Jun 19, 2007 12:38:57 GMT -5
My only big annoyance involving other people were the ones who carried on long loud pointless conversations during great parts of shows, it was not too hard to move a few feet away, but the whole principle just irritates the crap out me, why do they have to be at a show to carry out a gabfest? Isn't it rather hard to hear anyway? This happens at a lot of shows, not just at Roo.
I see all these loooong posts about peoples first experiances and reflections on previous years. It's all nonsense to me when you start out saying "I loved this and that and it was so awesome .. BUT .." then spend the rest of your page long post describing every little thing that went wrong. Snub it I say - cause you always end up with a sentence like "I'll be there next year" or "BONNAROOOOO".
So heres my version of my first 'Roo story. We waited in line for almost 4 hours (highway, car check and line to camp site included in this) and were staked and unpacked around 9pm thursday. Everyone around us was young and laid back. Our campsite rocked it hard - like our own home away from home with some new roomates. I found the Discotheque thursday night and I was in pure, sober, unmatched bliss while the crazy DJ in the Dr. Seuss hat rocked the tent.
I loved all the shows I saw while running back and fourth between tents/stages. Bummed the Police cut out early cause I had some candy that was just getting sweet - oh well. Sasha and Digweed renewed my vigour. The Roots were amazing as was Ben Harper. Sadly we didn't see the Flaming Lips - everyone had passed out of exhaustion from exerting ourselves too much. Live and learn.
Um - All that crap about shakedown street being dead or gone is lies. Just walk one lap and you'll be swimming in drugs without trying. Play a game called "follow that hippie" and you should be set.
There was this crazy guy who unstaked, moved and restaked about 10 peoples camp sites to drive out on saturday afternoon. He was uber-nice though and gave us beer for the troubles. The vendors were awesome too - teriyaki chicken was quite good.
Security a hassle? Get the hell out. Thursday night I was pat-down well and that was the worst. The rest of the days I walked into the line holding my wallet, keys and phone in my raised hands and they just waved me through with no more than a glance at my pockets. I could have carried in a bong had I wanted.
I met no jerks or idiots in all the shows I saw - every one was chilled and just enjoying what they paid to see - the music. I was fresh out of bud on saturday at the Police and just as I was regretting it - three guys sat down and took a corner of my groups blanket and shared two bowls with us. Same for sasha and digweed only it was a joint. Too perfect.
So yea - I was a little unprepared for things like ice and snack food - didn't pack that much cause I figured we'd only be at camp maybe two hours a day if that (aside from sleep). Didn't bring extra shoes or a towel either. Yea .. Live and learn.
I enjoyed myself alot. Yes - the sun and heat sucked. I got pretty torn up on my face and neck friday. A small price to pay.
Also, whoever said there are no drugs at bonnaroo is a tremendous liar!!! With the exception of me falling asleep there were always drugs of somesort within my view.I got offered many drugs that I didn't even know existed. What is DMT?
My new idea for next year ... bingo cards. Each time you hear the sales pitch for a particular illicit substance you color in its square. First Inforoo-er to get their card blacked in wins a prize.
lol lol hell yes I'm in there was DMT there!D@#n I missed it
Then I realized that I was wearing my Nine Inch Nails tour shirt.
Thanks for sharing your story... glad you had a great time.
NIN is one of my single favorite bands and I only wore my NIN shirt on wednesday for this very reason-- it is still amazing to me how elitist and conservative some of the hippie base has gotten. Hopefully Roo is helping the musical doors swing wider and we'll all be accepted regardless.