Recon

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Fear and Loathing in Middle Tennessee

So I took the usual route for a writer suffering from literary constipation and took myself down to Bonnaroo this weekend and listened to some music while engaging in pointless drug consumption.  It was my first 'roo I thought I'd scrawl out a few of my impressions on the music, the drugs, the culture and the experience so I'd have something to write about.

The experience was a fascinating one.  My overall impression was of a purpose built playground for adults who really should damn well know better.  It was the right thing for me, though the timing was terrible-we just bought a house and I'm in the middle of moving and my lovely wife is in the process of 9000 unrelated projects including putting on a gaming convention.  I left straight from work at 0700 on thursday morning.  We ended up in camp Peter Griffin on the very far end of Pod 11, giving us about a 45 minute walk to Centeroo.

On the surface, everyone was friendly-your neighbors in camp say hello, share their weed and beer and food freely.  But there are some worms in that big mushy apple too-we got burned on acid not once but twice.  Buying drugs at 'roo is absurdly open-air and easy, but obviously synthetic drugs can't be verified outside of a lab and it is clearly caveat emptor.  Basically, anyone who has anything to sell walks up and down the lines of people calling it out, so if you are wondering why everyone is looking for someone named Molly, that's why.  (Miss Molly will have her own entry later on in this series-she is a fascinating lady.)  I feel bad for anyone actually looking for a girl named Molly, as they will never find her.

We took a good group-3 cars worth of degenerates from Bloomington and elsewhere.  Some of us were experienced Bonnaroovians but most of us were virgins.  Basically there are two types of 'roo-goers-those who are there for the music and those who are there for the crowd.  I was more in the latter type although obviously I am a colossal music whore as well; I loved immersing myself in the great screaming mass of humanity and getting fucked up and wondering what it all means.  Essentially the whole damn thing was a noisy backdrop to me figuring out a bunch of things that needed to be figured out.  I wasn't the only one either; I met people there that only went to one or two shows.

The next entry should go live tomorrow where I'll discuss my impressions of the music.  Stay tuned, Scumfucketeers.

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