Friday, June 19, 2009

Sasquatch Day 1

Ok, finally have the time to sort through pictures from Sasquatch. I'm separating them into three posts, one for each day, all of which will probably be quite wordy, and have a lot of pictures.

If you don't know, Sasquatch Music Festival takes place on Memorial Day weekend here in Washington. It happens at the Gorge, which is a beautiful spot on the Columbia River, in Eastern Washington. Eastern Washington is very different from Western Washington in that it is dry and kind of desert-y, as opposed to pretty much a rainforest. The nearest town to the Gorge is George, Washington. It's around 3 hours from Seattle when there's not a ton of traffic. We were staying with some friends at Crescent Bar, which is a little bit past George, nearer to Quincy. It took us about 5 hours to get there because of Memorial Day weekend traffic.


We made a sign on the way over, while playing "Guess who's going to Sasquatch" (it's easy to identify people heading to Sasquatch by their crappy cars full of people and camping equipment, also KEXP stickers are a good hint). There was lots of honking and waving, and even talking to people in other cars, as we were stuck in traffic for a lonnnnng time.

We actually arrived Friday evening, but didn't take any pictures. Like I said, we were staying at Crescent Bar. Our friend Elyse's fiance's brother has a lot there, with a trailer, and lets us camp there, which is nice because camping at the Gorge is gross (port-a-potties, no shade, crowded, basically just pitching a tent in a parking lot) and expensive. The brother had a bunch of friends there too, but they were all really nice and we had fun hanging out and drinking with them at night, when we got back from the Gorge.

So Saturday we got up, sleepy and a little hungover and headed to the coffee shop/antique store up the road. While we were there, some other friends that came separately that morning instead of the night before called us. They had never been to Crescent Bar before, so we told them we'd meet them in Quincy. They were actually still pretty far away, but we decided to head to Quincy right away anyways, rather than just hang around the campsite. While we were waiting for them, we found a park with a swingset.


That's Amanda and me.



And there's Justina.

Met up with our friends, went back to Crescent Bar, made sandwiches and got stuff together and headed to the Gorge. Got there just in time to head down to the stage to watch the Doves.



Justina and I hung out on the hill while everyone else went off to see . . . I don't remember who they were seeing now. Someone kindly took this picture of us, and you can see what a beautiful location it is.



Then our friends came back and we goofed around taking pictures and such. This is Aly, who is super hip and awesome. Her sunglasses are pretty dope, and she's wearing a hat even though it's about a million degrees in the sun.



I finally got to see Animal Collective! I've missed them every time they've come to Seattle. Unfortunately we couldn't get very close and I'm not sure they're the best band for a big, outdoor venue like the Gorge.



Gary, Justina, and I decided to go see Mos Def instead of whatever lame band the rest of our friends were watching and that ended up being one of my favorites of the day (the other would be the Doves). He was wearing this sweet mask when he came onstage.





The last band we saw that night was the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, who I used to be quite into but I haven't liked their more recent stuff. Oh well. They had a giant eyeball and we chilled on the hill since we weren't that into it.



These are all the people I was there with (well, Aly's two friends hung out with us a bit but weren't camping with us and the people we hung out with at Crescent Bar that weren't going to Sasquatch aren't in the picture, but these are the important ones). On the far left (but not all the way over, there's some random strangers in the picture too) in the glasses is Shane, then Amanda, Elyse is in the white Washington sweatshirt, then Aly, and Justina, and Gary is the guy in the red tshirt behind Elyse and Aly. God, awesome people and so much fun.

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