Sasquatch Day 3

Monday was the last day at Sasquatch and in the morning we stopped at our favorite coffee place/antique store one last time. The place was actually in Trinidad, Washington, which is technically the closest town to where we were camping. However, all there is in the town is the antique store and a convenience store/gas station. We asked the owner of the antique store why the town was called Trinidad and he explained that the man that named the town had recently been in Spain, and the topography of the land reminded him of Trinidad, Spain.

The owner was really funny and awesome, and would always tell us cool stuff like that. He told us about finding old receipt pads from the dry goods store that was in the building before, and about his daughters band, and would always ask us what bands we were going to see that day. His wife took a picture of us all with him. There's Amanda, me, Aly, Gary, the coffee guy, Shane, and Justina. I'm wearing a little nineties dress I've had for ages, I think an aunt gave it to me for dress up when I was a little kid. Now it actually fits me. It is the cutest, most nineties little lace up detail on the back.

Monday there really weren't a lot of bands we wanted to see, but Deerhoof was playing and they're always awesome. I've seen them a couple times before, but they're just so cute. And foreign. The drummer came up to the mic at one point to say hi/thanks for coming, but he had to tie his shoelace, and it was really cute. And of course the singer is adorable, all japanese and hopping around the stage with her tiger mask.

It's nice when the bands you want to see are earlier in the day because you can get down close to the stage without too much trouble. Here's Amanda, Justina, and I goofing around after Deerhoof played. I guess we're all pretending to drink from the same water bottle?

Here we have Shane looking normal and then Shane looking like a douche. We made him wear Justina's hat and put on some of the free 1 800 QUIT NOW sunglasses. It was funny.

Justina's hat is from World Market, I believe, and I think it's pretty awesome. Yellow, floral, sparkly trucker hat? Nothing's better.

The next band that played was Grizzly Bear. I haven't been that into them before this, but their set was amazing. I'm definitely going to have to listen to them some more.

The rest of the afternoon we hung out up on the hill. There weren't any other bands we really wanted to see. This picture was taken when Santogold was playing. I think it looks kinda neat.

I love the old hippy tapestries I brought to sit on on the hill. And I like my toes when my nails are painted!

We left pretty early to get a headstart heading home and this is a picture J took right before we left. I think I was about to say something and my eyes are kind of closed, but you can see my dress, the little purse my mom used to carry when I was little, and the gladiators that look exactly the same as a pair my godmother had when she was a hippy. Ah, very nostalgic!

Sasquatch Day 2

Now Friday night I had slept in my own tent (actually my parents'), which is a nice little tent that's very easy to put up and also very sturdy. I shared it with Amanda, who brought an air mattress, so we were very comfy (and not too hot in the morning since my tent has awesome ventilation). Justina slept with Shane and Aly in Shane's tent, which happened to be essentially a teepee. Saturday night, we had Gary with us too, and switched it up a little. Amanda and Justina slept in my tent, and I slept in the teepee with Shane, Gary, and Aly. It was terribly windy and the tent was flapping loudly all night, so we didn't get much sleep. We told secrets and played Truth or Dare, minus the Dare part. Finally Aly and Gary were able to fall asleep, but Shane and I couldn't because the tent was actually falling over on us. When we woke up, it looked like this.

Yeah, any sleep we got was with a tent completely collapsed on us. It was a little hard to breathe, and kind of scary when you woke up. Of course, Amanda and Justina slept perfectly fine in my tent.

I napped in the grass.

We ate breakfast hanging out down by our tents as well. That's Gary and Shane enjoying some granola.

Again we drove up the road for coffee and Gary stopped at the convenience store next to the antique store to get some soda. They have strange things outside convenience stores in Eastern Washington.

Here we're back at the trailer, making sandwiches again. I was being goofy while Amanda took pictures of me. I'm wearing a homemade tie-dye tshirt, and some cutoffs made from some old jeans someone gave me.

The dress Justina wore this day was really cute. I think it was from Urban Outfitters, but I'm not sure. It was adorable regardless (and I think being so cute and girly helped us to get near the front of the crowd for one particular band).

It's impossible to prevent Gary from playing guitar if there's one around, so he serenaded us while we got food together. He wore the same clothes all weekend, even though we totally had showers and such.

Here's Aly watching Gary. In some ways Aly and I have kind of similar style. She wears scarves a lot and I have the same blue sweatshirt she was wearing in the group picture from Saturday night. It doesn't bother me when we have on something similar, but she will seriously go back and change if we happen to both be wearing the same sweatshirt. Which is silly because it's a generic blue American Apparel one and mine is way grungier than hers anyways. Anyways, she always looks really cute.

Most of Sunday there weren't any bands we wanted to see (at least me and Justina, the others had one or two they went to see and then came back and joined us) so we staked out a spot in the comedy tent. The lineup was especially good that day, so it worked out really well. We saw the Red Wine Boys, which is Todd Barry and Jon Benjamin, and I guess this was only the second time they've done the Red Wine Boys thing. (We actually saw Todd Barry on Saturday as well, but I didn't get any good pictures.)

They basically just get up on stage and fuck around, without a plan, while drinking wine, and occasionally spray audience members with wine and/or give away bottles of "wine" (non-alcoholic). It's pretty funny. Gary even got a bottle! He almost passed out on stage though because he's diabetic and his blood sugar was really low.

After their set, Justina and I went to go find a bathroom (port-a-potty, ew) and ran into them! We talked to them for quite awhile, probably 10-15 minutes and they were really nice. They were trying to decide what band they were going to see. When we told them how bummed we were that we left our cameras and phones with our friends in the comedy tent and thus couldn't get a picture with them, Jon Benjamin felt bad for us and gave Justina his pen, and me his hotel room key (in a non-creepy way, he didn't tell me what room he was in). Todd Barry offered to take a picture on his phone and email it to me (which he totally did), so we ended up getting our picture anyways. When we got back to the comedy tent, our friends were realllllly jealous.

After that, we saw Aziz Ansari, who is hilarious. We actually saw him quite a few years ago at Bumbershoot and thought he was funny. Now he's on the show Parks and Recreation.

Justina's boyfriend Liam is in a band called Natalie Portman's Shaved Head and they were playing later that night (we didn't see them because they were playing at the same time as NIN) so he came and hung out with us for awhile. He refuses to believe that mustaches are hip now and that he looks like every other hipster douchebag out there, but it's true. Also, he kinda looks like his dad/a cop. The mustache is fairly new.

Then we saw Zach Galifinakis, who is funny, but the crowd was being really shitty so it kind of sucked.

This skinny douchebag wanted everyone to sit down (they had all stood up for Zach Galifinakis, mainly because more people were crowding into the comedy tent and not everyone could fit if everyone was sitting) and kept yelling and interrupting. Zach got him up on stage to argue his side and then invited someone to argue the standing side. That guy happened to be kinda fat, and it was funny.

After all the comedy, the only band we really wanted to see was Nine Inch Nails.

We headed down the hill right away, and waited until whoever was playing before them finished. Then we took advantage of being girls to get guys to let us in front of them and even got two guys to push through the crowd for us and ended up pretty damn near the front. (We got called princess and sweetheart and were told we were beautiful by many drunk guys, but it was worth it.) Here we are in the crowd waiting for them to play.

The bass player is super cute.

Justina and I like to rock out while holding hands.

TRENT REZNOR!

NIN!

So epic.

Yeah, NIN doesn't exactly seem like a band I would be into, but really, so so good. It was so amazing to see Trent live and just an incredible show. We had so much fun and were so glad we went. Two guys that were staying at Crescent Bar (and were much older, like 30) also went to Sasquatch that night, to see NIN. I was hanging out with one of them a whole bunch that night, when we all got back and got drunk, and we kept playing and/or singing NIN songs, especially Head Like A Hole. Before we left the Gorge there was a mini-dance party.

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.