I will start out by saying that I initially did not want to go to the Outside Lands Festival, at least not for 3 straight days.  I was thinking maybe I’ll go for one day, two tops; but in no way did I want to go for three days.  My girlfriend planned on going to all three days from the beginning and harassed me enough until I caved in and gave her the go ahead to get me a weekend pass.  I wasn’t too fired up to go for a couple of reasons.  First off, I wasn’t huge in to too many of the bands that were performing.  There were plenty I wanted to see and even a few who I am a big fan of but nothing I felt that I couldn’t miss.  The main reason I didn’t want to go was just the simple and plain fact that I know myself pretty well by now and I don’t have the best track record of rocking out for three straight nights, especially without a solid amount of couch time in between.  With all of that said I had a great time and will definitely do it again.  For those of you that couldn’t make it or didn’t have any desire to make it, I thought I would give you a little run down of how the weekend went.  Sort the good, bad, ugly and weird of it.  At least the way I saw it. This write up went a little bit longer than I planned, but I think it’s worth it if you are curious about the show or some of the goofy things that went down.

Map of festival for your reference.

Day #1
The show kicked off on Friday at 5:00 PM.  You had your choice to get started off with one of three bands.  It just so happened that one of the bands I wanted to see, Steel Pulse was kicking off the Lands End stage (the main stage).  It also just so happened that I couldn’t get off work early, so I would have to miss them. They wouldn’t be the only band I was forced to miss over the weekend. I got out of work at 5 on the dot and jumped on the N Judah muni line. This took me all the way across the city to the edge of Golden Gate Park which also happens to be the edge of the country considering it’s not much more than a block away from Ocean Beach.  The muni was packed with hippies, hipsters, hip hoppers, stoners, yuppies and everything in between.  There were also a few locals who looked absolutely clueless as to what in the hell was going on.  I was alone and sort of excited for this part of the weekend.  I was meeting up with my girlfriend who headed up early with her sister and friends.  I liked the whole idea of walking into this congregation of madness by myself and trying to find her.  Sort of like a Where’s Waldo kind of thing.  I got off muni with a pack of people and headed in to the park.  I couldn’t wait to get a beer. 

As I walked in through the tunnel of the far west entrance Manu Chao had just begun their set on the Lands End stage.  It was quite a site.  As diverse of a crowd as I have seen at any show I have been to.  There were all kinds of tents and food stands set up and then I noticed the line you had to stand in to show your ID and get a bracelet which allows you to get beer, booze and of course with this being San Francisco, wine.  The line was seriously longer than the one to get on Space Mountain at Disney Land and appeared more daunting than any line you’d stand in at the DMV.  This was extremely disconcerting for two reasons.  First and foremost, I was very ready for a beer and secondly Beck was going to go on in about 20 minutes at the Sutro Stage (third biggest stage).  My girlfriend, Hannah was thankfully able to get a hold of me.  She found me in line and had a beer for me.  I was beyond grateful.  She also noticed a much shorter line at the beer bracelet booth, so we were able to get to Beck a little bit quicker than expected.

We got over to Beck where we ran in to my friend Ryan and we watched about 20 minutes of his set.  I wanted to see more of it, but it was obvious that there was a small exodus back to the Lands End stage where Radiohead was going to start shortly after Beck was done.  The path from the Sutro Stage back to the main area was a tad narrow and some fences were built to keep people on the main path.  This was the only time where things seemed a little out of control.  The path was so congested that people started hopping the fences and then pulling them down.  We were sort of getting knocked around and were eventually pushed to the area were the fences were pulled down.  It was a minor uh oh moment, but once we got through, things settled down.  We wanted to get a good spot for Radiohead, but obviously had to get some drinks first.  Even though Beck was still performing and the Black Keys were still on the Twin Peaks Stage (2nd biggest stage on the opposite end of Lands End), the beer and food lines started getting pretty damn long.  This would be a common theme throughout the weekend.  As the days went on, the lines got longer, and of course we waited in them anyway.  We got two beers each and went to find or friend Jason, who had a good size area cleared out for us.  We climbed and pushed our way through the crowd spilling splashes of beer on people’s belongings until we got to our spot.

There was no shortage of marijuana going around for the entire weekend and it seemed like it was pretty much accepted by everyone.  There was even one point when I noticed some guys lighting up a few feet away from some cops.  The cops ignored it.  While I am talking about the cops I should mention that they pretty much stayed out of everyone’s way the entire weekend.  They should be complimented for that because at events like this there are a lot of things that aren’t hurting or bothering anyone that the cops can get in the way of.  Anyway, Radiohead came on stage as darkness took over the sky.  The Lands End stage had huge screens on both sides that showed some good quality footage of what was happening on stage.  Radiohead had a cool set on stage with a very cool light show.  There was a nice blanket of fog covering the park that enhanced the light show.  Radiohead sounded good, and the audio was solid too; but at least twice the sound went out mid-song.  The crew got it fixed in ok time, but if they hadn’t it may have gotten ugly.  Regardless it was a rookie mistake and I am sure next year they’ll make sure no one kicks the plug out of the wall.  I like Radiohead, but would never consider myself a big fan.  They aren’t really a band that you dance or rock out to.  You just sort of zone out, or at least I did.  About half way though their performance, Hannah was ready to go so we could beat the foot traffic.  I wasn’t as ready to go as she was, but big crowds make me nervous and I was more than ok with getting out of there before the other 149,998 people.  It wasn’t easy getting through the crowd.  It was an endless sea of inebriated people whose first priority wasn’t getting out of the way for us.  None the less we made it out and got to listen to Karma Police as we walked out of the park.  You could hear the music perfectly clear for blocks.

We made it out of the park and found ourselves in what would usually be the sleepy avenues west of 19th.  They weren’t sleepy on Friday night or the rest of the weekend I would assume.  We posted up at a bar on Irving and twenty something and waited for some friends who had ordered a car service to take us home.  Friday night was fun.  I probably had more fun at the bars after the show than at the show itself, but the festival would prove to get much better.

As a side note, we ended the night at Mel’s in the Marina.  We split a plate of chicken fingers and then I also had a burger and fries.  Oh, and a root beer.  I only tell you this because my post festival meals each night contributed highly to the overall excess of the weekend.  Also while at Mel’s I got a text message at roughly 1 or 2 in the morning from Barrack Obama, letting me know he selected Joe Biden as his running mate.  I appreciated the text.  If you’re interested, I think it was a great choice.  They needed a no bullshit attack dog and that’s what they got.  I guess this is probably a topic for another time.

Day #2

I woke up on Saturday morning feeling average at the very best.  I mean how good are you going to feel after a night of countless beers, burgers and chicken fingers?  The show was set to get going at 1:00, but Hannah and I figured that there was no need to rush anything.  Galactic was playing at 3:00 and that was the first band of the day that we wanted to make sure and see.  We took the #28 bus to Golden Gate Park and got to the Lands End Stageright around 3:00.  There we met up with Jason, Hannah’s sister, her boyfriend and some other folks.  After realizing the night before that getting patted down at the front gates was purely for show, Jason brought in a couple water bottles filled with vodka and kindly fixed me a cocktail.  This was a pretty good idea on his part considering beers, booze and wine were $7 a pop.  Think about it, we were going to be there from 3:00 to 10:00 (7 hours), if you had only one drink an hour you will spend $49 on booze alone.  You add that up with food, water and anything else you may toss your money at; and you end spending quite a bit by the end of the day.  Most people I saw drank well over one drink an hour.  Back to Galactic.  They were a lot of fun.  Cyril Neville of The Meters got on stage with them and sang some of their old school songs.  It was a lazy start to the day.  I sat back on a blanket, took it easy and listened to the music.  I was still feeling really sick to my stomach from the night before which gave me anxiety.  If you were feeling sick to your stomach and saw the port-o-lets that you would have to use in the case of an emergency, you would get anxiety too.

After Galactic played Hannah and I just sort of cruised around the festival.  We checked out different merchandise tents and Microsoft had a big circus type tent with somewhat of a dance club inside.  In smelled like cattle in there.  I was feeling really bloated still and it was beginning to put a hamper on my day.  Port-o-lets are never going to be a nice inviting place to take a seat and let Mother Nature do her thing, but I will never understand why people don’t at least try to keep things from getting too disgusting.  I walked in to one and in the urinal there were 2 beer cups standing straight up.  They weren’t filled with beer anymore.  Ugh!. Two cups sitting in the urinal filled with piss.  First, someone thought they may as well toss their empty cups there instead of the garbage then, someone thought instead of avoiding the cups and going to the bathroom someplace where it’s going to go down the drain they would fill up the cups so everyone walking in there has to look at cups of a festival goers urin.  I also love the guy who thinks it’s hilarious to piss all over the seats and floor; especially when there is toilet paper laying around to create a disgusting paper mache type thing caked on the walls and ground or gooey paper/ piss slop balls smothered all over the place.  Thanks guys, real mature. 

The next performance we ended up at was Ben Harper on the Lands End stage.  I sort of forgot he was going to be there.  I was never a big fan of Ben, but he’s a good performer and I enjoyed it enough.  For the first half hour of his performance I thought I was feeling a little better, but all of the sudden I started getting some full on daggers in my stomach.  It was about to happen and there was nothing I could do about it.  Friday night wasn’t quite ready to let me fully enjoy Saturday yet.  I quietly excused myself and hustled through a little tunnel where I knew of a bathroom.  You know, one with actual toilets and running water.  Not so fast, they were overrun by chicks.  Not only that, but the stalls had no doors.  There was a hill with a huge row of port-o-lets.  I remembered Hannah’s sister saying she heard that if you walked to the far end you could find some that were hardly used.  Why someone would wait in line to use a trashed port-o-let instead of walking an extra 20 feet for a clean one is beyond me butI was determined to see if it was true.  I broke out into a minor sweat and was getting goose bumps on my legs.  I didn’t actually see the goose bumps because I was wearing pants, but I could feel them.  I juked through the crowd of people in lines for the more conveniently placed port-o-lets until I noticed a clearing.  The lines started thinning out until there was almost no one.  I walked up to one of them, opened the door and…  amazing, it was like the Ritz Carleton of festival port-o-lets.  It looked untouched.  The toilet paper rolls were still in their wrapper for me to unwrap like it was Christmas morning.  I don’t need to go in to detail about what happened next, but I will tell you that this was the turning point of my weekend.  I was having a good time up until then, but now I was unstoppable. 

I walked back down, grabbed a beer and met back up with our ever growing group.  I was interested in seeing Cake and Primus who were playing on the 2nd and 3rd biggest stages, but I decided I was better off holding down the fort and getting a proper place for Tom Petty at Lands End.  Hannah and I had toyed with the idea of bailing out early so we could rest up for Sunday and I am very glad that we didn’t.  Petty was one of the people that I really wanted to see and he delivered.  When he got up on stage he said everyone knows the words to these songs; sing along and let’s party.  Everyone did.  He basically rocked out for two straight hours busting out as many of his classics as he could fit.  He included the Traveling Wilbury song, End of the Line.  Another highlight was Steve Winwood coming out on stage to sing Gimmie Some Lovin’ with the Heartbreakers.  During the midpoint of the set, I had to run to the bathroom.  As I was scurrying through the crowd I saw a bunch of guys lined up at a fence going.  I was having such a blast watching Petty; I figured I should just go there so I didn’t miss anything.  For whatever reason I brought my beer with me.  I didn’t have any place to put it and because I needed both hands to avoid peeing on anyone; I held the half full beer with my mouth biting on the lip of it.  So I had my guy out, and I was just starting to get going when some dude bumped in to me, knocked the beer out of my mouth and all over my shirt, pants and most importantly by bare naked manhood.  So I did want anyone in that situation would do.  I finished going to the bathroom, grabbed not one but two more beers and headed back to watch the rest of the show with a beer soaked shirt, pants and boxers.  Petty truly is a rock star.  He and the Heartbreakers put on a hell of show.  They know exactly what the crowd came to see and they gave it to them.  Next time he is in town I will certainly try to make it.

There would be no leaving early for us on Saturday night.  Petty was too good.  We left with everyone else and while heading out with the crowd was not fast or fun, it could have been much worse. Hannah’s boss had rented a town car for the evening.  We met up with him a block or two outside of the park, jumped in the car and got a free ride home.  Thank you Steven.  That ride was a life saver. 

Here is a little end of the night side note for Saturday.  I again got home and was starving.  I was also buzzing pretty damn hard and was too fired up to go to bed.  I grabbed a couple of slices of pizza from down the street and checked to see if there were any last minute late night Olympic events.  I was overjoyed to see that the gold medal game for men’s basketball started at 11:30.  Surprisingly, Hannah stayed up and watched it with me and was totally in to it.  As you know the USA came out on top after a closer than expected game.  It was hard rooting for Kobe, but for the sake of the nation I did my part and cheered his every shot.  I can’t wait for the NBA season to start up so I can start my, no means no chants every time he touches the ball.  

Day #3

Sunday morning arrived, and although a little groggy I was feeling pretty good.  I guess staying up late to watch the game helped to sober me up a bit.  As good as I was feeling, Hannah’s idea of getting on the bus by noon to get to the festival was not an option for me.  I needed some time to wake up and shake out the cob webs before getting after it again.  She took off early with her sister while I slept in and grabbed a sandwich.  I eventually left the house a little after 1:00 and was forced to take a cab because the buses were slammed.  I brought myself a flask of vodka because I wanted to save a little bit of cash after an expensive weekend.  It didn’t turn out to save me much considering anything that I would mix the vodka with at the show ended up being only a couple dollars less than a beer. Jason took care of that on Saturday by bringing his own Sprite.   None the less, I snuck it in and met up with Hannah at the Sutro Stage to watch the Mother Hips. 

This was my biggest dilemma of the weekend.  The Hips were playing at the exact same time as Toots and the Maytals who I love.  We agreed on the Hips because there were some friends there we wanted to meet up with at that show and Toots was playing a little longer, so we’d be able to catch the tale end of their show anyway.  We met up with some friends of Hannah’s, and a buddy of mine from work.  The Hips were on top form as always.  They always sound great and put on a consistently fun show.  Unfortunately they only played for a little more than a half an hour.  We then busted our asses over to the Lands End Stage to watch the rest of Toots.  We ran in to our friend Keith on the way, along with some of Hannah’s girlfriends and were treated to Toots belting out Country Roads and 54 46. 

We split up from there and for the next hour or so; Hannah and I just cruised around.  Keith went to go work the booth that Maverick Restaurant had set up.  They were selling pulled pork sandwiches that looked amazing, but with my stomach history for the weekend I thought I was better off keeping with the liquid diet.  I kept buying these frozen lemonades that were basically lemon flavored slush puppies.  They were perfect mixers for the vodka I snuck in considering it was a beautiful day out, easily the best of the weekend.  It was typically weird San Francisco weather.  One end of the park was overcast and the other end was hot and sunny.  There was a large wine tasting tent set up over there which we missed because we were hanging out in the Visa Signature tent.  If you have a Visa Signature card, you and guest are allowed to come in to their tent, hang out at their bar and use their clean bathrooms.  The bathrooms were in these trailers, had real running water and nice wood paneled cabinets. Thank God for thsoe cabinets. On Panhandle Stage (one of the smaller side stages), across from the Visa tent a hip hop group called The Cool Kids was about to go on.  I had heard some good things about them, so we headed out to get a spot.  As we walked out of the Visa tent, I felt this intense pain in my left arm.  I looked down and there was a hornet sticking out of it.  The little fucker stung me without even being provoked.  I didn’t know what to do.  I was holding a beer in my right hand and didn’t want to spill it..  Hannah just stood there looking at me as some dude walked by, saw what was going on and smacked the thing out of my arm.  It hurt so bad.  When looking at my arm it was apparent that I got stung twice.  It immediately swelled up.  After a little bit of whining and a trip to the medical tent, I got over it and when to check out The Cool Kids.  They put on a good show and seemed genuinely happy to be there.  I’m glad I checked them out.

After The Cool Kids (even though they put on a good show, I think the group name is pretty bad, no?) we walked over to the Twin Peaks Stage to get a spot for Wilco.  I was walking around with a baggy of ice on the bee sting and got some unusual looks.  The ice made it feel better.  While I was excited to see Wilco, I was bummed out that I was going to miss Wide Spread Panic and Mike Gordon from Phish.  It would have been cool if one of these bands could have played on Saturday, but what can you do.  A small crew of our friends congregated at the spot that we created and Wilco got on the stage.  They really are a great band.  If you ever get a chance to see them live, you should do it.  They play along well with the crowd and they always sound fantastic.  Not a bad way to close out the festival.  By this time of the day everyone was pretty much off of their rocker and jamming out. 

As Wilco gave their final bow, some people headed towards the Lands End Stage to watch Sunday’s headliner Jack Johnson.  Neither Hannah, me or anyone we were with had any interest in seeing him.  Pretty boring headliner if you ask me.  Jack Johnson seems like a nice guy and it’s not like his music is bad; it just brings absolutely nothing to the table for me.  Anyway, plenty of people seemed to agree with me on this as it was zoo getting out of the park.  As we got away from the masses, Hannah and I took a wrong turn somewhere and ended up taking the long way out of the park.  This ended up working to our advantage as we were dumped out where no one else was.  As luck would have it, a cab rolled by as soon as we got out there.  We hopped in and of course were looking for food.

Because we were too buzzed to really consider price, we had the cabby take us to the Presidio Social Club.  Its close by our place and we both like it quite a bit.  We ordered some wine, I got the sloppy joe and she got the slow braised beef short ribs with egg noodles.  They were both awesome and highly recommended by me.  This isn’t your regular ground beef sloppy joe.  It’s shredded Kobe beef simmered in the sloppy sauce on ciabatta type bread.  Awesome!  We then found it necessary to order the beignets for dessert with a little bit of port to wash them down.   We completely overdid it, but what a way to end a fantastic weekend.  At that point we stumbled home and crashed hard. 

In Closing
Work was beyond miserable on Monday, much more so than usual.  There were definitely a lot of tired eyes in the office as I think half of the city was at the show.  The prices were high, but nothing I didn’t expect and nothing out of the norm.  The lines were a little longer than I would have hoped and think they could have done a better job spacing the acts or at least not have like bands playing at the same time.  Overall though, it was a great weekend and I will be there for all three days next year if it goes down.  If you missed it this year I would highly recommend getting out there for at least one of the days.  Just make sure you go in knowing what you’re getting yourself in to and that it’s going to be a circus.  Thank you Hannah for kicking me in the ass to get out there!  Oh yeah, if you go next year, take the following Monday off.  You’ll thank yourself for it.