Southside Music Festival

The weekend of June 23-24: legendary in local circles for torrential rain.  Gumboots are the name of the game when dealing with the massive crowds of inebriated fans at the Southside Music Festival, and a rainjacket is a must.  

However, I was lucky - the sun decided to shine all weekend, reflecting gloriously off my you-wish-your-teeth-were-that-white skin

A festival's worth of food and clothing

Gearing up for adventure

Me, Kathi, Lisa, Andreas.  The Canadian can't take the heat.  

Since we left late Friday morning, we were one of the last cars to arrive.  Finding a campsite was an hour-and-a-half long ordeal, but we eventually got our 4-person tent set up (after another 2 hours of struggling with the frustrating puzzle that are pre-hoop tents).

Scenery en route

Yes, we actually called home before winging it

Success!

Drinking commenced, and we moseyed on over to the concert grounds to see a couple amazing shows:

Grand Entrance

"Flooorreennnccee!!!" - Hat girl repeatedly throughout Florence and the Machine

That ain't orange juice - we were only allowed Tetra Paks on concert grounds

Live screening of Germany-Greece game

Beardyman - Check him out

JUSTICE!!! Legendary show

Saturday was much the same, with music festival activities going ahead full steam.

A couple of our neighbours

Niveau Free Zone (No Class Zone)

Urinals were a little gnarly here..

Sunset at The XX

Katzenjammer

Lisa and Kathi on the big screen! 

Cellphone charging station - humourously depressing.  Didn't stay.  

Floating on crowd 9 at Aoki

At 3am on Saturday night, I had been asleep for about 20 minutes at the campsite when the rest of the crew came rolling in.   I hear cries of "BEN!! Wake up!!"  "RAVIOLI!!  RAVIOLI!!."  There wasn't much I could do to argue with such a good-natured group of drunks, so I hauled myself out of bed to watch them light the grills, cook the cans of ravioli, and talk and listen to music until the first glow of the morning sun.  After waking up, we were a bit slow getting the day started:

Nutella, cookies and orange juice

Andreas and his Ravioli

Sunday was the last day of the festival, with a few good concerts and some reasonable mid-day alcohol intake.  

Our neighbours left a little mess.

Puppeteers with a sense of humour

Bungee jumping done differently

Annnd all of a sudden it was concert time

YEAH!  ORANGE JUICE!   Don't judge a book by the cover.  

Sunday's lineup: Wolfmother, Rise Against, Sebastian Live, Blink 182 and Bassnectar.   Wolfmother was amazing, and the Germans throw together some pretty awesome mosh pits.  They're very strict about people not entering the massive circle that opens up in the crowd until the beat drops, and on some occasions all drop to one knee in the middle of the show, waiting:

We made it home by 1am, and I somehow managed to survive a full day at work on Monday!