The nation collectively celebrated a holiday last weekend – no, not Memorial Day, Bottlerock in Napa! Like Coachella, Bottlerock hosts a musical and culinary extravaganza where millennials and old folks alike can dress like the cast of Almost Famous and overlook the Red Hot Chili Peppers’s rocky legal history with sexual battery, indecent exposure, and disorderly conduct in the name of catchy rock melodies. And unlike Stagecoach, most attendees are literate and acknowledge there’s no such thing as reverse racism.
Music festivals are like my wedding day if I had any semblance of interest in marriage. Preparation included vigilantly examining the Bottlerock schedule; selecting the most-coveted artists with minimal overlap; investigating their recent concert setlists; constructing a Spotify playlist featuring those exact songs. Me, obsessive? Never.
But I had to keep my music devotion on the DL because festivals are about being basic and you can’t rep basic bitches everywhere if you actually know the lineup. Just ask any girl clogging up your feed with 3 consecutive Instagram posts*: this event is obviously just an excuse to wear big floppy hats (flower crowns are so 2013), dabble in cultural appropriation (nothing complements your new balayage like a classic Native American headdress!), and record videos of yourself lip-syncing to the only Walk the Moon song you know (probably “Shut Up and Dance”). I’m assuming there’s a thesis out there on how the number of selfies one snapchats is inversely proportional to how much they give a shit about the music they shelled out $350+ for.
*With captions including but not limited to:
- We out here
- Napa vibes
- Festival vibes
- Good vibes
- #squad
Key takeaways:
- Human beings are innovative, resilient creatures… when drugs and alcohol are involved. That strict ‘no booze’ policy will prove futile, as Cyndi Lauper would say, time after time.
- Personally, I’m a fan of the classic ‘mini hotel shampoo bottles filled with tequila stowed away in the inside pocket of your leather jacket bunched up at the bottom of your backpack’ trick.
- Which was foolproof… until Day 3 when security apparently got bored and actually searched my loot.
Security (inspecting the shampoo bottle): Does this have alcohol in it?
Me: Uh, no, it’s empty.
Security: It’s cold.
Me (feigning surprise): Is it really? How odd!
Security: (looks at me for a few minutes)
…….
(looks at the bottle)
…….
Whatever, just go in.
- On the subject of festival ingenuity, at last year’s Outside Lands a couple of my friends requested we fasten our wristbands snugly so they could trim off the ends. Those pieces were then collected and delivered to Chinatown where a woman was paid to sew them together… therefore resembling completely new wristbands.
- They glided through security swiftly and nonchalantly and the festival was none the wiser. Talk about American heroes.
- Anyway, Bottlerock, much like Outside Lands, attracts an older, more wrinkled crowd.
- Another grievance with the 40+ demographic: they had zero chill about people worming their way through the audience. I.e. a few of us dipped out for a quick restroom break, and when we attempted to return to our crew, countless randoms went all Gandalf/”YOU SHALL NOT PASS” on us.
- I didn’t grapple with much aggression directly because my RBF remains in full force, but several of my friends were dished sass like: “There’s NO ROOM, stop trying to go through” and “I’ve been waiting here for 5 HOURS” and “You better not block MY VIEW over here!”
- To which I wondered, have these commoners never attended a concert before? Refill your Xanax prescription, Karen. Damn.
- Luckily, the majority of Bottlerockers weren’t so Les Mis and fully embraced the festival spirit.
- When I was ridin’ solo for Day 1’s Houndmouth show, a group of 20-somethings approached me: “Do you need anything? Alcohol? Weed? Snacks?” I took off my sunglasses. “What kind of snacks are we talking?”
- We became fast friends.
- I regret to say it was tragically unbasic of me, but I boarded the shuttle bright and early each morning alone to catch the first music sets at noon. Some sage advice: DO THIS. Sure, you sacrifice a few z’s (but who actually rests at these festivals anyway? That’s what Adderall is for!) but a) life is richer when you’re capable of enjoying your own company and b) with all of the miscellaneous drugs people are consuming, you’ll have strangers exclaiming, “We should be best friends!” at every show you attend anyway.
- Plus, you’re basically breathing distance away from the musicians. There was a gathering of maybe 15 of us for an intimate Bird Dog performance where I danced front and center beside a 2-year-old boy who was evidently already more of a badass than I’ll ever be.
- More random observations: I feel like my grandparents listened to The Lumineers in the 1930s, Lenny Kravitz’s performance was a sexual awakening for every man, woman, and child (“I think I’m pregnant?” -my thoughts 5 minutes into the show), and Florence Welch is less of a person and more of a mythical forest nymph as she pranced on stage in her dandelion-yellow sundress and effortlessly belted out notes that would make even Stalin weep.
The Art of Being Basic 