I jumped at the chance to attend the biggest music festival in the Bay Area with uncharacteristic eagerness! These big deal Multi-band shows are really not my style, but the OUTSIDE LANDS FEST is held at Golden Gate Park, San Francisco’s premier green haven, and I had a very special tour guide! My friend Beth was going to photograph the bands and cover the event for the Monterey Herald, and she is a veteran of this annual happening. She has been there from the start, some ten years ago!

We arrived early and found the first bands playing at four different stages, each one planted in a separate area, miles away from the others. Everything appeared to be pristine, well organized and plentiful: lots of food, beverages, music and other side shows and toilets! It was good to see this part of the show, for it never was visible again in its entirety, once the throngs arrived.

We spent the day wandering from stage to stage, so that she could shoot the bands from the press pit up front. My job was to hold down the fort (her stuff and mine) and observe. I took some photos myself, and did a lot of listening and watching the crowds. There were a lot of families with kids, babies in slings, curly haired boys with painted faces and a few brave dogs. But mostly it was a young hip crowd, wearing high boots to beat the dust, lots of bare legs, hats, wild shirts, no shirts + great tats, a few beautiful slinky women and one guy in particular who stole my heart. He was unaware, as I shot him in profile.

We visited a couple of circus type shows, one with a sword swallower and a woman walking on razors. We enjoyed some mimes and found lots of stores with souvenirs. I promised a cool shirt for my brother (the veteran of a thousand such shows) and stood in a long line where they used an iPad for the credit cards! Pretty cool.

As the day wore on, we repaired to the Press Tent, which proved to be a haven when the crowds reached huge capacities. We watched from above the fray, sipping on cool drinks and enjoying some snacks provided by the festival. We even had a real bathroom with running water, soap and a mirror! This is a luxury at a rock festival, unless you happen to be the headliner!

Perhaps the most amazing thing to me was the number of people slammed into the fields, moving as one, thousands of heads bobbing. It was almost impossible to walk through the throngs in the late afternoon, and someone said that this is no place for the claustrophobic!

The music was great and we saw some familiar faces, but at the end of the day, we made our escape like thieves in the night, winding quickly through the crowd before the end of the show, in a huge field covered with lasers in multicolored beams! Climbing up the hill to our lucky parking spot, we turned to watch the masses begin to exit behind us, and sped off into the night.

Saturday evening on the road is hairy enough, with several accidents and traffic snarls on the way to Monterey, but we looked back at the bedlam that had become a music festival, and decided we got the very best part of it! Everyone has to go at least once! It’s a rite of passage.