Saratoga Springs and Phish, part 1

I left for Saratoga Springs at 8:30. Pog and Simone were heading up too, but they were seeing Phish with Dustin and Amanda on Friday night and I didn't have a ticket. I didn't want to just hang out in Saratoga or Dustin's driveway, so I left with a 4 and a half hour drive ahead of me, knowing that I would get there a little after they got back from the show. Getting a sandwich and gas took a little longer than I had planned, but I was on the way. At one point, while on the phone with my Mom, I drove about 20 minutes in the wrong direction before I figured it out. Awesome. I texted Dustin, letting him know that I'd be later than planned, and he said if they passed out early, he'd leave the door open for me. Then it hit me. The daze of confusion and fury afterwards made me not remember what made me realize it, but I realized it at about 10 at night, right after I got on I-89 around Concord. I had forgotten my ticket. Actually, tickets, as I had a ticket to a Dead Sessions (Grateful Dead cover band) afterparty show too. I pulled over and went through everything in my head. I found my ticket purchase confirmation in my e-mail and called ticketmaster to see what the deal would be with a lost ticket. But they were closed. I debated in my head, and decided that knowing I had the tickets that night and wouldn't have to worry about there being a problem the next day made the most sense to me. I didn't want to spend another 75 bucks on the 2 tickets. I wanted to have the problem solved there and then. SO, I drove back. 

I got back to the house at about 11:45. I showered and brushed my teeth since I was filthy and it was a way to break the night up a little bit. I then hopped back in the car and drove 4 and a half hours straight to Saratoga with no breaks, no food, and nothing to drink other than water. Boy did that drive suck. Heading through the winding, never ending roads of Rutland, VT at 3 in the morning sucked. This was probably the longest I've ever driven at once and it blew. An already-long-enough drive of 230 miles turned into just about 400. Ughk. 

I got there at 4:30, passed out, and slept till about 11. After talking with Dustin's parents a little (and fighting with his Dad who apparently didn't enjoy it when I jokingly called him an asshole), we headed out to the store to get some food for a BBQ. I was bummed out we didn't bike, since part of the reason I had driven the night before was to do so, but Phish shows are tiring enough as they are, so I guess it made sense to not ride. 

At the store, my whole day instantly got better when I saw these: 

I can't get these anymore anywhere in the northeast, since Ruffles is the worst company ever. I was sooo happy to eat them again. I may or may not have left Saratoga with 4 bags.

After eating some sweet BBQ, we headed down to Phish on bikes. Dustin's house is only 3-4 miles from SPAC (Saratoga Performing Arts Center), so we got the pleasure of riding past a billion cars and people walking from faraway parking, right to a spot super close to the entry gate, where Dustin's sister and her crew were already hanging out for hours. It works perfectly. 

the gang heading out

I saw Phish for the first time here 2 years ago. I'm not a HUGE phish fan (PHAN), but I do enjoy the majority of their music and that show made me much more of a fan. They were great live, so I instantly got tickets once they were announced for this year. Dustin kept talking about something I missed out on last time though- Shakedown Street. He said I absolutely had to go this time, so we did. 

The way he described it, I got a picture of what Shakedown Street was, and it looked like a corner of the parking lot where a bunch of hippies were selling homemade clothes, weed pipes and drinks or baked goods with questionable ingredients. I was surprised such a thing existed legally, but assumed it was small enough that it wasn't a big deal. Boy, was I wrong. 

It was essentially a mini fair, with 3 huge rows of people selling pretty much what I had guessed, but with a lot more. Shirts, pizza, falafel, water everywhere (for like 1 dollar instead of 5 in the show), jewelry, precious stones, etc. It was just a full on hippie fair. And it was TERRIFYING. 

Let me tell you about hippies in large groups- they start to look a lot like zombies after awhile. They have weird clothes, they stink, their hair is either stringy and messed up or in nasty dreads. They're on a lot of different drugs, and they often just move in dazed slow motion through crowds. And the interesting thing I noticed about this crowd was that it wasn't just the hippies you'd imagine at a phish show- it basically was every concievable type of stoner you could imagine, from the old deadheads still going to shows after 40 years, to the typical phish-head 30 year old hippies to 311-fan snowboarding kids from college to weird hot topic video game punks with died hair. It was a weird collection of people who had only 2 perceivable things in common- they love weed and they all agree that seeing Phish while high is a good time. 

Here's me (with my hair down because Dustin said I didn't look weird enough), and Sheray and Amanda who were fully dressed for the show:

Some people fully embrace the scene:

Some people look like this:

The last time I went to Phish, I wore an Allman Brothers shirt I found at the Salvation Army as a way to fake fit in. 

Shaun commented on the picture: "for emo shows you wear hatebreed t's for hardcore shows you wear appleseed t's...hippie shows get hippie t's? wtf?" I commented back that if I had owned a Pig Destroyer shit (my favorite band name), I would have worn it, so I decided 2 years later to fulfill that promise and bought the shirt a few days before the show. One guy said "haha pig destroyer" when he passed me, and another an hour later said "Holy shit! Pig Destroyer! I love that band!" much to my excitement. A guy at the bar later gave me props for it too. But other than that, as predicted, I was the only one there with a Pig Destroyer shirt, and most likely 1 of 2 fans. I did see a guy in a Cradle of Filth shirt though. That was surprising.

It was a mess there.

Full of illegal things (sorry, these are TOBACCO PIPES)

And weird ass people.

This guy was especially horrific.

But let me tell you, Shakedown Street was quite the experience. If you want some real culture, go to a Phish show and hang out at Shakedown Street for awhile. Pure culture.

We finally headed into the show and my feet were already starting to hurt before the music started. Notice how this picture is a little hazy? Yea, LOTS of weed. 

Things started getting weirder,

and the show started.

It was a great show. The first set had a lot of stuff I didn't know and lagged a little bit, but the second set redeemed it and was really good. They kept going in and out of "Blister in the Sun" by Violent Femmes, and while I am pretty sick of that song, it was pretty neat to hear it keep showing up out of nowhere. Even if you hate Phish, I feel like it'd be pretty hard to listen to their set and not at the least be extremely respectful of their skill- how ridiculous they are at their instruments and how well they play together. It's truly a sight to see, and I'm in for whenever they play next. Phish shows also aren't as long as people think. Both I've been to where basically 2 hour to an hour and a half sets broken up with a 30-40 minute break in the middle. They aren't normally the 5-6 hour sets you've probably heard rumors of.

Here's some pics. Here's the screen and stage, zoomed in a bit from the top of the hill where we were. My whole body hurt pretty bad from standing on a weird slant the whole night.

Sheray all lit up:

Something that rules about Phish shows is the glowstick wars. People bring hundreds and hundreds of glowsticks and as the night gets darker and the set goes on, they throw them at the explosion of a huge buildup. It's pretty awesome and always absolutely insane just how involved it is- how many people throw them at the same time and how many get thrown. Look closely at this picture, you can see quite a lot of them in the air. The other neat thing is that I didn't see any before this moment. People seem to hide them for some reason.

The show eventually ended after about 3 hours or so, and we reconvened in the parking lot and hopped on our bikes to get out of there ahead of thousands of people. I really loved my trip through the crowds last year and into the city. I figured it'd look pretty cool filmed and brought my gopro. Unfortunately, through filming useless crap at the show and apparently not taking any video off the camera before the weekend (there was stuff going back to December on there- oops), I ran out of space, rendering the gopro useless and just an annoying paperweight in my pocket. 

We headed to D'Andreas, the greatest pizza place ever after a phish show and 3-4 miles of biking afterwards. When we got there, I was like "something is wrong with my bike- the wheel is spinning weird, like it's lose or something, it felt real weird." I picked the bike up, and the tire almost fell out. Apparently the skewer wasn't closed and my tire was loose the entire ride. I rode 3-4 miles with my tire bouncing around loose. I rule. Once it was tightened, the wheel didn't even spin. Apparently I lost a pretty key nut when I was taking the wheel off at the Ashland fireworks a few days before. Good stuff. 

D'Andreas was incredible. Here are 2 really good pictures of Dustin and Amanda while we ate pizza standing outside.

We were pretty exhausted (at least I was), but we had another show to go to. I haven't really ever listened to the Grateful Dead, but Dustin said members of Phish sometimes have sat in with the band and it was the way to keep the party going, so we headed up. The place was packed and the way in was literally the most crowded place I've ever been. It was also about a thousand degrees inside.

At least it looked cool.

While trying to sneak Sheray in without a ticket, Dustin and I went in to look for Pog and Simone. Eventually someone found us and told us that they were outside because Pog had almost died. Huh?

I guess he had some serious heartburn and had been popping TUMs. He realized he'd be dancing in a super hot room and pulled out his inhaler to get some air. After sucking in, he quickly came to the realization that he couldn't breathe. At the time, he thought that a part of the wrapper had shot down his throat and blocked his airhole, but he now says that it may have actually been a TUM, sideways and blocking all his air. He panicked and pointed to his throat in terror. Simone tried to give him the heimlich, but she wasn't able to do it and commenced freaking out and screaming for help. Apparently some guy just came in out of nowhere and gave him the heimlich without Pog even realizing it was happening. It worked. Pog ran to the bathroom and threw up, then came back out to a lot of applause. 

I missed all of this, but Pog told the story to us, choking back tears (pun intended). He had literally had a near death experience, and he was a mixture of intensely happy and full of life while at the same time nearly exploding in tears. I thought he might have been embellishing, but judging by the amount of people who came up and talked to him, apparently it was quite the spectacle. He verged on being annoying just for talking about it so much and saying how much Simone had saved his life and how full of gratitude he was, but it was beautiful being with someone going through that and seeing how happy he was to be alive. He could say whatever he wanted, he could have died. And it kind of ruled to be near such energy. 

He had a great sense of humor about it though, saying that he was really dying to see the band, that he hoped they didn't choke, etc. The guy who saved him's name was Erik with a k, while Pog's name was Erich with a ch for "choke." Good stuff.

Eventually we went back in, and he continued to be hilarious. He also kept buying me drinks, which I just learned he barely even paid for since the bartender charged him like 35 bucks for the entire night (I think he bought me 3 beers alone, who knows how much else he got). The band was ok (still not very into the Dead) but kind of awesome when the guitarist who looked like me sang. So it still ended up being pretty fun. 

absurdly happy

killing it

a second chance at life

Eventually, I was in too much pain, had had too much to drink, and had been standing and watching hippie music for waaaaay too many hours. I was burnt out. I was all full of hippie music (phull). I found a chair and sat in the corner, just staring at the crowd of people, dead. Dustin eventually sat next to me and I started hinting that I'd love to leave. "It's gotta be, what, 2 by now?" I said. "Holy shit, it's 3:45" he said. We left to ride bikes down to phish at around 4 in the afternoon. And now it was 4 in the morning. Wow.

Pog and Simone took a cab back to Dustin's house, while Dustin and I (Amanda and Sheray had left earlier) rode our bikes home at 4 in the morning. Can't say I've ever done that before. My front wheel barely turned, so that was one crappy ride. When we pulled into his driveway, the sun was starting to come up. I guess we know how to party. 

I was covered in filth and knew I wouldn't be able to move the next day without stretching, so I took a shower, brushed my teeth, and did a bunch of stretches at that ridiculous hour. By the time I finally lay in bed, it was 5:30. Needless to say, I slept pretty damn well. 

currently listening to: Lupe Fiasco- "Lasers"