big day out

yesterday was big day out – a day long music festival. i was thinking how i’ve been to 4 BDOs (and damn, it could have been 5 had au immigration been a bit faster with my visa!) and yesterday’s was quite different from the others.

first the location was different. due to construction work at the fair grounds (um, sorry, showgrounds), it was held in a large park near one of the unis (large but still smaller than the showgrounds). i figured it would be very crowded, long lines for beer, crap toilet facilities and was worried about the sound bleed since the 8 stages were all very close to each other. turns out sound bleed was really the only problem. the area wasn’t anywhere near as big as the showgrounds but didn’t feel crowded (the age sez it was a 38k sold out crowd) . having grass all around was nice but kim & i missed the pie!

another difference was the crowd. we noticed pretty early on there were a lot of older people there. older as in 30-40 but also 50+. they absolutely outnumbered the fairy/angel wing wearing young girls. we contributed this to iggy pop and possibly the more central location.

also, the presence of families. we were watching beasts of bourbon and had a grey haired 60ish guy carrying a latte go past followed by his woman and their daughter (granddaughter?) who looked to be about 10-12. the age also has an
article about families attending. a bit slanted considering the first family they highlight is the family of one of the guys in the beasts of bourbon band.

not to say the kids weren’t there. there were fairy wings and furry boots!! one of our fav moments was during white stripes when the 3 15ish yo boys in front of us decided they wanted a better view. the one crouched down so the other could get up on his shoulders. obviously they hadn’t watched how this was done (or as kim said… didn’t have older brothers/sisters) because the kid tried to leap frog onto the guy’s shoulders. totally didn’t get the leg over method. i sooo wish i would have been able to whip out the video cam for that.

i have pix of course (god, i’ve been v slack on the pix thing of late) but i thought i’d test out aussie acceptance of web2.0 and check flickr. there are bdo pix there but it seems folks haven’t cottoned on to the tagging yet (u have to look at the pix to see if they’re from melb or syd or wherever and some aren’t dated so there’s bdo 2005). some good ones though…

a protest against the sniffer dogs. for the first time melb cops were outside with 2 sniffer dogs checking folks.

of course i loved MR ORANGE.