I said I would never do it again.
However, there I was on Sunday with the same grimy and unwashed feeling and looking at thousands of people from all walks of life united for the love of music.
This time, I happened to be at Three Sisters Park in Chillicothe for Summer Camp ’09, a much smaller scale event than the first time I decided to brave the crowd and chaos of a music festival.
Ten years ago this July, three friends and I decided to purchase tickets to Woodstock ’99 and drive cross-country to upstate New York.
Armed with a media pass, I took in the sights and sounds for three days of music from a diverse mix of hundreds of performers such as Sheryl Crow, Moby, James Brown, Metallica, Red Hot Chili
Peppers and Snoop Dogg.
I have many fantastic memories from that weekend, many of which are captured from the photos and front page story I did for my hometown paper at the time.
Although I don’t regret going, three days of sleeping in a car and without a proper shower or bathroom is not my idea of a good time.
I have never been the camping or outdoorsy type of person. “Roughing it” is not really in my vocabulary.
So, while my media pass gave me front row access for photos of many of the acts and helped offset the cost of a pricy admission, it also gave us privileged parking. We didn’t have to camp with the other 200,000 people.
This meant I didn’t have to watch the festival revelers take extremely public group showers together, live in cramped tent quarters or have all my clothing reek of patchouli or whatever other substance was being brewed in the woods.
Basically, I missed out on the entire experience of going to an outdoor music festival. Am I OK with this? Yes.
I watched people get initiated into becoming one of the “mud people” by being thrown into a large group of moshing concertgoers covered in slop.
I watched a man stomping around the grounds completely stark naked. Nudity was not a shocking sight that weekend, but he looked really angry about it, like his clothes had been stolen from him.
I cannot imagine my reaction if either incident or the other random acts of craziness I witnessed happened to me. Yet, here I was worried about trying to wash my hair each morning with a cup of water and a sample bottle of shampoo or getting the dirt taste out of my mouth.
Luckily, we were already in our rented SUV on the last night of the festival when violence and large fires broke out, shutting down the event and becoming what Woodstock ’99 was ultimately known for.
We stopped at a hotel that night just so we could get clean and sleep in a real bed, and I have never again in the 10 years that followed seen dirt literally roll off my body and down the drain.
I was only at Summer Camp for a little over an hour and felt the need to shower immediately. My toes, my eyes and my face were covered in dust.
Even if I didn’t have the camera around my neck and my media pass, I would’ve stood out like a sore thumb because I know I looked annoyed.
When I was leaving, some guy in dreadlocks and bright pajamas told me I had “dropped my smile on the ground.” It was a rare moment, but I didn’t even have a comeback.
I happened to run into a girl I know there who said she and her husband live only a little less than a mile from Three Sisters Park, so they came to the festival each day but were able to walk home and sleep in their own bed and get clean.
That would be a perfect scenario for me because I think Woodstock tested my limits.
I’d like to think of myself as quite a big music aficionado and I still love going to concerts, but I think my need of control over my surroundings and vanity far outweighs my love of music in the end.
When I buy a concert ticket, I’d rather sit in a seat in a clean theater or arena.
I applaud the thousands of festivalgoers who could stick it out for three days at both Summer Camp and Woodstock. It shows true dedication and commitment to the arts.
However, I’ll stick with the CDs for now. I’m OK with being a vain wimp.
Chillicothe, Ill. —
