Fitting In With Hipsters

Saturday
By Saturday I’d gotten the “shower” thing down. It took about 4 water bottles to wash my hair, and about 5 wet wipes to get “clean.” I was also battling a slight sunburn on my shoulders, despite my multiple applications of sunscreen during the past two days. It wasn’t enough to bother me a ton but enough to keep me diligent about the sunscreen.

Many of the shows we wanted to see didn’t start until rather late in the day Saturday, so we hung around the tent for a while waiting for the sun to start going down before we walked over to Centeroo. I want to say we didn’t walk over until about 5pm (I could be remembering this wrong, though – seems like we were constantly in the sun). Cat Power went on at 6:15 so we all hung out for a little while and observed the one girl we found who fit in less at Bonnaroo than we did. And by ‘we’ I mean Jenn … Happy Lights, anyone?!

Bonnaroo Life Lesson #5: If you’re trying to fit in at Bonnaroo, don’t pack a peanut butter sandwich in your fanny pack. 
General Life Lesson #6: Burn all fanny packs.

Cat Power was great, but she didn’t sing Cross Bones Style or The Greatest, so I was kinda ticked about that. The Lumineers came on after Cat Power. They were amazing. They even came out into the audience close to where we were standing and sang a couple of songs. This just made the crowd migrate to where we were, but it was still SO cool! However, after they went back on stage, the crowd that had migrated toward us didn’t go back to where they came from and I was forced to stand beside a meathead having an identity crisis. He looked like he spent way too much time at the gym trying to out-exercise his diet. And was failing. He also had gauges in his ears and a full-grown beard. He didn’t know all the words to the songs but sang them anyway. Badly. He was also a terrible dancer, and every time his arm touched mine, I could feel the prickles from the hair he shaved that had grown out over the weekend. Ew. The weekend had started to get to me by this point.

Bonnaroo Life Lesson #7: Standing in the back isn’t always a bad thing.

After The Lumineers Rachel and I walked back to the tent while Jennifer and Meagan went to see Jack Johnson. This was supposed to be Mumford & Sons, but they had to cancel. Jack Johnson was not an equivalent replacement, and we just didn’t care enough to deal with the crowds. We decided to go back and put on our Molly t-shirts we got the night before just to see what would happen.

We were actually pretty popular with the crowd on the way back to Centeroo to see Billy Idol. Whether or not it was a ‘good’ popular or not, we may never know. But it was the most recognition any of those Bonnaroovians paid us and we felt like we fit in for the first time since being there. Though looking back now, they could probably see right through us. We made a few friends on the walk there but had no drugs to sell them, so our friendships were short-lived.

Bonnaroo Life Lesson #8: When in doubt, wear a t-shirt with a drug reference on it. You can’t go wrong.

Once we got to Centeroo, we realized we had no idea what stage Billy Idol was playing on, so we walked around to try and find it. For some reason we kept going in circles, so we finally had to stop and ask some people where it was. It was an older couple, and they pointed us in the right direction. They knew immediately where Billy was playing and were probably on the way to see him themselves. By the time we finally got to his stage, we were exhausted from all the walking we’d just done, so we stayed for two songs and went back to the tent.

Bonnaroo Life Lesson #9: Never forget your schedule.