Tuesday, August 4, 2015

Oh Shit, Osheaga

I have this thing where I like to talk about how I may be approaching 40 but I still feel like a 20-something inside. Like, I still dress the way I did in college and I like the same things (video games, rock music, drinking) that I did in college. That's what I kept telling myself as I traipsed through Parc Jean-Drapeau this past weekend surrounded by girls in bikini tops, cut-off shorts that left their ass-cheeks hanging out, shirtless bros, tank-top bros, and tons of other people who looked like they'd been transported from the set of some MTV Spring Break show. The unfortunate truth though, was that age gets you. Despite how "young" you feel inside, shit changes and it's often in a really surreptitious way. Suddenly you find yourself annoyed by shit that the carefree, young person you think you are wouldn't be. Bros and bras pushing their way to the front of the crowd as if the rest of you aren't there to see the same thing. Lack of toilet paper in the port-o-potty. That kind of thing.

It sucks to realize you're old in the middle of something like Osheaga. I think if I had had that realization earlier, I would have adjusted my expectations and my subsequent actions. I would not, for example, have attempted to roll deep into the crowd for some shows. I would have been that person with a blanket sitting on the hill far enough away to avoid the crowd but close enough to see the performer on the screens and hear the music. Maybe.

On the other hand, there is such a thing as too young though. I saw peeps there with their newborns, and toddler-aged kids, and I was like, "...the fuck, dude?" I kinda get it. My kid is 4 and I remember schlepping her to restaurants and stuff like that hell bent on proving that having a kid doesn't in fact mean the end of You. Except, it kinda does. You can put hearing protection on your kid (kudos to the ones who did that btw) but you can't block their nasal passages from inhaling tons of second-hand smoke from Senior Tobacco and his whacky cousin, Tobacco Loco, both of which were in abundance and pretty unavoidable if you were anywhere near a crowd of people listening to music.

So, what was Osehaga?

It was fun in that I got to experience a bunch of bands that I either would not have gone to see on my own or that I had simply never heard of. For example, I'd have to be mental to even attempt to see Tyler the Creator (and also I simply wouldn't pay a lot of money for that shit), but I got to see him at Osheaga from a safe distance. I've missed Father John Misty when he came through town and thought nothing of it, even though a friend recommended him. I saw him at Osheaga and damned if I'm not a believer. I hate St. Vincent's music, but I saw her stage performance because one my buddies is in love with her and it was actually interesting and entertaining. She's an amazing guitarist (but I still hate her music).

It was frustrating at the marks of entrance and exit, because there were sooooo many people there. Trying to get in and out of that place was an exercise in supreme patience...which a lot of people lacked. During the day people entered the festival in waves, so while there was ALWAYS a mob getting onto the train, trying to squeeze through the station exits, through the security checkpoints and finally into the festival, when it was time to leave it was pretty much everyone doing this at once. It was miserable. We shuffled shoulder to shoulder, ass to front like a wave of drunken, tired zombies. At least some of us did. Others of us thought that we deserved to get to the front no matter what and just tried to shove our way through.

This leads nicely into my biggest issue (and why I probs wouldn't go again)...

Holy entitled white girls, Batman!

Ahem. Sorry. But look man...you know who I'm talking about. If you've ever been to a concert and seen the girls dancing and sashaying their way through the crowd, drink held aloft and "woooos" emitting from their mouths like some sort of It Girl siren, you know them. Or maybe you met their slightly lower key sisters, the ones who come plowing through the crowd with their hands firmly clasped together saying, "My friends are up there." What do you call them? Bras? Broettes? Bro sisters?

Whatever the term, those bitches suck.

It's really annoying to be standing in a tightly-packed crowd watching a show, and having people continuously shoving past you searching for that mythical "extra" space ahead. It disrupts your enjoyment of the show and for me, fills me with a white hot rage at the notion that they think the tickets they purchased somehow hold a larger cosmic value than mine. They're the kind of girls who would look me up and down and say some low value shit like, "Whatever, you're just mad because you're fat and I'm hotter than you." Well sure, being fat and unattractive makes me mad, but it doesn't somehow absolve you of the fact that you're a bitch. The two don't cancel each other out or anything. It's cool that you're hot (or that you believe you are), but how about using your powers for good instead of evil?

Some of the dudes were just as bad with that crowd-shoving shit, and harder to stop. The chicks are counting on their looks to stop people from saying anything —which works because Bros were like, "No problem" and actually stepping on people around them to make non-existent space because Hope— and Bros were counting on no one wanting to get stomped. I went to a couple of shows that I was sure would be Bro-free zones, but there they were. Florence and the Machine?! Why are Bros at Florence and the Machine? Surrounded by Bros and Bras alike no one catches the irony when St. Vincent says something like, "Hello to all the freaks and artists and queers and dominants and submissives", essentially giving a shout-out to the Others. Like...notice she didn't say "Hey Kappa Gamma Alpha Epsilon!" Or, "Hey gurrrllll!"

Whatever. I kept my cool and stayed at the back of the crowd. I drank away my old-person hang-ups about being pushed and shoved. That worked, except at the end of the second night when I tried to see Kendrick Lamar. That's gonna have to be a separate post though, because that shit was serious for me and I've tried to keep this on a light note.

Ultimately, Osheaga was fun and I'm glad I did it at least once. I got to see some awesome bands that I knew and others that I'd never heard of. I got to do the kind of thing I would have liked to have done when I was younger but was too broke to do. Although there were plenty of Bros and Bras, there were also smaller segments of hippie chicks and stoners and grown-ups and hip-hop heads and gay dudes and lesbians and other counter-culture types. We were just in smaller supply. Would I do it again?

Who's playing?