I suppose that I should wrap up this weekend.
Sasha did quite well in her competition, at least in my opinion. This was a slightly odd mix, there seemed to be a lot of higher-level dancers competing, and Sasha was on the young end. She looked fantastic on the floor, but I don’t know anything about dance so I always think she looks great so sod off. The hotel was way over by the airport, as usual. In Los Angeles, this isn’t a big issue, as the airport is actually in town. But in San Francisco, the airport is 30 minutes out of town, without traffic, so that’s like 2 hours out with traffic.
As such, we really couldn’t just walk around town, or even zip in for a bit. It needed to be a big chunk of the day, which with the dance schedule we didn’t have.
On Saturday morning, Sasha found out that there was a music festival going on in town, and that Deadmaus was playing at 9:30. This actually fit our schedule, so we grabbed tickets, and once competition was over, we caught an Uber into town. The festival was on Treasure Island, which looks to be some kind of old military housing or tuberculosis quarantine or something. The Island doesn’t have the charm of Alcatraz, but it does boast better access, as the I-80 bridge runs over it. There’s actually a nice marina on one end, but the rest looks like the set of The Walking Dead.
The festival was On the shore overlooking Downtown San Francisco. It was a great view, pretty much the money shot of San Fran that you see in every movie opening. It was a small two-stage festival, with a series of food trucks, a silent disco, which is a bunch of people all wearing headphones listening to the same music together and dancing.
No, that doesn’t make any fucking sense to me either. Maybe I’m showing my age, but back in my day we used these old fangled things called “Speakers” to broadcast music through the air. Get off my lawn.
Anyways, the whole place smelled like pot smoke, which made us miss Seattle.
The first two acts we saw were good, but not my style. I didn’t care actually as I just wanted to get out of the hotel, and I was pretty excited to see Deadmaus, so the waiting until his set started could have been anything and that would have been fine. As it was, the other acts were really good. The first was a DJ called Hudson Mohawke. It was loud, with lots of lights. I paired this music with a large glass of Strongbow Hard Cider. The pairing was good, the pounding bass of the DJ made ripples across the ice of the plastic glass accented the tart apple flavors of the cider.
KFA Twiggs was up next. She sang some kind of high-powered pop with what looked like modern dancing and lots of fog and wind effects. She took a pause halfway through her set to thank everyone for being such great fans and introduced her band and family and such. She seemd nice. Then she sang and gyrated some more. I went for another drink. I found a Jack Daniels booth that did a mix with hard cider, the Hot Cinnamon flavored whiskey, and a cinnamon stick. Near that was a bacon stand. I bought a cup of bacon. Apple, Cinnamon, Whiskey, and Bacon. This gets the Mark seal of approval.
The crowds were surprisingly open and mellow. Lots of dancing, but nobody rushed the stage or anything like that. So Sasha moved up to the front of the main stage to get away from her boring dad, and I hung back a few feet in the crowd. We basically skipped one act over on the second stage to get this good position, but it was worth it.
The show was a fantastic stage and sound setup. Big lights, screens, and of course a few Mouse heads. At one point Deadmaus had “Left Shark” and some Alcatraz guy and a hot dog bring him beer and a couch and they danced. No I did not make that up. His set went on for an extra half hour. Well worth the wait and money. The crowds broke up after that, and we were still surprised at how orderly and mellow the whole thing was. it was a pretty low-key festival, which was nice compared to some of the madness that I’ve seen at other events. It took a long time to get a shuttle off the island, then we caught an Uber back from Downtown to the hotel. We got in by12:40, which was not bad at all.
A really good time for a last-minute activity.
Cognitive Dissonance 