Summerfest

I finally made it to Summerfest on Saturday night. I missed the first weekend due to the Chicago trip [new pictures have been added to that post], and was unable to go during the week because the man was holding me down. (Screw you real world!) For my [one or two] non-Milwaukeean readers, Summerfest is this big annual music festival. I've heard people say that it's the biggest music festival in the world, and based on attendance, it might be; there are like 13 stages on the grounds hosting acts that range from awesome to shitty, it's 10 days long, and it's not geared towards one particular genre of music like Bonaroo (jam bands), Lollapalooza ("alternative" bands, whatever that means), Ozzfest (guys that wear jean shorts), or Countryfest (guys that wear jean shorts and silly hats). At Summerfest, it's not uncommon to see Ludacris and Toby Keith headline on the same stage on consecutive nights. What I like about summerfest is that the bands that headline the smaller stages are the bands that were awesome when I was 13. Saturday night actually presented a dilemma for me because two bands that were wildly popular in my youth, Live and Collective Soul, were both playing at the same time. Actually Guster was playing at that time too, but I saw them last year and preferred the nostalgia that would come with the "alternative" rock stylings of Live or Collective Soul. But which one?

I met some friends for Mexican food and margaritas at Botanna's and then headed into the festival. It was about 125 degrees out and the whole "cooler near the lake" thing was not doing it's job. I think the massive sweaty crowd of chubby Milwaukeeans increased the temp an additional million degrees (to 1,000,125 degrees). After some beer-drinking and people-watching, we ran into some of my old friends from my collegetrack team, most notably, former roomie Kev-O. Kev-O is unique in that his favorite band of all time is... Collective Soul. Who's favorite band is Collective Soul? I mean, I suppose they're a very good band, but all-time favorite? Really? Anyway, this decided it for me. I wanted to see Collective Soul with Kev-O, so my friends and I joined him, his wife B, other former college runner bud R, and really really hot runner chick K. The show was pretty solid. I found that I knew almost all of the songs they played, even though I wouldn't have thought that I would prior to the show. Good times were had by all.

After the show, we walked to The Milwaukee Ale House. This was stupid because we could have easily taken an air-conditioned cab instead of walking [almost] a mile in the 1,000,125 degree heat. But the people I was with were all people I ran with in college, and apparently distance runners from small towns are anti-taxi. Or maybe they just don't get how public transportation works. When I suggested a cab, hot chick K said "ooh, can I call it? like on tv?" and started waving her hand in the air. How cute. But we were overruled by Kev-O and R and settled for a long sweaty stroll.