http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=8318311&BRD=1614&PAG=461&dept_id=161052&rfi=6
Happiness mushrooms at Bonnaroo
From Staff and Wire Reports June 14, 2003
MANCHESTER - Highs off "acid," "crack" and "hash" wasn't what the Partridge Family had in mind when they recorded "C'mon, Get Happy" for their hit 1970s television series.
But that's exactly what some people unfortunately had in mind for the Bonnaroo music festival, judging from early drug arrest reports.
Anyone denying that there's drugs here has to be burying their head in the sand, Coffee County Sheriff Steve Graves said Friday afternoon, a few hours after the festival got underway.
"They only have to look at the upsurge in the number of drug arrests which we and surrounding police agencies approaching Bonnaroo are making," Graves said.
Barely into the first day of concert activity, authorities at Manchester alone had made more than 50 drug cases, some involving multiple arrests.
"Curiously enough, there are some drugs we have seized that haven't been seen around here in any quantity for several years," Graves noted.
One concert goer reportely was caught with a cache of LSD, mushrooms, ecstacy, hashish, marijuana, valium, xannax and drug paraphernalia worth an estimated $60,000.
"We are issuing citations in the smaller seizures because the Coffee County Jail wouldn't hold all of them," Graves said.
"About the best we can do is to reduce the amount of drugs going in to the festival site to help keep things under control as much as possible."
Most seizures were from people carrying drugs for personal or recreational use by friends, he said.
But others were in large quantities clearly intended for resale. Felony possession charges are made in those incidents.
Some 800 festival goers were reported treated for drug overdoses at on-site medical facilities last year but there were no serious incidents or fatalities.
Eighty thousand tickets were sold this year and more than 70,000 converged on the 600-acre site on the outskirts of Manchester despite adverse weather forecasts of a mudfest.
Tickets sold for $160. The festival was a sellout.
While traffic congestion was nowhere as bad as last year, it was heavy enough.
One visitor said it took most of Thursday night to move 20 miles up I-24 from Winchester to the campsite.
But traffic jams created the oportunity for some "cool stop and go gravel road parties," he said.
Vendors hawking about everything from food to drink, clothing to jewelry and drums to beads could be seen lining the approaches and everywhere on site.
One entrepreneur sold a mixture of pure grain alcohol, rum and Mountain Dew which he called "firewater" at $3 a throw to pay for his ticket.
Enough people topped off tanks with the firewater to leave the vendor a tidy profit.
http://www.metropulse.com/dir_zine/dir_2003/1325/t_eye.html
Down and Dirty after Bonnaroo
Ellen Mallernee reports on breaking camp at Bonnaroo. I'm barefoot now. My flip-flops got irretrievably wedged in the mud earlier today when I was dancing at the North Mississippi All-Stars? show, and I had to abandon them there along with dozens of other sunken pairs.
My arms and legs are smeared with dark Bonnaroo mud. I have a wicked sunburn, and I'm dying for a shower (as it's been four days now) and for the use of bathroom that kindly flushes away the waste of all those who came before me. My muscles have a pleasant ache from sitting in traffic for 12 hours, trudging the dusty Bonnaroo roads, and dancing as uninhibitedly as I ever have.
I am now wretchedly broke. After food, water, beer and supplies, I spent the last of my money on a clean dress, a veggie tofu wrap and four bags of ice. I realize that at Bonnaroo I'm not supposed to care that I'm dirty and stinky and dancing with sheer glee?everyone else is too. So I try to disregard my trivial worries. More importantly, I tell myself, I've spent the last four days pushing through a community of 80,000 smiling hippie-pretenders to get a more intimate view of the performers who have marked my evolution as a person.
I've already dismantled most of our camping supplies and am sitting in our last remaining tent?a mesh number with a table and five chairs, our living room for the last few days. I nurse a vicious splinter in my foot, drink a beer, and talk with a strange guy who has ambled into our tent on account of the Radiohead song blaring from our boom box.
He tells me he has been sitting in the grass across the way for five hours waiting for his brother. He is awash with pride when he tells me that he's "a local" who snuck into the festival. And still, it surprises me that Manchester natives are so enthusiastic about admitting whole armies of rebel-rousing folks into its modest limits. He gives me cigarettes in exchange for a beer and my company.
We watch my inebriated neighbor in the grassy area next to us. He is constructing his shelter from three nearby trash cans, the discarded back seat of a car, and a piece of plywood. He yells incoherent things, flails about and throws the trash barrels down like Hollywood version of a caveman would. He is obviously sick from the beating sun, innumerable drugs, and a sleepless night. Finally, content with its makeshift arrangement, he crawls inside his cave of trash and passes out, his blond head poking out from the rubble, his cheeks ruddy, his lips agape. Though this initially strikes me as pee-in-my-pants funny, I'm sure that in the end it'll only leave a sad impression on me like so many things that I've seen at Bonnaroo.
Perhaps most disturbing was the sunburned three-month-old baby suckling her mother under Saturday's unyielding sun while she yelled out, "Tequila! Only a buck a shot!" Or perhaps the couple sitting Indian-style outside their R.V. sniffing lines of cocaine. Either way, I've seen sights that have made my heart drop.
But I came for the music and the camaraderie, and no doubt I've found it here. Most everyone seems light-hearted; their step is light and hellos are frequent. Generosity runs as rampant as the drugs do here; people pass bottles of water and spray-mist strangers' blistered shoulders with water bottles.
I pride myself on thinking that I've spent the past three days at the Woodstock of my generation and that I've survived a test of all my senses and limits. But I've breathed as much marijuana as I have air; I've fought off a tenacious bout of allergies, and I've slept as little as my body will allow. Frankly, I'm tired. Though The Dead are set to play tonight, I decide I want to go home. Now. Home to my bed and a shower and my two cats who wind circles around my ankles.
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=8385026&BRD=1616&PAG=461&dept_id=160076&rfi=6
http://tennessean.com/entertainment/music/bonnaroo/archives/03/06/34495722.shtml?Element_ID=34495722
http://www.indianastatesman.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2003/06/16/3ef0ba3d77131
http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/news/2003-06-15-bonnaroo_x.htm
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=8299120&BRD=1614&PAG=461&dept_id=161052&rfi=6
http://www.cmj.com/articles/display_article.php?id=39327
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Edited by motaman (06/19/03 05:36 PM)
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