Bumbershoot is the new awesome

Contrary to what the past several posts might indicate, I am still alive and well and have fully functioning fingers with which to take photos and gossip about myself on the internet. I have been in Seattle for the past week with the magazine i work for to man a booth at the Bumbershoot Festival, but now am back in SF and ready to talk all about it.
While in Seattle, we stayed with the lovely Cindy who was kind enough to lend us her basement. (She does a bang-up job of describing the weekend on her blog as well)

There were a lot of great reasons to stay at cindy's place:

We all nerded out on our laptops while eating eggo waffles and lucky charms for breakfast every morning.

I got to shower behind and take photos in front of her infamous shower curtain

The mint chocolate chip icecream and klondike oreo icecream sandwiches were plentiful

And the 2 am scrabble competitions were intense.


The Festival itself was so much fun. There was so much to see and do that I can't even talk about all of it, but here are many of the categories of awesome that were experienced:

The Booth
We sponsored the indie market section of the festival, so we were pretty much a big deal.

we were situated right in front of the UtiliKilts booth, where they proportedly "sell freedom" in the form of pleated man skirts. I saw guys dropping their pants all day to admire their ankles in one of these. I can't even tell you how many i saw sold (though I bet half of them will never actually be worn). You should know that the kilts come in leather, basketball jersey, tuxedo, and so many more styles that you will be sure to find the one that really suits your every need.

As we were getting our booth set up I said, "i wish i had a step ladder or something so i could hang our shirts and posters from the rafters here." I must have had some good karma wishes stored up (which means it is a pity that I didn't wish aloud for a million dollars) because immediately this 7 foot tall man in a "do i look like a freaking people person" tank top came lumbering over and hung everything up for us.

Aaron gave out so many magazines.

We had a shirt-making part of the booth too, and Cindy modeled her wares around all day long

This lovely fountain sprayed impressive amounts of water over people in various states of dress all day long. I tried to convince aaron and cindy to compete in a wet teeshirt contest with me but they totally wimped out.

The Entertainment:
We got to check out the People Talking & Singing 826 Seattle benefit with some truly hilarious spoken performances by Dave Eggers, Sarah Vowell, John Hodgman (the PC from the PC vs Mac ads), Daniel Handler (Lemony Snicket), and some musical magic by Smoosh (those fetuses that think they are rock stars), Zach Rogue (Rogue Wave), Stephin Merritt (Magnetic Fields), Colin Meloy (Decemberists) and none other than Ben Gibbard (Death Cab, duh). The best thing is that they all performed their own stuff, but also did a lot together. It was really fun(ny).

I saw just a little music at the festival too: New Pornographers, Spoon, and Blondie.

The Food.
We enjoyed some delicious shishkaberries dipped in yummy chocolate. They had the basics, as well as treats such as the "Halle Berry" (white and dark chocolate mix) and one really good one dipped in oreos.

Aaron and Mike had a battle of iconic good vs. evil shiskaberries.

We are lucky that we didn't poke anyone's eyes out with these things.


The Shopping.
There was so much great shopping. They had an entire room for Flatstock, the handscreened poster show. I got a few things from the fine folks at Hammerpress.

...a few sewn masterpieces from the folks at Ruffeo Hearts Little Snotty.

..and a great Orange Peel Enamel necklace that I love.


The Art.
I finally got to see a piece done by Knitta, a fiber arts graffiti group famous for "tagging" things by covering them with knitted pieces wrapped around anything from car anntennaes to public monuments and apparently metro underpass structures.


The Friends.
Half the fun of working there in the middle of Seattle at a huge music festival, is who knows what kind of old faces you are going to run into? Like Leslie and David and Leslie's sister Sarah?

Or Paul and Caroline Carruth and Nathaniel? We all enjoyed our VIP cards that got us into special places with plates of free drinks and all the goldfish you could eat, as well as into the front of any show. Just by flashing that card!

We decided to get away from the Bumbershoot madness for a little while and visit Nathaniel, and had to take a ferry to get there!

We ate hamburgers and played an intense game of Ninja Ball, which entails throwing golf balls on strings around a three-tiered structure and counting points for any golf ball string that wraps itself around one of the rungs. Behold, the winning team:

and the losers (though Caroline does strike a menacing pose):

at one point during the weekend cindy stole aaron's shoelace

and he was forced to find other dubious means of holding back his luscious locks.

Goodbye, Seattle. You were the best weekend ever. And the longest blog post in the world.