Hooray for festival season!

I went to the first of the season's many warm-weather-type festivals on Saturday. I love crowds - I even like Christmas shopping in December - so obviously festivals are a great thing to me. The best part is, I get to feel incredibly smug about the choices I've made in my life while simultaneously judging hundreds of strangers!

We had to park about half a mile away and walk to the festival, which gave us plenty of time to discuss how we're apparently not going to come in first in this years Most Dandelions in Your Front Lawn Contest, and how just because it was finally warm out it doesn't mean you should walk around barefoot in the city, and we played several rounds of What Exactly Is That Smell?

The location of this particular festival is smack-dab in the middle of some seriously-not-good neighborhoods, some gentrified areas, and a whole den of hippie weirdos, so I got to judge strangers to my heart's content. There was the hugely fat white-trash guy in the three-toned pickup truck, wearing what might originally have been a white t-shirt but was now the same shade of beige as his flabby self and also missing its sleeves; more than one girl wearing a halter or strapless dress with a regular bra; a fierce-looking ghetto princess wearing leggings and a midriff-baring shirt (so much skin!); and bunches of granola-loving hippies wearing those ridiculous dip-dyed dresses you can only get at festivals like this one (or apparently on Etsy, of course).

Really, one of my main goals was to get frozen yogurt for the first time this year, but the crowds were insane. The festival lasts ten days, and Saturday was the ninth day and the only day of the nine that it didn't rain, so everyone in the entire city had the same idea I did. This festival takes place in a giant park, so the foot-traffic of hundreds on rain-soaked turf meant there was sticky, stinky, disgusting-lose-your-shoe-in-it mud everywhere. So we bailed on the frozen yogurt and walked half a mile back to the car, then drove to Lugia's ice cream for some of the best ice cream around. These people do not mess around: I got a kiddie cone (two scoops) and couldn't finish it. A small there is three full-size, not-skimpy scoops. I love it.

I think my favorite part of festivals is that glorious conflict between appreciating being a part of a huge joyful mess of people, and being a total misanthrope at the same time.

What's your take on festivals? Do you love them? Hate them? Avoid them at all costs?