Note: Be sure to check out some of the links too!!

Monday 9/1

The last day of the Bumbershoot Music and Arts Festival. Yikes! So let’s enjoy it!! After a quick monorail ride to the festival grounds, we strategized in the hospitality area. And we ate. Hey, you gotta eat or you’ll die, right? We started the days entertainment with an hour containing two short independent fims grouped loosely under the title of Portrait Of The Artist. The films were a bit weird but harmless and not bad really. Then on to the main stage for recently popular modern rockers Paramore. They are a young and energetic band with a charismatic female singer, and we were up pretty close to the stage. I had ony heard a song or two by them but ended up liking their entire set. I’ll have to watch for their CD. Oh, and as a general side note, there will be pictures of them and the rest of the trip up on this site soon. Check back often! Then, when the pictures are not here yet, you can grumble “Why is Steven so slow?” Ha! It’s fun, try it! Anyway, Paramore was fun modern rock, you get the idea. There were people crowd surfing and young kids singing along with every song. Then of course after that we needed more food, a little at least.

And back to the main stage for The Offspring. They have been doing their punk rock act since the 90s and are still doing it. In fact, their recent album is pretty good. They did all their hits and a good chunk of the new album too. The crowd was really wild during their set. Lots of crowd surfing and I do mean lots. (In case you don’t go to rock shows often, that is when a person is passed around (not gently) on top of the standing crowd. It can get pretty intense up there and eventually they get passed all the way to the front and the security folks pull them down. At that point some are pumped up and smiling, some are dazed by the ordeal, and a few look pretty scared. It’s not easy having fun, apparently). Back to the Offspring show. There were hundreds of crowd surfers during the 90 minute set, but the moment that blew everyone away was when people lifted a person in a full-size wheelchair up on top of the crowd and passed him, sitting in the chair, all the way to the front of the crowd. If I had not seen it I would never have believed it. It looked really dangerous but I guess he wanted to do it. Not sure why, though!!

Suitably stunned, we decided on a sit-down comedy show for our next venue. It was a variety of local Seattle-area comics being funny without actually doing standup. That’s what they said anyway. They were standing up, and they were funny. Next we tried to get in late for up-and-coming political rap/rockers Flobots, but there were hundreds more people than the venue held so we didn’t make it in there. Good excuse to go get a drink. We got three drink tickets as part of our gold pass package. Three tickets, three days, you do the math. Next Petra went to a live show called Cheap Wine And Poetry. She didn’t get wine there but the poets did. Two Buck Chuck (except that in Washington it costs three dollars). I saw the Old 97s, a rowdy country rock band . More rock than country, really. We met back up to see the headliner Death Cab For Cutie. And no, they are not a death metal band. Sheesh! They are a talented indie-type modern band with catchy songs and sensitive-but-clever lyrics. Their album-before-last Plans is one of my favorite albums. And tonight they did not disappoint at all. They were great, on both the rockers and the softer songs. The sound was mixed well so you could hear quite a bit of the lyrics and vocals. They have become very popular in the last few years and the crowd was singing along with nearly every song. It was a high point in a festival with a lot of high points. Another great Bumbershoot! This will be eight years in a row for us, and each time it was a wonderful experience. We already have a room reservation for next year, does that give you an idea how awesome this is?

Tuesday 9/2

Now that the Bumbershoot Festival is over, we still have a little time to explore Seattle. It is my second-favorite city after all. So we bought an all-day transit pass for ( I think) $5.50 or around there. Because we had to wait about five minutes for the employee, they threw in a bunch of free bus passes too. We’ll use some of those for the trip to the airport tomorrow. Thanks. Anyway, first we took the short walk to Olympic Sculpture Park on the waterfront. A nice, walkable park with large public art pieces on display. Then we took a combined walk/bus ride down the waterfront to a pier to catch the water taxi to West Seattle and Alki Beach. This was included in the all-day pass, what a nice deal. After wandering around there for a while we decided to head back. After all, the 3-foot tall replica of the Statue Of Liberty was not ready until the following weekend. Curses! We took a bus back, also included in the pass, and saw some of Seattle that we had not seen before. Nothing remarkable but still interesting. They have such a great transit system we never had to wait long at all. We ended up in the Pioneer Square area, full of shops, restaurants, people, galleries, and cafes. We shopped a while at a huge bookstore and wandered in and out of other stores. But we decided to go back over to the Lower Queen Anne area for dinner. We took another (free) bus and got off at the Seattle Center. They were starting to take the Bumbershoot decorations, stages, and displays down. It’s sad that it’s over but there’s always next year! We decided to have a drink before dinner so we went to The Funhouse. It’s a divey punk bar that a few years back our friend Cal described as the “evil clown bar”. Of course he has some clown issues. It was very punky but harmless, at least in the daytime. 😉

Beginning to relax a little (more), we went in search of dinner. By that point we had scrapped our plans for dinner in Queen Anne and decide to walk or bus to the nearby Belltown area and mexican food at Mama’s, known as Seattle’s oldest mexican restaurant. The “Elvis Room” was taken but we still had a tasty dinner with equally tasty margaritas. I could go for a couple of those right about now almost anytime. Totally stuffed in a very good way, we walked the mile or two back to the hotel. Then we grabbed our remaining food and booze, changed into our jammies, and headed upstairs to the top floor Cloud Room to spend our last night in Seattle (until next time). Sigh. We toasted Seattle and Bumbershoot until we, too, were toasted. Then off to bed.

Wednesday 9/3

A bus (free, see 9/2) to the airport, some airport food, then home to Sacramento, CA. It was all over too soon. But as our lousy governor governator says, “I’ll be back!”

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