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| Phoenix Festival 2002 As I write this, it's Saturday--the final evening of the Phoenix Festival--and I'm stoned. The sun just set, and the accompanying precipitous drop in temperatures that characterizes night in the high desert has begun. It's already dropped at least 25 degrees in the past 25 minutes or so, from about 90 to about 65, and has another 10 degrees or so to go. I'm at the edge of a grassy plain filled with an odd combination of junk cars and the vehicles festival-goers have driven here. These seem to range from the newer cars and SUVs preferred by the high-tech set to the jalopies, barely distinguishable from the junk cars, that the hippies prefer. I'm camped here next to the parking lot, primarily because it's a reasonably centralized location, and I didn't have to haul my crap anywhere. This turned out to be a pretty good place to camp, because it's relatively quiet and there aren't a whole lot of other people around (most people are camping in clusters near their favorite stage, but I like to sleep after I've gone to bed). I attended the first Phoenix Festival in 2000, and this is the third Phoenix Festival. The first wasn't as long-lasting an event as this one, spanning only a weekend, and was pretty much an undeground affair. I met the disciples of the Church of Mez and all sorts of crazy people. Last year, there was a scheduling conflict with Defcon, and as cool as Phoenix Festival is, Defcon wins. However, this year, despite a busy travel season, it was possible. These days, the Phoenix Festival is held at a farm halfway between Klickitat and Wahkiakus, Washington. It's located about as far from civilization as you can get, at least in this part of the country. To get there from the Seattle area, you drive on Interstate 90 east across the Cascade Range to the high desert of eastern Washington, then follow Interstate 82 across the Yakima Firing Range to the Yakima Indian village of Toppenish. From "next services 52 miles" Toppenish, you follow US 97 through the Yakima Indian reservation to Goldendale, home of 4 gas stations, 2 small grocery stores, a McDonald's, a Subway, a Dairy Queen, and an idled aluminum mill. From there, you follow SR 142 as it narrows to one lane and winds its way precipitously down a cliff (sporting vertical drops in excess of 1,000 feet with no guardrail) to the banks of the Klickitat River. Following another 4 miles of narrow, winding road along the Klickitat (a federally-designated Wild and Scenic River), you arrive at the road that leads to the property. 2 miles of an even more narrow, winding county road (requiring first gear to navigate in places, it's so steep), and the pavement ends. Another 2 miles, and you turn left onto another gravel road, which you follow for about another mile, and you're finally there. Despite nowhere else in the vicinity having any cellular coverage whatsoever, the Phoenix Festival property has full coverage from just about every wireless carrier--the topography just happens to be right to allow a "straight shot" across the Klickitat Canyon to a cell tower outside Goldendale, about 6 miles away as the crow flies. Incidentally, if you're a phone geek, dialling 1-700-555-4141 on my Sprint PCS phone results in a "Welcome to AT&T!" recording. Sprint PCS service in these parts is provided by Alamosa PCS, an independent licensee of Sprint PCS who apparently prefers AT&T long distance (go figure). So what, you may ask, is the Phoenix Festival? It's best characterized as a Pacific Northwest electronic music extravaganza. While the primary focus is goa trance, all genres of electronic music are very well-represented at nearly a dozen stages, playing everything from hard-driving trance to the irreverent Chicken Hed, who is just as likely to play Billy Idol as BT. This year, the Phoenix Festival started on the Wednesday before the 4th of July and continued all through the weekend. I got a late start on 7/4, and stopped in Yakima on the way to see the fireworks show, since I arrived there just before 10:00--perfect timing. In Yakima, the fireworks are at the fairgrounds. I tried to park there, but the lot was full and police were directing people to the surrounding neighborhoods for street parking. After driving around, I managed to find a space among some scary-looking houses and even scarier-looking cars. This would have been a lot more challenging if I didn't drive a small car--even my Echo was a pretty tight fit. The fairgrounds in Yakima are located in a mostly first-generation Mexican immigrant neighborhood, and I found it pretty strange to be standing in the front yard of a church called Templo de la Baptista or something like that--without a single English-speaking person around--taking in a fireworks show set to patriotic American orchestral music (occasionally drowned out by blaring salsa music from the passing vehicles). All else aside, Yakima (a small city where the economy is primarily based on apples and agricultural commodities, private prisons, and crack smuggling--yes, I'm serious) takes its fireworks *seriously.* They had a bigger and more impressive display than normally takes place in Bellevue, not only the 5th largest city in the state, but one of the most affluent. I stopped for fuel and supplies at the Toppenish Safeway, noticing that groceries were considerably less expensive than in the Seattle area, and completed the drive to the Phoenix Festival. I arrived pretty late, but there was still someone at the gate to take my ticket and issue me a wristband. As it turned out, he was also in the software business, so we shot the breeze about technology for a few minutes. It was quite late and I think that he was grateful to have someone around to talk to; working the gate at that hour is bound to be dull. I set up camp, which wasn't a lot of fun in the dark, but I managed to get through pretty quickly. It was really cold, and I immediately wished I'd brought extra blankets. However, I wasn't ready to go to sleep, so I walked around and checked out the stages. The grounds are large, so there is enough room for stages to spread out without interfering too much with one another. Eventually, I ended up at the Novatron Lounge, which is a live d&b set, with a separate lighted viewing area containing several couches, a cheesy LOUNGE sign--such as you might see in a bad hole-in-the wall restaurant--and some random reading material scattered about. I met a guy who'd traveled all the way from Omaha, and his weekend-girlfriend, who was from Eugene. There were several other people there as well; joints were passing back and forth, and a good time was had by all. Friday morning, I was awakened by the Chicken Hed stage playing really loud Bon Jovi. It was about 7 in the morning. Since I was awake, I walked down to the Honey Buckets to take a leak, and then went back to my tent. Strangely, it wasn't cold. I woke up again a couple of hours later, and it was boiling hot. My tent is dark purple, and it was absorbing the sunlight like crazy. This is a good thing when the outside temperature is cold, but in the high desert, it warms up (and cools down) really quickly; this made things rather uncomfortable. I opened and unzipped everything I could, and that helped somewhat. After the long drive to Klickitat, sleeping for a few hours in a really hot tent, and dancing all night, I was ready for a shower. I also realized that I hadn't bought all the supplies I needed. Since the temperature was almost into the 80s and it wasn't even noon, I decided to drive to The Dalles, Oregon, which is the nearest city of any size, located about an hour away. The drive is incredibly scenic, and I was glad to have gone. The first three orders of business were buying sunglasses, swim trunks, and a pair of shorts. I bought the shorts and swim trunks at Fred Meyer, but their sunglasses selection wasn't very good and seemed overpriced. I went across the street to Rite Aid, which usually has a good sunglasses selection, and found a decent-looking pair for about $7. I also found a comfortable folding camp chair on sale for only $11.50. However, I had to wait a long time, because the woman ahead of me decided she didn't want an item, and Rite Aid requires a manager's key for a cashier to void a transaction. I found it ironic that Rite Aid would institute such Draconian security measures on low-level employees, considering that the former CEO is under criminal investigation for accounting fraud. The next order of business was getting a shower. It wasn't easy figuring out where this was possible, but I found a public city pool next to the Chamber of Commerce, and for $3.75 with a swimming session included, this fit the bill nicely. I spent about an hour in the pool, which was full of local teenagers. They were obnoxious, but the pool was tolerable until I realized I hadn't applied any sunscreen. I decided to leave immediately. Fortunately, I was not yet sunburned, and I applied SPF 45 sunscreen before going back out into the sun. I grabbed a sandwich at Subway. Subway recently discontinued their Caesar sandwich dressing, and the woman making my sandwich lamented its passing as much as I did. After lunch, I headed back to Klickitat. While driving on Hwy 142, not far north of Lyle, I was surprised to see a green Honda civic with Maryland plates pull onto the road, two cars ahead of me. It was my ex-boyfriend Jesse, who now lives in Portland. I followed him to the gates of the Phoenix Festival. Jesse is not particularly observant, and it didn't surprise me that he was completely unaware I had been following him until I pulled up next to him in the parking lot. Things really picked up on Friday night. At 11:30, a beautifully choreographed fire performance celebrating the "death by fire" chapter of Phoenix mythology took place. Notwithstanding some really complicated maneuvers by the performers, there were no mishaps. The property was tinder-dry, and I was impressed with the fire control preparations that the performers had undertaken. Because the Phoenix was dead (remember, the festival is themed around the Phoenix myth), there was no music at the main stage; instead, they screened obscure movie clips from the 1950s. There was some really hard-driving trance behind the main stage, so I grooved to that for awhile, and then explored most of the other stages. Eventually, I ended up at the Chai House. The operators were giving away free Chai tea and providing chill space. I'd never tried Chai tea before, but they handed me a cup, and it was excellent; I am now hooked. Behind the Chai House, there was a projection screen, and a movie was just starting. Having danced for several hours, chilling out for awhile seemed like a good idea. The movie was really weird and creepy; it was about a schizophrenic serial killer. Although the sci-fi premise wasn't even close to scientifically real, there were some trippy visuals--and this is, mind you, from the perspective of a perfectly sober viewer. Saturday morning, I was awakened at 7:00AM by the asshole DJ on the morning shift at the Chicken Hed stage, apparently the same one as the previous day. He first turned up the sound system as loud as it would go, then got on the PA and announced that "This set is for all of you people who are trying to sleep right now. It's 7 in the morning, and if you want us to stop, you'll have to come down here!" He then proceeded to play Milli Vanilli, MC Hammer, and other horrible 1980s rap. I was *pissed* and started to get dressed. Since the DJ made it clear that people would have to "make him stop," I figured I'd do it right. Digging through my tool box, I plotted to shut off their unguarded generator, and then use wire clippers to cut the spark plug wires. That'd stop them, at least until they could drive to Goldendale for a new set of wires, by which time I'd have gotten a decent night's sleep. Fortunately for the generator, someone else managed to put a stop to the madness before I got there, so I aborted my plans, took a leak, and went back to sleep. Later on Saturday morning, Jesse stopped and asked if I could drive him into town for some supplies. During the day, just about everyone was leaving the Phoenix Festival, because the temperatures were just too oppressive. We decided to drive to Goldendale, because it was closer. Neither of us were in a hurry to get back, so we took our time visiting the funky stores there, had a late lunch, and arrived back at the festival around 4:30. I went to the Chicken Hed stage to see my friend Adam (aka the Goa Constrictor) spin. Adam actually spun a *good* (though very unorthodox) set, unlike the asshole morning DJ. The DJ who was scheduled to spin after him bailed, so Adam got to spin a second set. I went back to camp, and retrieved my laptop and a couple of beers. Since I had wireless Internet coverage, I sat in one of the lounge chairs next to the stage and checked in with a few of my friends online. This killed both my cell and laptop battery, so I went back to camp to get some dinner and recharge the batteries. I'd spent most of my time at the Phoenix Festival visiting the music stages, but next to the Church of Mez (which had a much more low-key presence than during Phoenix 2000) was a group of anime afficianados. They had created a movie screen out of a bed sheet attached to a large truck, and were showing anime videos that were still unreleased--even in Japan. The anime crowd has a really hardcore contingent, who manages to obtain material sometimes even before it's screened, encodes it into Windows Media format, and even creates their own subtitles. After eating a light dinner, I went down to meet the anime folks. After the frenzied two previous evenings, I was definitely ready to chill out for awhile, and the anime show fit the bill nicely. The owner of the projector had gotten it from eBay for only $200, plus shipping from California. I was curious how they'd managed to translate VGA output to the RGB inputs. As it turned out, Vulgar was rather skilled with electronics, and it became apparent that he had other technical interests as well. I asked why he didn't attend the Seattle 2600 meeting, and Vulgar broke out into a laugh. It turned out that he and I knew a lot of the same people in the Seattle area, but--as is sometimes the case with circles of friends--we just hadn't yet intersected. We exchanged contact information, and see each other periodically now. Eventually, it was time for me to retire, and I went back to my tent and crashed, after briefly considering just driving home. The following morning, I was again awoken by the boiling heat. I packed up my tent, and made the long drive home. |