Bonnaroo Rumination 4 or Drugeroo

Before you read this post please go watch the movie Waterworld. It will make one joke in a very long and stupid post much more hilarious.

In my last rumination I mentioned how 5 different people asked me what drugs I was on and if they could partake in the drug usage. I have also mentioned how Bonnaroo has it's roots as a hippie jam festival. Thus it is not surprising that drugs are very omnipresent at Bonnaroo, so much so that it becomes annoying at times. Now I don't ever consume any drugs that aren't alcohol, and I don't have any desire to, but at the same time I don't get on the case of other people that use them. Drugs are corrosive to society when amplified by an addiction and I'm not going to joke about that, but I have plenty of college and high school friends who smoked a whole hell load of weed and they are still contributing members of society, wonderful people, and it didn't gateway to anything else for them. Overall, I am pretty libertarian about drugs, I'm going to say no and please don't use them around me if you offer, but if you wanna smoke up in your house or do cocaine in the girls bathroom whatever, hey it's your life, who am I to tell you to stop.

Drugs are everywhere at Bonnaroo and they are not hard to get. Dealers constantly stop by your camp during bruncheroo and offer and are overall very polite and will go away immediately if you say no thanks. They're just trying to do business, not harass you. Saturday morning when we woke up had the two of the most hilarious encounters of druggies and dealers by far. First was the guy (I'll name him Sketchy J) who provided this conversation: Sketchy J: "Hey I'll trade you a bump of cocaine for a beer!" Me (giving a WTF look): "What the fuck?" Sketchy J: "OH WHAT AM I SAYING I didn't mean to say that um I mean I'll give you a dollar for a beer haha." Me: "Go away." I don't really know what the going price of cocaine is but a bump for a shitty PBR hardly sounds like a good price for him, but hey, whatever you gotta do for a cold one I guess.



The next story involves the most bizarre actual human being I've seen in my life. This guy came to Bonnaroo with his friends in a van painted entirely black except for the punisher symbol painted on one side. Here is his picture (taken the last day as we were leaving, the ones I took of him in the camp didn't come out well):



This dude comes in and says to Arthur and I: "krryyyzaaazzzkkkzkzkkzkkkkzkkzk qqqqqpooopqqqqqqkikikkkkkkkk" to which Arthur and I at once give a WTF look and I notice this crazy bastard only has one tooth. I literally had no idea what he said, and since I am smart said, "um ask them" pointing to the SOPTRANTA camp. SOPTRANTA was much more fluent in druggie speak but even they had no idea what this dude was saying and just gave him two beers and he went away. As he was leaving, one of the SOPTRANTA's says: "Was that guy an extra in Waterworld?" causing me to burst out laughing, because seriously just look at that picture again. Now look at this picture of waterworld:



This dude was obviously prominently involved in that film. In addition, waterworld guy and his waterworld people would frequently enter the forrest behind us, presumably to use their drugs. Once again, not consuming any drugs, I have no idea what the purpose of doing this in the woods is, but they seemed to love it. I'm not even entirely sure they saw any bands during the trip.

Two final observations about drugs and their place in Bonnaroo: At a few points I was warned about drug sniffing dogs at posts on the way to Centeroo, and one person lamented to me about how all of his weed was taken, but not his other drugs because they were in a scent proof metallic box bolted beneath his car (holy crap that's a long way to go just to smuggle drugs). Anyway, weed guy was looking for some more weed and he brought up an interesting point, that none of the dealers were selling weed. I found this to be very true as well, almost all dealers were selling cocaine, acid, or ecstacy, very few, if any (I can't fully remember since I always say no thanks) offered weed. I'm not sure what to make of this, whether it was because of the metal and electronic kids (do they tend to do harder stuff than hippies? I thought hippies also did acid? What do I know?) or what, but it was interesting because weed is blatantly obviously used everywhere in the camps and during the bands. SOPTRANTA had a gravity bong and you could smell weed before every single band. By that I mean, literally, every single band, to a point where on the final day, sunday, Erin and I were just blatantly tired of the smell of weed and hoped that most people were out of it already (many people were). So why are all the dealers selling hard stuff if such a huge percentage of people are smoking? Seems like the old grocery economics where if you sell a ton of a cheap product (with small profits) you can make more than selling very little of an expensive one (with large profits) because of the power of aggregate.

That's all I have to say about drugs.