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Zebra Festival 2008 Part 3 Act 3: Friday night
Lets look at the magic 'eat an drink all you want card' again. This card was the essence of 'mixed blessing'. On one side I could drink and eat all I wanted. On the other side, I was expected to stay sober and make sure everyone had enough to drink. How the hell does one stay sober during a rock festival? How??
An hour before we actually opened the ice I ordered for the drinks arrived. This would prove to be by far my biggest act of incompetence during the entire festival, but more on that later. For now, this is what 400 kilograms of ice cubes looks like when still packed in boxes and bags. It represents about half our supply of ice cubes. Oi...
And then, just like that, night time came and the terrain became packed with some 600 people, looking for rock music and beer to drink. To my utter amazement and the amazement of pretty much everyone else involved, things went well. Almost too well. Even the fire breathers didn't set anyone on fire! Although it was proving a hell of a job of keep all the taps supplied with beer and we didn't get to see any of the bands, it was still good. No time to take any more pictures though. Moving on....
Act 4: Saturday The main reason I haven't written anything more about Friday night is that there's not much worth remembering. You're reading the perspective of the dude who made sure everyone who was present, at least in my area, had enough to drink. And that involves work. Quite a lot of it in fact. I don't like work which is why I became a teacher. Ah well.
Remember those wooden cutouts from earlier? As it turned out you could arrange them in really funny shapes indeed. We even tied these two to the wall as decoration but someone decided this may not be the best way to improve our image as a family festival and he tore them down. Maybe next time.
Despite the fact that we were all suffering from a horrible sleep deficiency the drunken mob returned very early indeed. The first band was scheduled to play at 2 in the afternoon. Its never crowded in the afternoon and we were thankful for that. Some might consider it a bad sign if personnel almost outnumbers the guests (personnel are the people in the blue shirts) but at this moment, we didn't care. I was on the roof to fix the fallen giant screen we had for projecting our sponsors on. Oh, and to let the people bask in my magnificence for a while of course. Oh, how they basked.
At 3 in the afternoon I had reached my apex of power on this mortal plain. I had a card with which I could drink whatever I wanted and they had given me a beeper I could use to talk to some 15 other people across the terrain. Yup, my star of influence had reached its zenith all right.
When I returned to my station an hour or so later, all hell had broken loose. A frenzied seething mass of humanity was attacking the bar outside with endless demands for booze and an attitude that was becoming unfriendly very quickly. Some of them were skinheads and they scared the hell out of me. Pictures don't really convey the sense of desperation I felt at this point but lets show it anyway:
I'm not exaggerating when I say that this was no longer a bar. It was a fort and it was under siege. For the next 2 hours we did everything we could to supply the endless masses with drinks. Beer kegs needed replacing with alarming regularity and once you've carried your 40th 50 kg keg into position your arms feel like they're gonna fall off. It was brutal and I don't remember a heck of lot from these hours. Worse was to come.
Act 5: Afterparty When you work hard, you either drink hard afterwards or you pass out afterwards. No other options. After a workday of some 14 hours we had come to a horrible conclusion. All of us were so sober we still allowed to drive. This was a situation that needed fixing very soon indeed. I wasn't about to leave the grounds without tasting the sweet sweet taste of alcohol and doing stupid stuff. No way.
Beer. Oh how I felt I would never taste its sweetness again when I was dealing with nutcase leftwing hippie Indonesian lunatics clinging to my person in the final moments of the festival. How I felt the chill of despair when hundreds of lunatics assailed our bar. All over now. All that mattered was getting drunk and do it quickly.
The drinking progressed into the night and then into the morning. This guy is called Thunderman. No particular story, just thought that's an awesome name.
Remember the ice we had ordered? An important lesson from this festival was that you really don't need a 1000 kilograms of ice for a festival where 2300 people come. You really don't. Still, I wasn't about to admit mistakes or defeat and claimed I intended to do this all along. Its actually remarkably comfortable to lie on sacks of ice.
Besides, you can do so many good things with ice! Like find out who can toss a sack of ice the furthest. This became the epitome of fun for I don't know how long. In the end, Bart had beaten me. He could toss a sack a meter fur4ther then I could. I'll be back for revenge next year!
And then, all of a sudden, it was morning. Seriously. Just like that. It just snaked up on us!
Crap. I guess its time to go to sleep.
To be concluded....
Back to the world of sucks and rules
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When
nighttime came again I had found time to go and watch a single band. The
only band I would see during the entire festival. The Badass Berettas are
composed of two of my old colleagues from the Jumbo and one dude I don't
know. And they rock. I had made sure all the bars had enough beer to
satisfy an army and allowed myself an hour to rock. Oh yeah.
In
the end we were told over 1700 people had been on the grounds that night
and they leave behind unbelievable amounts of trash. Our groundskeepers
had already reported around midnight that they were at a loss to clear it
all up and so at 3 at night, after even the hardiest and most
indestructible party animal was finally outside and security had locked
the gates we started the clean up. The endless and messy cleanup. The
'shove as much crap into this bag as you can and haul it off' cleanup. Son
of a bitch, that was a lot of trash.
