Fest Season!

Mill Fest

Spring's here, and Fest Season in Athens is almost over. I think it starts in March, and—to my understanding—it’s basically comprised of some fests that are named after the streets that they are happening on, like Palmer Fest, Milliron Fest, Mill Fest (MILF fest, according to my professor), and High Fest. They’re all privately organized ‘festivals’ along certain streets, which simply means that from around 10 a.m. onwards tenants turn their front porches and lawns into party zones where (almost) everyone is welcome. Some houses have dj’s, a few might even have a band playing, others just turn up their ghetto blasters. And OU students go there; and they go crazy. 

Mill Fest

If you’ve ever been to a music festival—it’s pretty close to that experience, except for the fact that this is an ordinary street, and not a field closed down for the purpose of a festival. People just know that everyone who lives on the respective street will participate in the fest. Which doesn’t mean much more anyway than to play some music and allow people to hang out and get wasted on your lawn. And apparently, these fests have been around for more than twenty years. I’ve never seen anything like it.

Mill Fest

The sidewalks and lawns are crammed with people, many of them dressed very very casually or in some kinda crazy way—as a hotdog, or in their pajamas, or whatever. And you just stand around or walk from house to house, hiding your open beer can from the cops because it’s not allowed to drink on the street (on the private lawns, however, it is), or you dance. As you can imagine, some people are better at handling that than others. I’ve heard of a guy who’s lost his job because his employer saw a video of him on a fest. I don’t know what he did in it, but it’s probably nothing to be proud of. Anyway, these fests usually get shut down by the police (some of them are even there on horseback!) pretty early, sometimes around 5 or 6 p.m. And for no apparent reason. I’ve heard of a burning couch, even a fire inside a house last year, but this year, I didn’t see any of that, but the police was still going from house to house, telling us kids the party’s over.So the first fest I’ve witnessed was Milliron Fest, but only for the last hour or so. We arrived there after nightfall, and the police hadn’t shut down all of it yet. I and my buddies have been invited by my good friend Blake who lives there, and we were there for maybe an hour before most of the people were gone, and we’d eventually left as well. Being the first fest for me, though, it was relatively impressive to see about 150 or 200 people on a very short section of the street.

Mill Fest

Next day’s Mill Fest, however, made Milliron look like a bad joke. It’s located downhill from the way we came, so while it was comparably quiet uptown, the view and the noise on Mill Street were pretty stunning as we approached. Hundreds of people walking and standing around on sides of the street (warm and sunny weather, by the way), music, singing, and conversations everywhere. I had the feeling that we just went from lawn to lawn on the left side of the street, pausing on many premises to have a beer or dance or meet people, and then went back in the same manner on the right side.

Mill Fest

I wore this kind of (artificial) fur hat—an inside out hood of a winter jacket—and this one guy on a porch  told me that he liked it (like many others on the street before him), but I didn’t catch his words due to all the noise, so I went up there, and we got into talking. And he tells me how he travels to Alaska (Alaska!) every now and then for hunting. Killed a bear once, supposedly. “Dude, shooting that 500 pound bear, it’s like killing a fuckin’ person!” Yeah, he wasn’t a bad guy, but then again…Recreational hunting isn’t exactly the kind of hobby I wanna relate to. After that, the group kinda dissolved, and Rene, Justin and me had some Chinese buffet at that place where that poor huge white fish lives all alone in a fish tank that is maybe twice the size of its inhabitant. Depressing politics, good food.

High Fest

Then, High Fest. When I joined the gang, we hung out more on Justin’s and Michael’s porch than on High Street. Most of them had already been there (while I was studying diligently). So Rene, Lisa and I just walked along High where party was still going on, passing a parked van that was full of empty PBR cans, uphill and then down, and then back again while the mounted police were putting an end to people’s peaceful celebrations.

Palmer Fest was on the weekend that we were in D.C. (maybe there’ll be a separate post on that trip). So I don’t know how that went, but Rene did apparently have a good time there. This weekend, Number Fest will close fest season. But I’ll be out of town again, going back to New York, this time for the presentation of our GLC project. Maybe that’ll spark another post.