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| ACL 2007 Weekend |
This weekend I went to my first Austin City Limits Music Festival... what a blast! Three days, 130 bands and lots of fun! The weather was hot but not as bad as in recent years, so that was a plus... and I only bought the Saturday pass so that I could see what it was all about without having to worry about not using the whole pass. Next year I'll do the full weekend - it was really fun! I got to see a number of great bands, plus the people-watching is a sport in itself :)
Friday night, Dawn and I picked up Jessica and the gang at their hotel and drove to Opal Divine's on 6th St., where we met Dawn's friend Mando and had a great time with much food and drink... our server, Anna, really did a great job keeping up with us :) Then it was time for bed, to get ready for Saturday...
Saturday started off right - by sleeping in till noon(ish), and then having a leisurely lunch and drive into Austin... Dawn dropped me off at the ACL Shuttle dropoff and then was off running errands, while I got on a shuttle bus and was carried over to Zilker Park, and then the fun began!
While there were a lot (!) of people, there was none of the massive crush of humanity that I had expected after hearing some folks' descriptions... It was really well laid out, I had no problems finding anything and the only real problem was the fact that with so many people in one place using cellphones to locate and keep track of each other, the local cell nodes were so overloaded that sometimes you had to send a message five or six times to get it through! However, I soon met Jessica at the WaMu stage and we hung out there, listening to Beau Soleil, before going over to the AMD stage for Arctic Monkeys and Arcade Fire. It was a great time, and I will definitely be going next year! I left ACL early, however, because my brothers from SuperCrash were playing at Hanover's in Pflugerville at 10.30p... and I wasn't about to miss that show :) (Can you say "free beer"? I thought so.)
I made my way to the exit, and stood at the top of the hill for the first couple of songs of Muse's set (and light show - wow!)... then made my way to the shuttles to be carried back downtown. I was really impressed with the efficiency of the shuttles, but then I wasn't riding at peak times, either :) Once I got back to the shuttle dropoff, it was a short wait before Dawn picked me up and we headed north to Hanover's... I think I have found a new favorite watering hole! I can't believe that it's taken me this long to find this place! It's your basic rock bar; since it's in Pflugerville you can smoke (if that's your bag), and the staff are friendly and it just has a great feel... plus there are tables, volleyball courts and horseshoes/washers pits in the Biergarten out back. SuperCrash put on a great show, as usual! Following them was a Hendrix cover band called Stone Free that really put on a good show as well. As the bar was closing, we made our way home and crashed.
Sunday was a day for sleeping in, and then it was off to grab some lunch, run some errands and generally wind the weekend up in a nice way :) I'm looking forward to next year's ACL already!
