Hempfest: Baked

RantWoman has, for purely journalistic purposes, just spent several hours at Hempfest. RantWoman actually spent longer than she really planned partly because just as she was arriving, the park had gotten so packed in a couple places that measures had to be taken to realign and reroute pedestrian traffic. This resulted in a good chunk of time where it was impossible to move while festival goers streamed past on their way out of the park. See further comments below. Anyway, RantWoman really enjoyed the walk in the park and such music as she heard; she hereby offers a review and some general survival tips.

The website http://hempfest.org/drupal/node and the prep: Hempfest's website came to RantWoman's attention recently in connection with a discussion at the Friendly Neighborhood Center for Extreme Computing. Several readers liked the concept of staff as anyone relied on to get work done regardless of whether paid or not but we did not think our Fearless Leader would really appreciate the Hempfest reference. Consider this posting an effort to give credit where credit is due. RantWoman also really likes the business-like enumeration of what kinds of help are needed and the expectation that supporters will be able to deliver. The mere fact that Hempfest, the actual work of doing the festival is an all-volunteer effort with only vendors and outside services paid out of the festival budget is quite notable.

The venue: Myrtle Edwards park with its paved walkways and exquisite views several directions along and across Elliott Bay is a beautiful location and the weather was more than cooperative. Having the festival in the long narrow strip between the water and the railroad tracks should give the hundreds of thousands of festival-goers a place to spread out.

RantWoman has not been to Hempfest at Myrtle Edwards since the sculpture park opened, but her general impression is that the park is a lot more cluttered than it used to be. This is tolerable on normal days, but with hundreds of thousands of people milling around, all the extra things built into the park add up to a lot of places that just caused severe pedestrian bottlenecks of the sort that greeted RantWoman when she arrived.

The grounds of the park also have several places with slight hills where vendors had set up tents. RantWoman was not entirely charmed to have to do so much climbing from paths to vendor booths and might entertain fantasies about a location where the grounds are more level.

The ambiance: RantWoman is all for medical marijuana, industrial hemp, hemp oil, hemp paper, hemp cloth and even nerdy exhortations about the environment, electoral politics and stupid public policy. Silly RantWoman though does not remember coming home from past Hempfests quite so thoroughly baked. Maybe RantWoman is just in the tiny minority of festival-goers who believe in the cause but use the theme mind-altering substance very little if at all. RantWoman went to Hempfest voluntarily of her own accord, knowing perfectly well what kind of environment might obtain. RantWoman is pretty sure very few other attenders would complain that the dense clouds of smoke in some locations really were a bit much so perhaps it is best just to move on to other topics.

All-time best humor moment of the evening:
"Honey, you can't eat the brownies they are selling here."
"Why not, Mom?"
"They have nuts in them."

The shopping:
As RantWoman has already mentioned, RantWoman is a fan of many hemp products including hemp bags of all sizes, hemp fabric, and hemp paper. Maybe it was the RantWoman visual fog, but RantWoman found the festival strangely deficient in any of these items. In fact, RantWoman could almost have just stayed home and ordered from www.hempmania.com or http://www.goodhumans.com/Shopping/Brands/Hempmania

In particular, others might really enjoy but RantWoman was decidedly not in the market for:

Hemp leaf leis for one's hair.

A hemp-themed bandana offered in exchange for a $5 donation at the gate.

Bead bags with a hemp leaf worked into the pattern, perhaps for one's ORCA card

Bongs the size of the Space Needle.

Hand-blown glass pipes

Henna body art.

Hippy-dippy challis skirts

Really psychedelic tie-dye

Seattle Marijuaners t-shirts

The truth: all this and a lot more are available through several vendor areas for festival-goers' shopping convenience.


Things it would be lovely to have more of, besides the kind of staid items RantWoman might order online:

More Hempfest shopping bags, regardless of what happens with the Bag Tax

Wheelchair-accessible porta-potties: RantWoman noticed LOTS of people in wheelchairs and reflexes in connection with RantWoman's work on disaster preparedness caused her just to check at every clump of porta-potties. The RantWoman visual inspection method is, of course, not 100% reliable by itself, but RantWoman just kep not finding anything wheelchair accessible. Well, RantWoman observed one porta-potty that could have been accessible, but it was closed and marked off with yellow tape.

A solar shower to try out the Hemp soap: RantWoman arrived late in the day and wound up spending more time that she would have preferred crammed in fairly tightly with streams of festival-goers just as organizers, fire marshals, and other authorities were all cooperating to clear some really oppressive bottlenecks. Clearing the bottlenecks was absolutely necessary and was accomplished with decent humor and not too much spectator grousing. Still hot sweaty stoners do develop an odor. Plus, RantWoman just really likes solar showers. She is trying to imagine how provisions could be made for minimal modesty but thinks it could be done.

A donation form on the http://hempfest.org/drupal/node website. RantWoman spent her cash on a felafel sandwich at the festival. Then she felt a little guilty and thought of just going home and making a small donation online. RantWoman is meditating about whether enough Hempfest groupies would use an online donation form and risk linking Hempfest and an online bank transaction to make the effort worthwhile and RantWoman does not volunteer to help implement such, but the option certainly crossed her mind.

If you go:
Take cash. There are onsite ATM's but, assuming one trusts temporary ATM setups (RantWoman is a little iffy on them) and want to pay whatever extra fee comes with immediate access to your own money, the lines take forever.

Take enough water. There are plenty of beverages available at all the vendor areas, but start with water. In the worst case, you can just contribute any leftover cash to the festival fundraising at the gates.

Actually drink the water you take. It's hot. There several first aid stations, but why visit them if you don't have to.

Go and have a good time; don't just rely on RantWoman's jaundiced views!