Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
Lunar pilgrimage
Chad floats in a sea of fisherman hats, ponchos, and high-waisted mom shorts
The Jive Joint, a Vaudevillian improv and variety stage, was in full force with the world’s smallest bass accompanying the world’s greatest hair.
On January 1, a wizard-bearded Norman Feller emerged from his Canadian bunker for the first time since he’d locked himself away from the impending anticlimax of Y2K. Actually, he didn’t. The CBC Radio broadcast turned out to be part of their satirical This Is That series. But that didn’t stop many a reputable news source from reblogging the piece, which centered on the baffling notion that, to Feller, the most impressive development in the past 14 years was the KFC Double Down “sandwich” — a maelstrom of fried chicken, bacon, cheese, and mystery goops.
Blonde Redhead were one of the several rarities to appear at the third annual Desert Daze festival.
Say what you will about KFC’s avant-garde slant on suppertime (and Canadian radio), but the takeaway message is that there is a multitude of larger reasons to be stoked on the Year of the Majestic and Unbridled Equine, 2014. Among them is the vast number of summertime festivals within a day’s drive of San Diego. Play your cards right, and you could spend every weekend rocking out anywhere from a megafest such as Coachella, Outside Lands, or Burning Man to the more esoteric gatherings of a few hundred campers huddled around a Funktion-One soundsystem at a clandestine, unadvertised location.
It’s somewhere between these extremes that Desert Daze has found its niche. The third annual installment of the festival, thrown by Pomona-based collective Moon Block Party, landed just 20-some miles southeast of (and a week after) Coachella, but the two festivals were galaxies apart. Located in a minuscule, outlying ag-town sardonically dubbed Mecca, Desert Daze played host to a few thousand folks who pitched camp in the craggy lakebeds of Sunset Ranch Oasis and then milled about the venue’s three stages to catch elusive headliners such as Blonde Redhead, Liars, and Vincent Gallo.
Truth be told, I have no idea how many people ended up making the lunar pilgrimage because: (1) Franzia (Pro tip: when you slap the bag, the bag slaps back), and (2) the organizers declined to comment on their figures in a post-fest email inquiry. One can only guess at their motives, but — judging by the hour-plus parking wait — it’d be hard to believe that they were underwhelmed by their congregation.
The psych-garage riffs of Disappears filtered through reeds and lurched over the craggy campsite, arriving in lysergic waves of bliss.
Whatever the case, a sea of fisherman hats, ponchos, and high-waisted mom shorts filled the grounds by late afternoon. Come sunset, the Tatooine heat compelled me to recline and recharge with my girlfriend in a buddy’s tent on Crag Lake. The psych-garage riffs of Disappears rolled across the neighboring lake, filtered through the reeds, and then lurched over the nano-canyons of the campsites, announcing themselves in celestial torrents. It was blissful, and for one charmed moment, I was convinced my drink(s) had been spiked.
We returned to the main stage just in time to find Blonde Redhead getting into their classic “In Particular.” The sound cut out halfway through the tune, and, even though singer Kazu Makino apologized profusely, the flub felt purposeful — a statement, perhaps, against holding on to the past. A declaration of the new. Be here now, Feller.
Just afterward, the impression was bolstered by Vincent Gallo’s strict no photo/video policy. His terminally sentimental improvisations, played with his back to the crowd, felt at home in the desert — a place that will both embrace and emaciate you on a whim.
Around 10 a.m., when the sun had broken our few hours of sleep, my friends and I saw that we were among the last to leave the wide lakebed. It was as if we had emerged from a bunker all our own — just us, the dust, and the accusation of sunlight — hungry already for our next bite of goopish festival sandwich.
Crash your party? Call 619-235-3000 x421 and leave an invitation.
Here's something you might be interested in.
Lunar pilgrimage
Chad floats in a sea of fisherman hats, ponchos, and high-waisted mom shorts
Lunar pilgrimage
Chad floats in a sea of fisherman hats, ponchos, and high-waisted mom shorts
The Jive Joint, a Vaudevillian improv and variety stage, was in full force with the world’s smallest bass accompanying the world’s greatest hair.
On January 1, a wizard-bearded Norman Feller emerged from his Canadian bunker for the first time since he’d locked himself away from the impending anticlimax of Y2K. Actually, he didn’t. The CBC Radio broadcast turned out to be part of their satirical This Is That series. But that didn’t stop many a reputable news source from reblogging the piece, which centered on the baffling notion that, to Feller, the most impressive development in the past 14 years was the KFC Double Down “sandwich” — a maelstrom of fried chicken, bacon, cheese, and mystery goops.
Blonde Redhead were one of the several rarities to appear at the third annual Desert Daze festival.
Say what you will about KFC’s avant-garde slant on suppertime (and Canadian radio), but the takeaway message is that there is a multitude of larger reasons to be stoked on the Year of the Majestic and Unbridled Equine, 2014. Among them is the vast number of summertime festivals within a day’s drive of San Diego. Play your cards right, and you could spend every weekend rocking out anywhere from a megafest such as Coachella, Outside Lands, or Burning Man to the more esoteric gatherings of a few hundred campers huddled around a Funktion-One soundsystem at a clandestine, unadvertised location.
It’s somewhere between these extremes that Desert Daze has found its niche. The third annual installment of the festival, thrown by Pomona-based collective Moon Block Party, landed just 20-some miles southeast of (and a week after) Coachella, but the two festivals were galaxies apart. Located in a minuscule, outlying ag-town sardonically dubbed Mecca, Desert Daze played host to a few thousand folks who pitched camp in the craggy lakebeds of Sunset Ranch Oasis and then milled about the venue’s three stages to catch elusive headliners such as Blonde Redhead, Liars, and Vincent Gallo.
Truth be told, I have no idea how many people ended up making the lunar pilgrimage because: (1) Franzia (Pro tip: when you slap the bag, the bag slaps back), and (2) the organizers declined to comment on their figures in a post-fest email inquiry. One can only guess at their motives, but — judging by the hour-plus parking wait — it’d be hard to believe that they were underwhelmed by their congregation.
The psych-garage riffs of Disappears filtered through reeds and lurched over the craggy campsite, arriving in lysergic waves of bliss.
Whatever the case, a sea of fisherman hats, ponchos, and high-waisted mom shorts filled the grounds by late afternoon. Come sunset, the Tatooine heat compelled me to recline and recharge with my girlfriend in a buddy’s tent on Crag Lake. The psych-garage riffs of Disappears rolled across the neighboring lake, filtered through the reeds, and then lurched over the nano-canyons of the campsites, announcing themselves in celestial torrents. It was blissful, and for one charmed moment, I was convinced my drink(s) had been spiked.
We returned to the main stage just in time to find Blonde Redhead getting into their classic “In Particular.” The sound cut out halfway through the tune, and, even though singer Kazu Makino apologized profusely, the flub felt purposeful — a statement, perhaps, against holding on to the past. A declaration of the new. Be here now, Feller.
Just afterward, the impression was bolstered by Vincent Gallo’s strict no photo/video policy. His terminally sentimental improvisations, played with his back to the crowd, felt at home in the desert — a place that will both embrace and emaciate you on a whim.
Around 10 a.m., when the sun had broken our few hours of sleep, my friends and I saw that we were among the last to leave the wide lakebed. It was as if we had emerged from a bunker all our own — just us, the dust, and the accusation of sunlight — hungry already for our next bite of goopish festival sandwich.
Crash your party? Call 619-235-3000 x421 and leave an invitation.
Comments