The Life and Times of a Southern Gentleman: Acid Boy

Biting the bullet.

This past weekend I attended the Free Press Houston Summer Fest. It was advertised as "Two glorious days of music, art and summer love". To be completely honest, it was exactly that...and more. Much, much more. I'm going to try and relive this past weekend, while spinkling in some humor and pictures along the way, mmmk? Get it? Got it? Good.

(John) Pham and I had been planning on going to Summer Fest just to see The Tontons for about 3 weeks. When I went to the Summer Fest and read the lineup of acts, I knew I had to go both days. Scheduled to perform were The Tontons, Fat Tony, Prince Paul, Devin The Dude, and The Octopus Project. In my mind those were the only groups that I wanted to see, but I came back each day with a handful of other bands that I became a fan of.

So, at first it was just Pham and I, then another friend of ours, Jill overheard us talking about it and wanted to tag along. Why the hell not. The more, the merrier. Plus, she's still kinda new to Houston, and I thought it'd be cool for her to check out our music scene. All three of us head down to Eleanor Tinsley Park on Saturday, and we get there around...hmmm, I'd say 12ish, 12:15. We walk through the gates, without having to show any tickets or even having my backpack checked, which I found quite odd. But I didn't care, I was pumped to have a jolly good time. The first thing is see is the sprawling park set underneath the fantasic Houston skyline.

It was still hella early, so there weren't that many people there yet. We walked past the massive mainstage, navigated our way past the Merch Tent (as it came to be known by) and other vendor tents to the second stage. A group calle Juz Coz was the first group we saw perform. A hip-hop group consisting of two members, Pham and I really were groovin' to there song "Ilovevideogames", which was made up of old Nintendo sound effects and talked about how you used to leave you Sega on pause while you slept so you wouldn't have to start over the next day.

Now, before I forget, I want to introduce a very special person to EVERYBODY at Summer Fest. He goes by the name Michael, or "Happy". The three of us simply called him "Acid Boy", for the simple reason that we thought this dude was on an acid trip. During Juz Coz's set, we saw Acid Boy rolling around in the grass and dancing around in a really weird way. You know that stereotypical image of hippies at Woodstock? Imagine that embodied in a dude (probably in his early 20's) at 12:30 on Saturday afternoon...in Houston. Words can't describe this guy. He literally became the unofficial mascot of the festival, as Of Montreal put it.

Such a free spirit, this kid was.

After watching Juz Coz, we wondered around to the park for a while, to kill some time before The Tontons played. Mind you, it's early August in Houston. The heat was killer. Dude were taking there shirts off, chicks walking around in swimsuits, really laid back. There was a massive cooling tent adjacent to the main stage. It had these huge shop fans blowing air and misting fans to cool people off. VitaminWater was nice enough to provide free bottles of VitaminWater to everybody. Back behind the cooling tent, near the playground, they had set up dunk tank and a large inflatable slip and slide. After touring the park grounds for about an hour, we headed towards the mainstage to catch The Tontons. What a great band, seriously. There's nothing else to say other than they rock.

Summer Fest had it's fare share of colorful characters. They definately helped add to the atmostphere that made Summer Fest a great festival. Insert the Hug Guy. This dude was walking around with a sign that read "Hugs Not Drugs" and offered free hugs out to everybody. You couldn't help but laugh as he walked up to you giving free hugs. Haha, around 3pm, when it was hell hot outside, I saw that he had changed his sign to read "sweaty Hugs Not Drugs"

<---(pre-sweaty hugs)

Now, around this time, Pham and Jill were getting hungry. So after The Tontons's set, we went to the concessions tent. People were ready for the concessions tent, but the concessions tent wasn't ready for all the people. It took them 25 to cook 4 burgers. Luckily for me, I had eaten before I left the house. After those two jokers finished eating, we went to the cooling tent to snatch some VitaminWater. They did have regular water for sale, keyword "for sale". I wasn't going to pay for lame-ass water when they were giving away supercool water for free. Around this time I heard this new group playing on the main stage. It was a mix of latin musica and ska. It was hypnotic, I mean, there wasn't one person in the crowd gathered in front of the stage what wasn't dancing. Since it had that ska feel to it, kids were skanking and moshing at the same time, which was a first for me. I couldn't help myself. I jumped right in the middle of that mess. A cloud of dust had risen up infront of the stage from all the movement. Unfortunately, I forgot to grab a cd. Don't worry, I'm already working on getting a copy in the near future. Los Skarnales, my favorite group of the day.

Wow, looking back, I've typed a lot, and I'm not even halfway through the day yet.

Let's see...

After Los Skarnles, we watch Fat Tony and Super Smash Bro. perfom. A very good hip-hop duo that everybody should check out. Don't sleep on these guys. I'm not going to go into too much detail on all the artists I saw. I'm going to save that for another post on the Houston music that I've recently discovered.

To avoid the heat in the afternoon, I decided that we should go hit the slip-n-slide. We walk over to there, only to discover that it had been deflated. So I headed to the dunking boot to cool off. Thanks alot to whoever set that up, by the way. I remember talking to some guys while hanging out at the dunking booth. After about 30 minutes of dunking and getting dunked, I decide to pack things up and head on. This is where I meet Zack. He asked me if I'd seen his friend we'd been talking to. He had tried calling him, to no avail. I said I hadn't, but he was welcome to hang out with us until he did. Zack took me up on our offer and hung out with us while I attempted to dry off. Zach is originally from Pittsburgh, now living in Austin. He came down to Sumer Fest with a friend of his, also from Pittsburgh. Ok, so now, I was getting hungry. Not wanting to stand in that monstrosity of a line for concessions, I voted that we venture out to see what food options we had around us. We left Zack, still looking for his friend, and began our journey for food. 5 blocks and about 20 minutes later, we wound up on West Grey street, maybe a block away from the West Grey Cafe. We plopped in, grubbed, and headed back to the concert, full with all kinds of comfort food. We get back just in time to catch the last of Broken Social Scene's set. As we head to the stage for Explosions In The Sky's set, we bump into Zack agian. Still not having found his friend, Zack becomes an adopted member of our group for th rest of the evening. After the last group performs, we make our way towards the car, Jill, Pham, Zack, and I. Still having some fight left in us, we decide to go out for drinks and food. (Haha I'm rushing this because it's 1am and I'm hella tired). We drive downtown, off of Main St. where Zack's hotel is. He goes in to change clothes real quick. Apparently, his friend had left the concert early because his phone was busted and went back to the hotel. We take them just down the street to the Flying Saucer to knock down a few brews. Around 12, we all leave. We exchange numbers, and wish each other good tidings (seriously, who the hell still says that crap?). Pham, Jill and I head back to our side of town, completely exhausted after the first day of awesomeness that was Summer Fest.