Winter Peace Fest
Posted on February 17th, 2013 by admin
It’s been cool to watch the Peace Fest evolve as it has, rising like a phoenix from the ashes of the Chicago Hempfest, itself risen from the stems-and-seeds laden ashes of the Windy City Weedfest, which sprang forth out of god-knows-what, et cetera et cetera back to the Summer of Love. I’m not sure if there’s been a direct 1:1 correlation between each of these events, but I see a lot of the same faces that I saw at my first fest, back in the day, when I had to tell my folks I was going to a friend’s house just to see it.
The fest is a genuine product of it’s creators, and of it’s time, so when peaceful music and peaceful vibes are coming from rock’n’roll and reggae, that’s what you get, and when the call for peace has been coming the strongest from bookish rappers and political punk rockers, the fest was a showcase for aggressive guitars and hip hop beats, and now, when the majority of America’s peacenik teenagers are finding it from the PLUR side of EDM, the Peace Fest rather resembles a rave. Sure, there are drum circles and hula hoops and hash pipes and puppets and tie dye, but the love beads were traded for kandi and the most prominent sound in the historic Portage Theater was BASS.
It was funny to watch some people’s reactions and over-reactions to the craziness of the fest, after the fact online. Even with a completely different soundtrack, the energy of the fest was the same, an overwhelming feelong of freedom, which for some meant drugs and experimentation, and for some means overindulgence, which meant the power and excitement of young sexuality, and the scariness of watching young people making dumbass mistakes in public and hoping they were being taken care of, or taking care of themselves. On the other end of the spectrum, a lot of young folk got to party with people their parents’ age or even older, and see how cool that could be, and then on the flipside, realize that, oh yeah, old folk get sexual, and rowdy, and overindulge too, and it ain’t always pretty. Even peace isn’t perfect, but it’s much much better than any alternative out there. Much love to Genral Patton and his crew for putting on another amazing Peace Fest.
Scroll down to see the full set of pictures from the night. Right click any image to download, and click here for information on ordering prints.
