Pitchfork Music Festival 2012

On Saturday, Alana and I went to Pitchfork in Union Park. I went to Pitchfork in 2006, its first year, and in 2009. As much as I love it for the music, I love it equally for the food and the merchandise. It features local restaurants with fantastic food and a merchandise tent with local artisans selling their stuff. We arrived around 2 after a hot but fantastic brunch at Cafe Selmarie and it immediately started raining. The place was a swamp and I had to resign myself to the fact that I was just going to be dirty and sweaty all day. Drinking helped this. 

When we arrived this is what the sky looked like.

Luckily, we made it to the beer tent just in time - Heineken (of all the beers) was sponsoring the festival and had a giant dome tent set up with a/c. It was very green inside. This is Alana flashin' a peace sign.

A projector was casting images of the crowd and the current act on the ceiling. It was even a little too cool for me.

I stopped by the Curbside Splendor Publishing booth and they were the nicest bunch of people. I met one of their editors, Lauren, and we had a long conversation about the company, a book she recently edited (that I bought, by Amber Sparks), and Franki Elliot, the author of a recently published chapbook, Piano Rats (which was free with purchase), whose blog, Typewriter Stories, I also follow. We also talked about books and she told me to get in touch with her if I ever wanted to publish any of my writing. I couldn't help but think about wanting to work with them as an editor. What a dream job.

There were lots of food options. Except, no cevapcici, which was a major bummer, since they are always at all the festivals and have been here in years past. I had fish tacos from Big Delicious Planet (a catering company) and they left a little to be desired - they were room temperature.

We grabbed our beers and chatted up this guy for a while.

This is at Hot Chip, the only band playing that I really cared to see. This guy was a dancing maniac.

Black Dog Gelato had a booth there for the first time featuring blood orange sorbet, goat cheese cashew caramel, and blueberry french toast gelato. I had never had their gelato but have been dying to try it.

I got the blueberry french toast. It was amaze-balls. So was the sugar cone.

After the fest we went up to Longman & Eagle, which has this incredible outdoor bar that I am seriously enjoying this summer. Inside, Ryan Phillippe was dining! That was fun. He has pretty eyes. After a while we decided we were hungry and didn't feel like waiting for a table at L&E so we skedaddled to El Cid 2 (best tacos al pastor evah) and stuffed our faces. Now Juliette is flashing the peace sign and that's her new friend on the right.