Lexington Winter Warehouse Festival - Canberra 2008

Who made it to WWF on Saturday at the AIS?

RiotACT already has pretty good discussion on it, but here's my rundown on the day:

We rocked up at about 2pm (doors opened at 1pm) to a pretty empty carpark - a bit of a shock to us! Myself, The Hun and one of my friends rocked up to the entry gates, were I was promptly told that there was to be no food, no drinks, no gum, no lollipops, no lipgloss and no deoderant to be brought in to the venue. I told her 'But I'm vegan! What will I eat!' in an attempt to get to keep my falafel sandwiches I'd painstakingly made an hour before (in my effort to keep healthy!) but she didn't care, and told me there was amenities inside. So in went two sandwiches (one for The Hun!), a packet of gum, half a bag of jellybeans (tsk tsk!) and a bottle of water. At least, I thought I chucked out my bottle of water, but when I turned back to the guard lady she barked "no water!" and then I realised it was still in my hand. I chucked it out and returned to her, when she decided that it was now a good time to tell me that if that bottle had not been opened then I could have taken it in. Nice.

The Hun and my friend were a fair bit ahead, but I still had to line up to get my bag searched (I only brought it to hold my sandwhiches!) and then line up to get metal detected. Super strict security for a Canberra show - why can't we have gum?! They paid extra attention to scanning The Hun's pants - my boy must be packing some junk in his trunk because there wasn't anything in his pockets!

We got in there and it was pretty dead, but the music was sounding fantastic - so we headed to the bar line. $9.50 for a Smirnoff! $10.50 for a Smirnoff Black! So doubles it was. There was a sign indicating that the prices were largely due to the RTD tax, but it also made sure to point out that they had generously absorbed as much of the price increase as they could. Oh. How generous.

We caught up with the bro's and their friends a boogaloo'd to Aston Shuffle for a bit, before I got a call from some more of my friends whose tickets I had in my bag. This is where crazy security stayed crazy - there were no pass-outs, so I had to find my way outside to a perimeter fence near the portaloo's and pass the tickets over. I felt totally dodgy but was on my second double, so I thought I was playing it pretty cool (if any of you are Facebookians, you might have seen my 'funny face' photo - taken at that time).

On the whole, we spent a lot of time dancing and having a ball! The music was pretty consistently good - Kid Kenobi and MC Sureshock were faboo (His abs!!! Breathtaking!!! Glistening!!) and I wouldn't mind seeing them again. Mixmaster Mike is hard to classify- he played some amazing stuff, but also some terrible stuff - he was hard to dance to a lot of the time, and I described him as being the shittest and the best simultaneously. You can't deny he has some skills though.

My highlight was definitely Bonde Do Role. I'd only heard of them when The Hun would blast them through the TV while he was cooking in the other room, and I knew they were pretty catchy. Well. NOTHING prepared me for how awesome it was! I admit the atmosphere, anticipation and alcohol probably had a lot to do with it, but more than once during their 45 minute set I thought to myself 'This is one of the happiest moments of my life!' 'I may never be this happy again!' and 'I have to remember this feeling!'. I basically jumped up and down and squealed for close to an hour. FANTASTIC. Go listen to their MySpace now!!

After that I got a bit tired and a bit hungry - as predicted, the only food available was sausage rolls, cold pizzas and chips cooked in beef tallow. NOICE. I felt a little less like the alcohol was burning a whole through my stomach after a packet of Salty Kettles chips, but felt more dehydrated. If they run the event again, they need to get more 'festival' food in - like the Hare Krishna's and the Turkish Gozleme women!

We sat down for about an hour while I rested my feet and tried to decide whether to stay or go. My friend was the dessy and not so keen to stay, but The Hun had 7 drinks under his belt (six of them doubles!) and was ready to tear the damn floor up! As soon as I was back on the floor (8:15) I didn't want to leave - but unfortunately, we'd promised the dessy we'd leave at 8:45 (middle bro later told me he'd told me he had spare seats so we could have stayed! Damn!).

I thought the $55 early bird ticket was well worth it. Hopefully it's back next year with more food options, cheaper drinks and nicer security.