On Saturday night Sam and I met up with Aaron at Tarfest. Apparently it’s the tenth anniversary, but you wouldn’t have known it from the extremely lackluster crowds remaining 2/3rds through the event.
When we arrived I realized a magnificent sunset was escaping from us on the other side of museum row. We were still waiting for Aaron and Sam was kind enough to let me literally run off in the other direction to bound across parking lots and climb staircases in an attempt to see the ribbons of orange and purple wind backwards toward the ocean. Unfortunately at the highest point I could get outside of LACMA the building stuck out in front of me and would only allow shots looking north and slightly northwest, but never due west.
I scrambled over to Wilshire boulevard to see if I could see the orange steam still rising from the sun that had just set in the Pacific ten miles west.
I was too late, but there wasn’t a good vantage point on the street anyway, so I turned back east.
Along the eastern side of the (unused?) LACMA building I captured some pink tufts easing down.
Back on the north side of the building the sky was darkening over the Levitated Mass exhibit.
After fifteen minutes of leaving Sam to talk to a statue of a bear, I knew I needed to come back. She was waiting behind the small stage.
Behind the stage was a beer garden and to the right of that were a few large format paintings being created. The artist below is Craola.
We took a break and walked over to the circle of food trucks east of the tar pits. There were three trucks and the Kool Hauz ice cream sandwhich truck. All of them had long lines and high prices. A very poor showing considering the hundreds of trucks we’re used to seeing at the art walk. We decided to just walk to The Counter only a few hundred yards away.
After eating we walked back to the festival to see a hipster band with “wizards” in their name.
When the set was done Aaron and Sam were interested in seeing Levitated Mass, so I guided them to the rock, taking photos of the Asian art building on the way.
We came back to see Blondefire. Usually the closer has the most fans, but I’m not sure that rule held for this festival. Blondefire had their songs very well rehearsed, but sounded a lot to me like a rehash of the late 90s band The Cardigans; the crowd was dwindling. The sound was directed primarily towards more feminine ears, and there truly seemed to be more women in the crowd interested than men; perhaps including my own girlfriend. There were a few obvious female fans in the audience “grooving” to the music, while most of the men stood around, probably happy to have an excuse to look at the hipster women. As I am neither single nor find the hipster aesthetic attractive, I resorted to critiquing the sound with Aaron, reminded by the body subtly swaying in time with the music next to me that I shouldn’t be too vicious, as my opinion may not be shared among those closest to me without a Y chromosome.
Blondefire closed their set with a song called “where the kids are” that featured a never ending synthesizer blip. That same blip can be heard in the official video (below).
