Today, I was able to mix business with pleasure. The business of having to watch five acts to write a review on for Redefine Magazine (of course, they were five acts I had wanted to see) and the pleasure of spending the day watching some of these acts with my OA’s. I took paragraph long notes on all the performances with my blackberry…crazy work.

This was my third year attending Bumbershoot and as always, I had a great time. I felt that the tone was set a little differently this year. I don’t know if the rain is to blame or what, but everything seemed much more tame. No one was really running around and there were less people moving. People preferred to be more reserve maybe.

I don’t want to give out info about the performances or post pictures just yet because I will be using them for the review and when I finish that I’ll put it up on here also. I didn’t take any streeet style photos today because no one was extraordinary. Nothing made me want to chase anyone down :/ sorry!

A very important lesson was reiterated back to me today while I was standing in line waiting to see Kay Kay and His Weathered Underground’s performance. Actually it was a lesson that I made up a couple years back. It was a goal or maybe a rule that I believed would better a person. I believe that if you can have a conversation with any random person at any moment then you are set. Obviously it’s still something I’m trying to develop. Maybe you’re not set for life, but you are comfortable enough to speak with any stranger and can make up a conversation on the spot. You’ll find that most people can’t do this. It’s definitely something I’m still working on myself.  As I stood in line, a guy who looked just like Eric was behind me. Behind him was an Asian man who had just moved here from Philidelphia and had volunteered at Bumbershoot that day. What began as a conversation about when Kay Kay was performing turned into future aspirations for James (the young man,) European movies, types of art that the Asian man loved, relationship, families and an exchange of emails. It was probably the greatest thing I have seen all day. I’m not an analyzer on people. The three of us stood in line alone with no accompanyment. I quipped in every now and then, and even at the beginning of this I could tell James wanted to involve me more, but the Asian man had known no one since moving here and he had taken a liking to James. The conversation went on for nearly 45 minutes and when we were finally able to get into the EMP venue, the two men stood together and enjoyed the show.

As much as I regret not being able to exchange more words and being a part of this bond, I’ve come to the realiziation that it wasn’t my bond to have, it was theirs. I witnessed the entire thing and it was a sight to see what relationship had come out of this – two men – that you would have never thought would have much in common from looking at them, but in fact you probably couldn’t get them to stop talking to each other.

I’ll leave you with… my favorite picture from last year!

Death Cab For Cutie Bumbershoot 2008