SxSWicked Awesome
I just got home from a week at South by Southwest in Austin. It was so fun. I am going to try to describe it briefly here, but my strongest recommendation is just that you go and check it out for yourself. But only if you wear comfortable shoes. Whatever shoes you own, they are probably not comfortable enough.
The one other big multi-day music festival I’ve been to was Reading Festival in England, in the summer of 2006. We camped in tents, existed on chips and cheap Chinese food, and basically didn’t bathe for four days.
SxSW is more of an “adult’s” festival. By this I do not mean that anyone acts more mature. I just mean that my friends and I rented a house, so every night I slept in a real bed. And I took showers most of the days. Sometimes I even brushed my teeth, too.
I have seen an unspeakable number of bands since Tuesday, and I have fit an astonishing number of breakfast tacos into my body. But rather than recount how I spent every second of every day (quick summary: I spent them all standing up, or walking), here are just a few of my SxSW highlights:
-Getting dinner with the fabulous girls at Forever YA, gossiping and discussing kids books, and visiting BookPeople, Austin’s ENORMOUS and GORGEOUS indie bookstore. They had Mostly Good Girls in stock, so obviously I loved it there. I took a photo of one of their displays because it had books by Jess Rothenberg’s and Lauren Oliver.
-Gingerbread pancakes with bananas, pecans, and real maple syrup at Magnolia Cafe.
-Counting Crows at Auditorium Shores.
-Ice cream from Amy’s. Perhaps I should list this three times, since I ate ice cream at Amy’s three times during my six days in Texas.
-Watching a screening of Girl Walk // All Day at the Alamo Drafthouse. The director gave us free tickets, and there was a dance party in the theater, and afterward we got to meet the star:
-Getting the top score at photo hunt on the Megatouch at the Mohawk.
-Mash-up dance party at Bootie. They played some of my favorite mash-ups, including this one:
Hello Girl, Let's Party Till the End
I’m also going to put together a Spotify playlist of some of my favorite bands/songs from SxSW, so I’ll post that here once it’s up. For now, though, I have to try to figure out a way to fall asleep so I can wake up for work tomorrow. This is going to be a challenge, since I’ve been out until 2am every day this week. Look, nobody ever said parties were easy.