Sh'Bang Music & Arts Festival - a land of hippies, pirates, cowboys, vaudeville performers, compost toilets and skinny dipping to live music. I showed up to Lookout Arts Quarry (Bellingham, WA) on Friday and immediately felt miles out of my comfort zone. I actually want to run straight home at the first chance I got but I stayed with faith that good things happen when you leave that silly little comfort zone. And I was right. By the end of the weekend, I was crawling around naked on a floating dock with other people pretending to be wild animals and chanting Om in a dark sauna with dozens of unseen naked bodies. It was a weekend of naked bodies - I probably never saw so many gorgeous boobs in one place in my life. I did have some serious boob envy for a couple hours until my boyfriend..I mean husband (still getting used to it) reassured me that he likes my boobies lots and lots ;)
THE 10 WEIRDEST & COOLEST THINGS I SAW & DID
1) I turned around and saw a naked cowboy with a black hat and whip, doing a handstand on a raft and then jumping into the water with a yeehaaw!
2) I ate two giant gluten free raw-as-fuck hippie friendly cookies in the biggest hammock I've ever seen (it could hold more than 10 people) up high in the forest trees and watched a soap box derby race downhill into a wall of foaming bubbles.
3) I watched an old man so high on drugs he was in a different solar system having conversations with folding chairs.
4) I met a wolf who didn't give a shit about being pet but walked around like he owned the place. So awesome to stand with a wild animal (clearly wild even though he has a human friend).
5) I heard a man singing incredible karaoke (love ballads) by himself at 430am for at least 2 hours straight for two (maybe three) nights in a row.
6) I saw kids and adults running around on all fours with horse heads on chasing each other.
7) I made friends with a gorgeous mermaid sitting on a pirate ship (her mermaid tail was custom made in Florida by The Mertailor (cost over $1000 and felt like real rubbery fish tail). She said "Life is about doing what you want. So if you want to be a fucking mermaid, be a fucking mermaid." #preach!
8) I discovered a car in a forest clearly that was covered in kids happy meal toys and spewing bubbles out the back.
9) I ate freshly fried donuts while watching men strip in a burlesque show and then passionately make-out with each other on stage...one was a cowboy and the other some kind of lumberjack.
10) I took a rhythmic yoga class that made us touch strangers with our eyes closed (made us feel like instant friends) and then lock eye contact with strangers (also made us feel like instant friends) while primal crawling on the floating dock, naked, while listening to a woman singing about the wild wild west, while an artist painted live on stage and kids paddle-boarded and jumped off the diving board and people gave each other massages, and we all soaked in the sun as one beautiful human tribe, all differences aside. Some say crazy...I say human. // cha