FTR – 06
Okay, so I told Smokey and Spitz since they’re getting here late, I’d get wristband clippings for them too. Everyone with a real wristband here has already cut them! It’s wicked cool, but also a bit frustrating. I honestly think there’s as many gate-crashers as ticket-holders here…
But yea, so I thought it would seem disingenuous to ask people for clippings if I were already wearing a wristband, so I kept walking around bare-wristed for a few hours – mistake! – and taking my sweet ass time. A badge asked me to pull up my sleeve; I changed direction. A minute later I felt a hand grab my shoulder. Fuck!
I got taken to the hidden police compound in the center of the festival, where two other dirty hippie kids, a skinhead guy and a girl with sectionally shaved blonde hair, were getting interrogated for not having wristbands as well. After four cops surrounded me, they started throwing accusations at me all willy-nilly like.
“Do you have any weapons on you?? Anything illegal??”
“No, no!” I wasn’t lying. I emptied my pockets (except of wristband clippings, of course). This meant wallet, phone, cigs, keys, and my canister of bud. “That’s medicinal, I’ve got papers for that,” and not just Elements… I started to get a copy of my prescription out of my wallet when a cop stopped me.
“Look, if I actually called up to verify all the medical scrips I see out here, at a Dead show, I’d be here all month. You’re fine, except for the trespassing-”
“Trespassing? I was just in the parking lot,” I may have been lying, “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize I needed a ticket to be this far in…”
The cops explained to me and the other kids that we weren’t being charged with anything, and were welcome to come back in once we had tickets, but a cop was going to march us out to the street. Man, out of anything I could have had on me or where it could have happened, at Furthur too, of all places, and all I had in my pockets was a little bud. Talking to the cops is like a roll of the dice every time…
“…and if we see you in here again without a wristband, I’ll remember your faces…”
Right, like I don’t have ten more hats and four pairs of sunglasses in my car…
The cop who was monitoring our departure was pushy at first, motivating us to keep a brisk pace and stay a few feet ahead of him. After five or so minutes of walking through the campground staring toward the exit, I looked over my shoulder. I could not see the cop. At all. I turned forward, then asked the bald hippie kids to check; they couldn’t see him either. I decided to introduce Kemo and Nazi to an oft-utilized strategy in my survival skill utility belt – the art of bail!
“Okay, here’s what I’m thinking: on three, you guys go right, I’ll go left, and we disappear into the campgrounds, and fast. Sound good?” Two nods. “Alright, have a good festival guys! Three!”
The irony is that the car is parked literally right at the entrance, I pulled right into the corner of the parking area, so my car was right at the entrance we were walking toward. As soon as I got back, I taped on a wristband. All good now, and I’ve seen a hundred other fake bracelets today already – most not as convincing as mine, either. I got a couple extra clippings, but screw Smokey and Spitz, they gotta learn to do this themselves…
