Bottle Rock 2013

"Enjoy your bottles and your rocks" 

    - Security Lady who patted me down.

This is me very excited to have a music festival come to my town!  It was a five day affair (Wednesday through Sunday) but I only attended Friday.  I bought my ticket months in advance (like a sucker) but if you procrastinated until the week before the event, there were awesome 50% Off deals.  Oh well, lesson learned for next year.  Procrastination for the win.

 It was a big deal to Napa because the expected crowds made everyone nervous.  I was surprised by a  few of my friends who I thought would be into the festival say they were going to "avoid it like the plague" because "it's going to be a nightmare/shit show".  I was curious how the parking situation was going to play out but I shared none of my friend's feelings.

 

This was one of the adorable ways the event tried to fuse music and wine.

All the restaurants in Napa showed up which meant the food was delicious and crazy mad crazy expensive.

 

Beautiful eating area away from the stages.

These wine pouches were one of my favorite things at Bottle Rock.  I didn't pay $15 for one, but I'm a HUGE fan of alternative packaging.  I need to talk to someone about how to get my wine into these pouches.

No glass, no cork, no foil, label built in.  What's not to love?

  There were 3 stages, this one being the biggest.


The weather was pretty darn perfect.

 I found fellow fun-sunglasses-lover Chelsea soon after arriving.  Do I really look that small in real life?  In my head I am a normal size person.  To be fair, Chelsea is also very tall.

 The other component of the music festival was comedy.  I saw Sarah Tiana and Natasha Leggero, both very funny ladies.  I missed the other two comics I wanted to see because the theater was full.  I think they really underestimated how many people would want to go.

 After the funny ladies, went to see one of my bucket-list artists: Andrew Bird.  I was a little ambivalent about the festival until I saw that Andrew Bird was playing.  I would have been happy to go home after seeing him.

 The lyrics, the violin, the whistling, the pedal looping; such a pleasure.

 A few hours later, on a different stage we waited for The Black Keys.  This time I was a little further away from the stage.

 But I was still in front of all these people.  Later I read that attendance on Friday was 30,000 people.

 I cringe at the quality of night pictures on the iphone, but what can you do? What's that you say - buy a real camera? Nonsense.

 The Black Keys were a fireball of energy and awesomeness.  Overall I think the day and the festival as a whole was a success and hope they can get their act together and do it again next year.

-L