Arts Things I Saw at Bumbershoot Yesterday
In about eight hours, I managed to squeeze in the following delights:
•Twenty minutes of Jeremy Enigk.
•Twenty minutes of Mike Daisey.
•Twenty minutes of Mates of State.
The rest of the time was spent in line, squeezing through the fellow crowd members, and browsing the trinkets. It would’ve been nice to see more. I also ate a hot dog and a third of a funnel cake (those things SUCK).
I could be wrong, but it seems like the elimination of Friday made the audience denser and more desperate to cram it all in. I’m not complaining; Bumbershoot is a cool event, with lots of good features that attract a more diverse audience than would normally attend any of these events if they were held independently (there were probably more African Americans, for example, at the two indie rock show fragments I saw than at all the I.R. shows I’ve seen this year combined). Not that diversity alone is its own reward, but there’s something to be said for art that can withstand being performed in front of people who aren’t already in its cheering section. There’s a strong sense of being out among people who only leave their houses once a year. I think it’s great that Bumbershoot gets them out of their Kirklands and into the world. And I think it’s great that standard-issue city folk are forced to be shoulder-to-shoulder with them. It can make for an uncomfortable mash-up of Seattles: old and new, suburban and urban, pre-fashionable and effortlessly chic. And every possible thing in-between (faux-hawks included). Though my heart was screaming to leave, my brain felt like this had to be a positive jam—to be taken out of your zone of comfort and forced to be cheek-by-tie-dyed-fanny-pack with the same people you scream at on the freeway (or who scream at you on the street even as they try to run your bikes over): surely, that is city life. At least in this city.
So that's what makes Bumbershoot great? That it makes you feel terrible?
So we get bigger crowds with one fewer day, higher ticket prices, fewer acts to pay, yet the same people who constantly almost mindless champion Bumbershoot will all come back en masse anyway, so the organizers can pull a better profit.
The ratio of crowds and long lines to the actual amount of entertainment were what drove me away and I'm definitely not alone in that sentiment. And now, first hand accounts that those very things have indeed gotten even worse.
It's the local equivalent of an annual tourist trap.