Psychedelic Flower Hippie Love Camp

This weekend I attended a counter-cultural event held in the woods on a mountain in the middle of nowhere. Some friends had heard about a '60s styled outdoor concert and given my interest in most things '60s styled, I was immediately intrigued. With backpack packed I boarded a subway Saturday afternoon with my companions and set off.

After an hour of weighing the sub, we arrived at a major terminal where more friends joined up before boarding a "nowhere-bound" bus. Two hours and some wine later, nowhere turned out to be a small town, which we soon discovered was the wrong small town. As luck would have it, a nun and a priest offered to give all seven of us a ride in their church van to the designated hippie rendezvous point. I am not making any of this up.

About an hour later, with growing suspicion that this "nun and priest" act was really a way for them to get us to a quiet place and chop us up, we arrived at the Love Camp. It was now about 10pm and the party was on. A band of old bearded Korean dudes was rocking the hell out of some filthy acid-rock and wound their set down with CCR's Proud Mary. Something I noticed was an absence of a certain aroma which supposedly wafts around during these outdoorsy music concert things. Korea is strict, dude.

The crowd was fascinating. Maybe 150 people, mostly in their 20s and 30s, although there was a strong contingent of those who lived through whatever passed for the '60s counter culture in Korea. Maybe 30 foreigners too, although most of them were Euros or freakish pseudo-English speakers from places like "New Zealand" or "Oz". A Polish girl sat by me at one point and I said to her "So you're Polish... that's weird" and she says "It's very normal for me". This was a) the only possible response to my remark and b) freakin' genius. If you ever meet a crazy-dancing blond polish girl, ask her for enlightenment.

As the night went on things got weirder, Polish or otherwise. A mystical dance performance by odd-sods in white makeup was accompanied by hand drums, guitar, and shrieking woman. I really enjoyed several young Korean bands playing a frenzied style of proggy math-rock. The music was closed out by an experimental American guy with a keyboard and drum kit (his set reminded me of the music from Chrono Trigger) and then a more traditional techno music DJ. Then the rain started and it really became a hippie fest.

Unwilling to sleep in the mud, I decided to keep drinking and stay up all night. One of my companions, apropos of nothing but his manic drunkenness, drop-kicked a watermelon, raining pink and green bits on innocent by-standers. At another point, I used my plush black bat (Stump, RIP) to fly onto the stage and kidnap a performer's stuffed rabbit. Various audience members asked me about this for the rest of the night and it was fun to hear their mixed interpretations of the act. Alas, Stump was left on one of the buses we took back home the next day.