Year Two Day Fifty Two - Wakestock

Dear all, 

It's time for  WAKESTOCK!!!

The epic music and wake boarding festival is coming to Collingwood and we made sure we got our tickets early in order to catch the headlining group, The Dropkick Murphys! http://www.wakestock.com/

We managed to get some fantastic early bird tickets from The Edge (http://www.edge.ca/) a saucy radio station from Toronto and were excited to see the band having heard great review from so many people over the last couple of years. 

The Festival was being held behind the iconic Grain Elevators on Collingwood's water front. It was pretty impressive with a huge amount crammed into a relatively small space. They had a number of big name sponsors from Monster drinks to Sprite and Micrsoft... A big event for CWood!

There were numerous stalls ( trendy surf, skate and wakeboarding gear) and a huge beer garden sponsored by Coors Lights. Music festivals are slightly different from those in the UK. As you may know, the music festival season in the UK is now what everyone lives for - there are HUNDREDS of different festivals to choose from including the famous Glastonbury http://www.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk/, The Big Chill http://www.bigchill.net/ and Bestival http://www.bestival.net/. The 'beer garden' is totally segregated from the rest of the festival and one is not allowed to transport ones drink out into the 'common areas' ( the heavy police presence maintains this r). This is VERY different from the UK.. and creates a slightly different vibe, but it was still amazing to be there and taps deep into my heart, as I maintain my visceral love for music festivals has most definitely not waned. 

The bands perform in tandem with the WakeBoarding and Skating Boarding championships. It draws and young and trendy crowd with everyone wearing a similar attire of string bikins, board shorts, flourescent caps and green or orange 80's style ray bans... Lets just say that Darren and I stood out from the crowd somewhat [but i always like to do things a little 'off piste']. 

We didn't have to wait long before the crowd start to assemble to watch the main attraction, The Dropkick Murphys. http://www.dropkickmurphys.com/

Darren has always wanted to see the band and we were contemplating going down to Boston ( their home town) on St. Patrick's day to see them live... turns out they came to us instead and we couldn't wait!

Their set was awesome! They are most certainly wild men and play with overwhelming flair and energy. 

They whipped the crowd up into a frenzy with people crowd-surfing and a constant stream of miscellaneous items being flung into the air (water bottles, shoes, clothing, turf). And here is a little video snippet!

They played some classics and snuck in an ACDC cover to get the crowd going. Their encore was the hilarious, 'kiss me, I'm shit-faced' where they invited 'every' lady in the audience to come up and dance on stage.. As I wasn't 19 and wearing a bikini, I decided to stay back on ground level and after 90 minutes or so, the show was over and we were all off home.. 

We joined the stream of folks heading back into Collingwood - extremely happy we had been and also happy to head back home ( ** by way of the pub of course). 

And in other news:

1. Ahhhhh we pooped in to The Beaver and Bull Dog http://www.beaverandbulldogcollingwood.com/ for some post-match wings.. my favorite: Three Pepper wings with Chipotle Tabasco on the side.

 A M A Z I N G

2. Look what we stumbled across while walking back from Wakestock: A fleet of Square Riggers docked in the newly developed 'Shipyards'! http://www.theshipyards.com/

On further inspection, we discovered that it was the Toronto Brigantine that run sail training programs on Tall Ships for young people keen to try out a spot of  the 'ocean' life - http://www.torontobrigantine.org/

This struck a major cord with me having done the very same as a crew member of TS Astrid http://www.tallshipastrid.nl/ many moons ago.. ( That's me in the stripy top..)