ACL Festival 2011 - Day 3 Punt

Punting after the watching the game

I started out Sunday by heading down to the Tavern to watch the game. Unfortunately, my Ravens laid an egg this week. A huge let down, after last week's drubbing of the Steelers.

I had planned on arriving to ACL late in the afternoon, and had only really wanted to see Fleet Foxes, and Randy Newman. However, I was not in the best of moods after the game. I had also woken up the past two mornings and was extremely congested, after inhaling a huge amount of ragweed pollen during the previous two days, at Zilker.

So, I decided to head home, missing the opportunity to sweat, worsen my blisters, pay exorbitant amounts for parking, food, and drinks, and infect my sinuses. I can watch Fleet Foxes on the webcast, and won't get to see Randy Newman, but it doesn't seem like much of a loss.

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Some Observations about the ACL Festival after 5 years

• Zilker Park is too small for the Festival in my opinion. During the past two years, C3 has upped the number of tickets they sell. It was impossible to maneuver around or through the Stevie Wonder crowd last night. There are other bottle necks, that make it difficult to move around between the AMD and Honda stages. (This is a real bummer).
  

  I can only hope that they consider changing the location in the future. Perhaps out to the Formula 1 track.
  

• I really detest the Cattle Chutes that they set up to funnel the foot traffic to and from the shuttles. At times, it seems like some sort of weird Pavlovian experiment, where they're trying to see what we'll put up with.
  

• A small number of the food vendors are down right criminal in their pricing. There was one stand in particular, where as I was waiting in line, everyone returning from the counter was audibly complaining (rightfully so), because of the amount of food.
  

  Well, I left the line when I saw what they were talking about.
  

• The Porta-Potty situation is disgusting. I count my blessings that I'm a guy.
  

• The trains! We wasted a shit-load of tax money on these things, why the hell are they not running during ACL and SxSW?