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Bestival battered by blustery blows
Bestival has been suffering an almost Glastonbury-like weather battering: the BBC Introducing stage has had to be axed in the face of storms.
Rob Da Bank is confident everything will turn out alright:
"Obviously people are going to moan about the rain but but I've been to enough muddy Glastonburys to know that things always come good in the end. I've had loads of people come up to me and say this is actually the best Bestival they've ever been to. Onwards and upwards!"
Bestival attempts to capture the original spirit of Glastonbury; Da Bank is even chanelling the insane optimism of Michael Eavis.
5 comments:
I left the site early yesterday morning because it was blinding obvious that things were going to get worse. I have been to Glastonbury every year since '97 and the Bestival site was shaping up to be just as bad as a muddy Glastonbury, if not worse. I had to queue up for an already overflowing portaloo before I left, at least that doesn't happen at Glastonbury since the introduction of the slap-doors. Hearing that the loo suckers are having trouble getting round the site must mean the sanitary conditions are pretty grim by now. I'm so glad I left when I did even if it means I missed The Breeders :( and paid £150 to get pissed in the rain and then sleep in a leaky tent for one night.
After the rain yesterday how can Rob Da Bank (I fear thats not his real name) be that optimistic.
I've done a couple of glastonburys, countless other festivals in both England and Europe and 3 bestivals.
I lasted one day this year. It wasn't the rain or the mud - there is just too many people in that rain and mud. The capacity has tripled from 10,000 to 30,000 in a few years and this site is not meant for that many people.
The rain was unwelcome but the atmosphere that Bestival was built on washed away for different reasons.
Fancy dress? Some people made the effort but the majority didn't. When the festival was smaller, the atmosphere was something special and virtually everyone dressed up.
Bestival has become just like every other festival.
I've just come home having lasted till Sunday morning. The mud was no worse and often better (less sticky owing to the bleedin' constant rain) than bad Glastonbury years, and if you bothered to check around and walk to the next toilet block there were always some loos available that were quite sanitary. I also don't buy the "oh it's just like everywhere else now, hardly anyone bothers with fancy dress" line - a lot of people I know had brought it but either didn't use it because of the conditions or got dressed for an hour and then changed again.
What DID miff me considerably was the fact that owing to a short-sighted resiting of the stages at the bottom of a hill this year, both the BBC and comedy tent were mostly flooded and inoperative (one or two acts got on the BBC tent), and the bandstand never even opened. This meant more than half the acts I wanted to see didn't play, which made my ticket ruddy poor value. At least at Glastonbury the show always goes on - I didn't see much effort being made to salvage those stages. And on Friday the main stage opened several hours late due to ground shoring up work, so a few more acts never played there. If anyone really did go up to Da Bank and say it was the best one ever they clearly had better drugs than me.
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