fucking fuck. 9:30am monday morning, and i had a few fucked up dreams about kat. i need to go back to sleep, but i decided to brush my teeth and write this first.

yesterday was awesome, got a ton of cool pictures. hope to get some more today, away from the downtown area of detroit which is where i’ve spent most of my photography time thus far. i wanna check out the ghetto but james says there’s an overwhelming chance that we’ll get carjacked, and that ain’t good.

seeing the vast number of people at the festival still blows my mind. a few times yesterday i just stopped at the top of the hill and looked at the sea of people. it’s an unbelievable sight, to see that, and then one dj on stage commanding the crowd. it’s like the hfstival except with no bands and 20 times bigger. although there weren’t any traditional bands, i’ve seen a lot of fusion kinda things with various instrumentalists. a dj from nyc played yesterday with a bongo player who was really excellent. got some cool pictures of him. met a few people off doa yesterday as well, dr greenthumb and krs-2.

gonna try to go back to sleep now so i can be well rested for the day-

2:58am, sunday morning. pretty damn tired, but staying up for a few minutes to check some things online and to write this. had a really long day today, pretty much did and saw new things all day long. woke up at 12:30pm after going to a few clubs last night, had a damn good time. got some good pictures of the venue last night, which was really cool. it was in a giant ballroom with huge chadeliers. saw a few dj’s and some live acts as well. there was one live act with two guys, a table full of equipment and computers, and two guitars. they’d play minimal techno, play a few riffs, and sample and loop that for a few minutes. really interesting, i had never seen that before. also, saw more photographers there than at any other party i’ve ever been to, easily. there were 5+ pro photographers there.

today we checked out a local record shop for an hour or so while we got tickets for a party on sunday night. the tickets are small, clear, plastic squares in a tiny ziplog bag – they look just like acid. we got the tickets and i sorted through some 80’s vinyl, picked up 6 or 7 things. then we went to the festival in hart plaza, detroit. the site of the place is awe inspiring. more people than i could have imagined, and i was expecting a huge amount. it was like starscape times 100. all the same vendor booths, the same varied crowd, but during the day, and entrance is free and the event is for all ages. heard some really good music, the good thing about the festival is that there’s 4 or 5 areas with different music. unfortunately drum & bass or downtempo aren’t really big at all here. tons of techno, a lot of house – a lot of 4×4 stuff. we ate at the festival and hung out there and at an irish pub playing drum & bass all day. the evening at the festival was absolutely insane. we left for an hour or two and came back around 10pm, it seemed like the amount of people there had doubled. the main area is a huge stadium-like concerete pit that can probably hold about 150,000 people. the place was packed, it reminded me of being at a concert. the entire place at 10pm is like 10 concerts in one area. we make our way near the front of the crowd in the main area and everyone is crowd surfing. 5 people are crowd surfing at any given time.

after leaving the festival we go to a “paxahau” (well respected local promoters) party that we had gotten tickets for on friday. speedy j is the headliner and he plays all swedish techno which exhausts me. it was really hard and not really to my taste at the time – maybe i’d had enough techno. tomorrow i’ll be looking forward to the atmospheric and idm-like stuff. will post pictures when i have them – i’ve taken about 400 so far.