This weekend, there's a "Midwinter Festival" in a small town, in a rural area, probably 20 minutes from where I live. It's in an old apple museum, which was, I kid you not, bought by hipster wankers and turned into a cidery, and more recently a brandy distillery...
Their cider is objectively terrible, but it's expensive, and hyper "local", so everyone pretends to love it, even while they get food poisoning from it, lol.
So yeah, these people have been running a "festival" there, for nearly a decade, in collaboration with the local version of fucking Bilbao, or the Getty, which... Is owned and run by a literal professional gambler, who made his money by cheating the state's Keno system (yes, literally. That actually happened), and refusing to pay tax. He runs the museum for "good PR", and to get government grants to promote his own degeneracy.
So, onto this festival. I would link their website, if it wasn't (literally) too close to home, but let me explain:
In the past, while it was still exceedingly pretentious, it was initially actually free, and you could drive to the festival and park (there's no public transport, and it's on a highway in the middle of nowhere). You could arrive when you wanted, and leave when you wanted...
Guess what it is now, post-Covid? $10AUD PER HOUR, just to get in. Food is extra. Drink is extra. And you have to buy separate tickets for those, too. Entirely cashless. So that means you're paying $70 for tonight, and $90 for tomorrow, just to get in. No discounts. No "half time" passes. None of that. Absolutely fucking outrageous.
Once you're in, you're in. You can leave, but that's it. You're out. You've just wasted your money. No big name acts, either, and it doesn't include anything. Oh, except a bus.
On that, they no longer let you DRIVE to the festival. You're not even allowed to be dropped off. If you want to get in, you have to get on their bus, which is, apparently, included in the ticket. But seats aren't reserved. And there's no timetable.
Worse still, they are deliberately not running enough buses from the nearest city (where the accommodation actually is), because it is "too far away". So to get the bus, and be sure there is space, you have to get to the nearest town to the venue, yourself, in the first place, and just hope the buses there turn up. No joke. Which, because there is hardly any transport there, means that you will have to drive to that town, anyway.
So let's just be clear about this: to get to the festival, you have to drive down the highway, to the nearest town, which will mean you will have to drive past the venue. But you can't stop. You can't park. You can't be dropped off. You're expected to keep going, drive past, find a park in the nearest town, *and then get their stupid bus back, IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION...
And they are so smug that, in case anyone complains, their website now has a poem, a poem, which insults you, in rhyme, for even thinking about complaining about this situation. I am not kidding. I would screenshot it, but again, too many place names there...
This festival is being funded by government grants, to attract (hipster) tourists from interstate, because it's winter, and that is what kind of person the state government here wants to market to, apparently.
All it includes is shitty local bands, "wassailing", fires (heaps of that shit, including "fire twirling, and probably actual fireworks), shitty overpriced food and "craft" drink, live butchering of animals (yes, really), degenerate costume parades, Morris dancers, woke "welcome to countries" and white guilt parades, and finally, the burning of actual fucking wicker man effigies, because that is what it is all about, really... An entire festival of degeneracy.
You know what's funny? No one in the local town (where the buses go from) will be able to afford to go to this. None. Not that they would probably even want to, at this point, anyway. This is a poor town, which has been utterly decimated by policies put in place to appease these kinds of people (i.e. shutting down both the forestry and apple industries), and which is like... The antithesis of what the festival is. So it's almost like this is a deliberate slap in the face to them (and to me). A... "Fuck you. If you don't like it, you wouldn't be able to afford to go, anyway". And now, with the ticketing bullshit, that is literally, unironically, the case.
That has to be deliberate. It has to be. It's disgusting.
One final note: this festival is largely run by (aside from the cider wankers) that museum I mentioned, which also runs "edgy" hipster arts and music festivals in the city, twice a year.
You know what that festival has had, as previous events? A man who sewed his lips together, and stuck needles in his whole body. For "art". Another year, he suspended himself (or his head) inside a box, for three days, and didn't move. For "art". Then he buried himself under the main road of the city, in a shipping container, for five days. The council PAID for that, and for digging up and closing the road, twice, in that one week. Deliberately. To disrupt traffic (because these people hate cars, and humanity). For "art".
But worse than that, a few years ago, the festival sacrificed a live bull and bathed in its blood. Yes, you heard me - people paid good money to bathe in the blood of a bull that was killed in front of them. As a "ritual". For "art".
Two years ago? The festival asked for Aboriginal volunteers to donate THEIR BLOOD, so that they could soak an antique Australian flag in that blood. No fucking joke. This finally jumped the shark, and the public told them to go fucking jump (well, those of us with common sense did. Not the media so much). So they rescinded, and instead now run "parades of guilt" through the city, twice a year, where they "mourn for Aboriginal Australia", and shut down the city while they tell us all how guilty we are.
Oh, and they also have inverted red crosses up around the city. Every year. To be "edgy". For "art".
This is all true. Look it up, if you wish. All of it. I'm not just schizoposting, this time.
While it might sound like I live in the Twilight Zone, or in literal Hell, I promise you... Try actually living here.
You thought Williamsburg or the Bay Area were bad? Try transferring that same "aesthetic", mixing it with additional white guilt and even more leftism, and plonking it in a rural environment where it does not fucking belong, and this what you get.
And yes, people here think that this shit is all "muh wholesome Keanu chungus". You should see the backlash you get on social media when you try to call it out. :-/
Yes, yes that’s it. 😛
Not where the festival itself is, but it’s where the museum is, lol…
You know what’s extra funny, though?
I grew up ~200m or less from where that photo was taken, and was living there at the time, ha.
If you know where that cannon was, and still is - that was the first house I lived in.
It’s worth over a million bucks now (something like 5 times what it was sold for). Pity my folks sold it off when they did, lol…
From some of your posts, I'm not sure them having more dollarydoos would make your life any better.
True. But at least then I still might have access to the building/property, and/or might “inherit” it in 20 years time (though probably not)…
I didn’t mean it from a perspective of them having more wealth (per se), because as you say, it doesn’t benefit me in any way. More just that the property was fantastic (as you can partly see from that view, sort of), and I wish I still had access to that…
Also, if they hadn’t moved from there to rural woop-woop when I was a child, then I… Might have actually been able to visit my friends, and catch public transport from the bus stop literally outside (that house), and even walk to town… 😑
Which, in hindsight, is probably a big part of why they forced me to move away, but obviously, I didn’t know that when I was a kid, lol…
I’m genuinely fascinated by your experiences of the place, and that trip, if you feel like discussing more about it, btw. Because a) clearly I feel a vague connection to that ship (oddly), and b) I was too young to even really… Know what was going on at that point, so would be a fascinating perspective to get from someone who came in from overseas, lol!
Did you get any shore leave while you were here, if you don’t mind my asking??
Re us going nuts: you’re not wrong, but the cultural rot here (specifically in this city and state, but also the whole country) has been around long before that time, and has really just… Been increasing ever since.
While John Howard’s government (1996 - 2007) laid the groundwork for a lot of this, including by the changes they made to Universities, and the gun ban, I can actually pin down when shit really started to slide, here…
The 2007 election of Kevin Rudd, and the 2008 “Apology to the Stolen Generations”, which we were forced to watch in school, at the time, by the way…
That’s when things started to become like this. Under that government. After the precedent set by that decision, and the… “Mainstreaming”, of that sort of activist-politics, and everything it unleashed…
So much of what has happened since can be pinned down to the “cultural change” which Rudd-Gillard (2007 - 2013) unleashed… 😔
Simplification, of course, but I do really know what I’m talking about, here, lol…
Also, on a more wholesome note: I don’t remember you and your shipmates’ visit (I was like 3yo. And may have been overseas at the time), but guess what?
I have a model of the Kitty Hawk, that I built, in my house.
First proper (plastic) model that I ever built, lol!
At least, I think it’s probably the exact same ship of that name…
Built in the 60s (edit: 50s, apparently), no?
I also had a poster of it up on my wall, for years…
Small world, hey?
Did you guys visit Little Italy (restaurant, not precinct) on Collins, when you were here?
The owner was fanatical about US navy ships. Had photos of every single one that visited.
It’s not there anymore, sadly. I think he probably died. Chinese and Kebab shop now (but of course)…
And yes, I know about the ban on nuclear-powered ships in the port, lol.
I think I learned about that at a surprisingly young age!
So I imagine that must have been one of the last of your big ships to even come here, sadly!
I’m sure there has been a few other oil-powered visitors since (pre-Covid), but I don’t remember specifically…
You must have heard of Teddy Sheean, and that whole saga, then, I assume??