{"id":2761,"date":"2004-08-21T11:34:35","date_gmt":"2004-08-22T01:34:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2004\/08\/21\/hempfest-2004\/"},"modified":"2019-12-11T08:01:44","modified_gmt":"2019-12-11T16:01:44","slug":"hempfest-2004","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2004\/08\/21\/hempfest-2004\/","title":{"rendered":"Hempfest 2004"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:10362,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.hempfest.org&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20260219095141\\\/https:\\\/\\\/www.hempfest.org\\\/&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-11 03:28:51&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-11 03:28:51&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/graphics\/2004\/08\/graphics\/artskull.JPG\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/graphics\/2004\/08\/graphics\/artskull-tm.jpg\" height=\"319\" width=\"400\" alt=\"Skull\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I spent some time today wandering around this year&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hempfest.org\/\" title=\"The Seattle Hempfest\">Hempfest<\/a>. I&#8217;ve avoided this particular Seattle festival for the past few years I&#8217;ve been down here, mostly because of my personal opinions regarding pot. Today, though, I had nothing else planned, and figured it might be worth wandering down with my camera for some peoplewatching.<\/p>\n<p>As for the event itself&#8230;well, I can&#8217;t honestly say I was very surprised by the attendant crowds. Virtually every stereotype imaginable when dealing with the hemp\/pot communities was there, plus all the requisite political hangers-on. Stoners, hippies, thugs, freaks, wierdos, Democrats, Libertarians, Socialists &#8212; you name it, that subculture was represented somewhere. Not to mention the ultra-right-wing religious proselytizers.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/graphics\/2004\/08\/graphics\/blessyourdirtyheart.JPG\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/graphics\/2004\/08\/graphics\/blessyourdirtyheart-tm.jpg\" height=\"398\" width=\"319\" alt=\"You poor sick miserable bunch\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Is it any wonder so many people have such a dim view of Christianity when these bigoted idiots are the most visible representatives of the religion most of the time? I&#8217;ll give them points for perseverance, but that&#8217;s about it.<\/p>\n<p>I didn&#8217;t bother to listen to any of the speakers I passed on the various stages, and for the most part, none of the few bands that were playing when I wandered by caught my ear enough for me to stop and listen. I did manage to catch a few minutes of a bellydancing performance on one of the stages, though.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/graphics\/2004\/08\/graphics\/bellydancing.JPG\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/graphics\/2004\/08\/graphics\/bellydancing-tm.jpg\" height=\"319\" width=\"400\" alt=\"Bellydancing\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I only ended up sticking around for a couple hours, though, as &#8212; speaking of stereotypes &#8212; today&#8217;s cloudy skies finally started raining. It wasn&#8217;t enough rain to really be that much of a bother, but as I didn&#8217;t have anything along with me to protect the camera, I decided it was time enough to find my way home. Besides, walking through another thick cloud of marijuana smoke every few minutes was starting to get to be a bit much for me.<\/p>\n<p>All in all, not a bad afternoon, though. Had the weather been a bit better, I probably would have stuck around a bit longer and taken a few more pictures. I&#8217;m trying to get over an ingrained resistance to taking pictures of random people, and festivals like this can be a good place to work on that. It&#8217;s not an easy thing for me to do, as I&#8217;m always at some level afraid that whoever I&#8217;m aiming the camera at will get offended, or make the assumption that I&#8217;m some sort of creepy voyeuristic freak, or some such thing, but as &#8220;still lifes&#8221; and buildings get a bit boring after a while, I&#8217;m going to keep working on it.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/graphics\/2004\/08\/graphics\/dancers.JPG\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/graphics\/2004\/08\/graphics\/dancers-tm.jpg\" height=\"398\" width=\"319\" alt=\"Dancers\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>iTunes:<\/strong> &#8220;My Mind is My Enemy (20,00 Volts of Stimulation Focused)&#8221; by Khan, Praga from the album <em>My Mind is My Enemy\/Luv U Still<\/em> (1998, 4:12).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I spent some time today wandering around this year&#8217;s Hempfest. I&#8217;ve avoided this particular Seattle festival for the past few years I&#8217;ve been down here, mostly because of my personal opinions regarding pot. Today, though, I had nothing else planned, and figured it might be worth wandering down with my camera for some peoplewatching.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2043,2050],"tags":[13,27],"class_list":["post-2761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","category-photography","tag-life","tag-photography"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2761"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2761\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}