More by: Lori

Last weekend I had the “pleasure” of going to one of the most obnoxious downtown public events this city has debuted – or at least one of the most obnoxious that I’ve ever attended. At the corner parking lot of the B.O.B (Big Old Building), the multi-level bar centered nicely in the core of the hustle and bustle of clubs, bars, and mainstream nightlife obnoxiousness, was an event entitled “Wake Wars”. Wake Wars featured a temporary pool set up in which local folks (all white males from my observations) and international wake boarding super stars (all white males from my observations) did tricks and stunts on this pool and launch thingy from which they were pulled by a cord strung to a motorized thing that made the effect of a boat pulling a water skier. The wake boarders showed off what they had all the while splashing the crowd of mainly white folks cheering and hollering and raising their $4 Bud Lights in the Bud Light cozies wearing those tacky Mardi Gras-style Bud Light beads around their necks totaling how many Bud Lights they had consumed throughout the day.
My partner and our friend and I had headed out to this thing in an effort to score free food. They had advertised an “opening reception”, but of coarse when we got there, all they had were over priced pulled pork sandwiches and hot dogs – nothing of the free variety except a few granola energy bar things that we got hours later laying out on some table.
So we pretty much just parked it and watched the commotion and craziness. There was an obnoxious DJ that kept saying things like “Grand Rapids: are you ready to party?” and the crowd would scream and raise their drinks like it was this divine revelation, or question for that matter that he was asking. And in between constantly thanking all of “our” sponsors that evening he would say “Get ready for thee one, thee only Wake Wars 2009 at the B.O.B.!” More music started pumping, people were shaking butts and what not, and then some corporate folks started chucking t-shirts and beach balls in the air and people were screaming and yelling for them to toss them their way. PURE MADNESS I TELL YOU. One woman tried sticking a neon orange foam visor on my head that said “#1 Mongoose”. I had no idea what it meant, it was obviously a brand or something but she told me, “Just do it! Don’t you know it’s cool to wear a piece of foam on your head?” I guess I didn’t. Oh and there were also Navy recruiters there chucking little footballs in the air that just said “Navy” on them. They were in those terrible white uniforms and we talked seriously of coming back the next day (Wake Wars was a weekend-long event) with a squirt gun full of mud or something brown to shoot at their butts to make it look like they shit their pants. There were women on a stage dancing in bikinis and men hollering at them. All of the people serving alcohol and working the bar (which was in one of the pools!) were women. At one point I saw this drunk guy give a woman in a tiny Bud Light logo’d tank top a hug and then let his arm slowly graze her breasts. He grinned and she raised her eyebrows in a look of brief shock, yet not surprise.
All in all the whole thing was insane. So why am I writing about it? Well, for one I know it’s over said, but I will say it anyway – punk rock saved my life. I fear that I may have turned out like these folks or some variation of; all drooling and screaming over alcohol, shit music, and corporate crap, if it were not for the people that I love in my life and punk rock. Secondly, I know the things we create, the music we play and the lives we try to live can sometimes get mired and muddied in the ugliness of the world we were raised in, but it is a hell of a lot better than what any thing else can offer us.
So if you think what we’re fighting is for naught, seriously, do not give up. Frolicking in something that was pure all-American showed me an all time low. For real, I don’t know if things can get any worse. Like I know things have always been bad, but I’m talking bottom of the barrel, all out, “I can touch your boobs with out asking (as that guy did) and it’s totally okay while scoring some free corporate t-shirt and get recruited in to the military at the same time”
This was an incredibly honest experience. Heck, maybe I’ll go next year too, just to remind myself of why we have and are creating something entirely different and totally rejecting their way of life. In its bleak fake suntanned, Bud Light, bleach-blonde, board shorts, bikini life there was something ironically sobering about this experience. It screamed in my ear “Lori – YOU ARE OUT OF TOUCH WITH THE ‘REAL’ WORLD!” And I have never been more proud to be.