shrine to the prophet of americana

Little Radio, man - it was this actual pirate radio station that somehow evolved into an internet radio station slash hipster...

Little Radio, man - it was this actual pirate radio station that somehow evolved into an internet radio station slash hipster venue slash electric car dealership? Sunday afternoons in the summers they did this thing called Summer Camp, it was like they’d cover the parking lot in astroturf and have an aboveground pool and an inflatable waterslide and a badminton net and waterguns, and they’d have bands playing inside. I saw Great Northern there, and The Like, and Giant Drag, and Kelly did Shoes once, but I’d never seen the video and had no fucking clue what was going on.

And the drinks were free, this was before the crash of 2008, and because we were “influencers” alcohol companies would literally compete to have party producers give us their booze for free, Dewar’s and Colt .45 and canned wine and Sparks knockoffs. I knew a girl who put together electro parties and she literally had a garage full of free drinks, free Monster cans. She had Monster Water cans, surplus from I think the Limp Bizkit tour when they just wanted to have the guys drinking something branded on stage, sometimes at parties the bartenders would grab the wrong can and think they were making vodka Monsters when they were actually pouring vodka root.

Anyway for some reason that ended and the party moved further south and east to some bar, they were calling it Summertramp now, the drinks weren’t free and there weren’t bands and the vibe was a little weaker so I gave up. A year or two later my friends and I decided to give it another try and we waited in line for fucking ever and when we got in we realized it had turned into a gay party while we were gone, all buff dudes standing around shirtless but no one getting into the pool, not even really checking each other out so much as positioning themselves to get checked out.