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bunking into festivals

I also got lifts from the bloke who said he'd killed someone, and the army blokes and the lorry driver with loads of porn stuck up his cabin and the weirdo who tried to come onto me...
 
Maybe in the 90s there was still some hang over from the free festival scene and more people where attending weekly free parties so it felt unnatural to have to pay to get in to something.
 
bluestreak said:
See, this is why men are confused... what is it women want when they get into strangers' vehicles...
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I have always wanted to get from A to b but I understand quite a few prostitutes use to hitch between destinations hence very easy for blokes to get mixed messages when a lady is hitching on her own.

anyway, we are de-railing your thread...


back to festies....
 
That's alright, it was such a ridiculous proposition that it didn't require your sensible answer. I suspect DJ Squelch has it. For those who grew up without any free festivals and Reading providing the business model I guess it didn't seem so weird. To be honest, I can't believe what people will put up with, Reading is Hell, and yet people (including myself when i was young) go back year after year to put treated like shit and milked like a fucking dairy cow.
 
Back on topic... :D

I hopped into Glastonbury from 1992 - 2000 and tbh it was a big part of what made the vibe so good, so spontaneous and wild. I hate to say it but Glastonbury has felt sterile to me since the superfence. But I've kept going even so, hunting out the old vibes in Glastonbury's nooks and crannies - and I've bought a ticket every year from 2002, this year included, so please don't give me a hard time :D

I'd love to sample some other festivals, like the Glade etc., but I can't afford it this year, after shelling out for Glastonbury. However, if I could hop the fence I might find I like it more than Glastonbury, and come back next year with a ticket.

Would appreciate a PM from anyone with any thoughts on the matter :D
 
Part of the excitement was trying your luck to get in free and meeting old and new friends around the fence. There was a sense of unity around the festival parameters as groups would pass on information about what they'd heard about getting over the fence. I went in free three times -over, under and through.
 
I should imagine there are still many kids out there who blag, jump thier way into festies. I know a group of lads round my way whove been blagging thier way into Reading festival for around 4 years now, only into the camping site and theres no way that appeals to me but what ever floats your boat.

Prevous experience of festivals Ive been to would say, u cud prbly find ur way into Guilfest, judging by the amount of wronguns in the dance tent every evening last year and I suspect Big Chill wouldn't exactly be a very tricky task.

I for one could never be arsed to head all the way to a festival not knowing weather I'd get in or not, unless it was one of the biggies like glasto and I suspect thats the mentality of most of my generation.
 
docus said:
Back on topic... :D

I hopped into Glastonbury from 1992 - 2000 and tbh it was a big part of what made the vibe so good, so spontaneous and wild. I hate to say it but Glastonbury has felt sterile to me since the superfence. But I've kept going even so, hunting out the old vibes in Glastonbury's nooks and crannies - and I've bought a ticket every year from 2002, this year included, so please don't give me a hard time :D

I'd love to sample some other festivals, like the Glade etc., but I can't afford it this year, after shelling out for Glastonbury. However, if I could hop the fence I might find I like it more than Glastonbury, and come back next year with a ticket.

Would appreciate a PM from anyone with any thoughts on the matter :D
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if you want to go to glade for free get thee to the oxfam thread, think they're still a lot short on the stewards.

I hopped the fence several times at glasto, but always worked as well (short cut to travellers field mostly).

first year of glade I was going round in a minibus picking up fencejumpers and offering them the option of doing a shift in the carpark and getting a wristband, or getting picked up by the security van behind me coz we were so short on stewards that we almost had to shut several stages early. To be fair to them all though, they were all well up for it.

I also caught a load about to jump into the festival via the backstage compound a couple of years ago... not too arsed about people fencejumping into the festival as long as it's not too overcrowded already, but I'm fucked if I'm going to let people jump into the secure backstage compound.

on a similar thing we also used to get fencejumpers ending up in our backstage camping areas at glasto, and walk them out of the gates into the main festival site then tell them to have a good time... we figured our job was just to keep the backstage camping areas secure, plus the security were always fucking wankers to the gate stewards.
 
My uncle talks about his glory days of turning up in a camper van full of drugs a week before glasto started and then watching as the camp built around him.

Festivals must have been so much cooler before all these plods and fences
 
btw - the glasto fence is climbable unless they've changed the security arrangements if you pick the right spot. ;)

also don't try to damage the fence - a lot of the paramilitary style security team around the fence are (or at least were) only employed to protect the fence.
 
Have done a fare few in my time more for the buzz than anything else. Actually work at a lot of festys now but still do it just to see just how much piss I can take - waltzing past security with a walkie-talkie to my ear and half a dozen mates in tow was the most memorable. Confidence is the key as most people do want to help you.

Jumped the fence at the 7th Sun festival last year but it was so lovely (and I was so minced on MDMA) that I sought out the main organiser and handed her the cash direct :o:D
 
same attitude as free spirit really. fence jumpers are not our responsibility though I don't like people backstage who shouldn't be there - basic security for all the people and gear back there.

if someone tries to run the gates at Glasto then it is not my job to stop them.
 
I've worked at the beer tent for years so that's how I do my festivals for free now... if I so choose to..

Endorset this year will be my first paying whole weekend festival...
(I paid one day at Leeds festival once)
 
Glade had a few jumpers two years ago when I was there, I met some who had gone round clipping the ends off of peoples wristbands and then sewn them together to make new ones, which worked perfectly apparently :)

I reckon that the free festival/party thing mentioned above has something to do with it, but also I wonder if any other festivals were like glastonbury in the 80s/90s, when it was so blatant and so widely known that you could jump the fence that everyone did.. was it only glasto that was like that? I don't remember talking about fence jumping into reading or pheonix.. since the mid/late 90s I've only been to smaller festivals where I wouldn't think about breaking in or I've been working.
 
BigTom said:
I met some who had gone round clipping the ends off of peoples wristbands and then sewn them together to make new ones, which worked perfectly apparently :)
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Hmmm - theres a distinct possibility that that was me or one of my mates. Managed to talk the vans way in but none of us had wristbands. Looked like a sweatshop on Saturday with us all sewing away :D
 
I don't get why you'd bunk into a festival when it's so easy to become a steward. 9-15 hour shift over the course of a 3-dayer, wristband (sometimes even a spiffy all areas pass), free food...

Getting caught trying to bunk a festival and kicked out having usually travelled a decent way would suck.
 
Because even to do stearding you need to have the money up front. yeah, you get it back, but if your bank account reads £00.00 then you're still not going.
 
The bigger festivals are too much hassle to bunk in these days, with their super fences, wristbands and/or central arenas.

The smaller festivals are a piece of piss to get into but then I feel bad cos I doubt some of em make much cash.Wickerman actually had no fence at all last time I went, I'd feel rude not coughing up there though as it's such a nice weekend.
 
bluestreak said:
Because even to do stearding you need to have the money up front. yeah, you get it back, but if your bank account reads £00.00 then you're still not going.
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not if you work for me - but then you'd best do your shifts or have a very good reason why not if you work for me, or I'll come and find you and make you explain to the person who's having to pull a double shift to cover you why it is that you reckon you should be allowed to be getting twatted instead of working when they now can't, or you'll be hitching home, or your tent will find itself locked in my van etc.

at least these are the threats, I very rarely have to carry them out luckily.
 
I occasionally get told off by friends for dobbing in stewards who are asleep on shift or otherwise fucked/incapacitated

fuck 'em. you're there to do a job if you can't do it then fuck off and stop disrespecting all the people who are trying.

Urban Oxfam stewards 2008 be warned :hmm:
 
free spirit said:
not if you work for me - but then you'd best do your shifts or have a very good reason why not if you work for me, or I'll come and find you and make you explain to the person who's having to pull a double shift to cover you why it is that you reckon you should be allowed to be getting twatted instead of working when they now can't, or you'll be hitching home, or your tent will find itself locked in my van etc.

at least these are the threats, I very rarely have to carry them out luckily.
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tbf, i'm not a complete freeloader. if you're willing to offer me and my missus duties at a festie or two you'd be impressed.

i'm happy to work for me festies, honest. just not got any money to front!
 
JTG said:
I occasionally get told off by friends for dobbing in stewards who are asleep on shift or otherwise fucked/incapacitated

fuck 'em. you're there to do a job if you can't do it then fuck off and stop disrespecting all the people who are trying.

Urban Oxfam stewards 2008 be warned :hmm:
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I've had to take vests off people for being too fucked before now, but quite often I'll find them something else to do like supplying the rest of the team with constant stream of coffee or something.

I've never actually had anyone kicked off site, though there's been a couple of people who I would have done had I found them... either that or given them a double shift offsite somewhere.

I did fuck up one year at glade though by allowing the overnight gate crew to have some beers on the sunday night... it was a shift we weren't meant to have been doing, as we'd been told we'd be finished at 8pm, so I'd had to get volunteers to do it who'd already done all their shifts, and the only way to do that was to allow them to drink. Apparently they then proceeded to get pissed and twat about on the radio pissing the oxfam stewards team right off... doh.
 
bluestreak said:
tbf, i'm not a complete freeloader. if you're willing to offer me and my missus duties at a festie or two you'd be impressed.

i'm happy to work for me festies, honest. just not got any money to front!
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I'll bear that in mind... not sure how many places I've got yet, but yeah I'd have thought you'd fit in ok with my crew so possibly;)
 
I'd like to volunteer/work at some festies to get in free but got no cash and probably won't until all the places are filled :( Anyone know of anything else apart from stewarding that you can do during the festival, where you don't have to pay a deposit? I can't stay for (many) days after the festival litter picking as I'm working at the moment. Otherwise it'll be over the fence for me if this is still a possiblilty (suspects it probably isn't)
God, I'm not very optimistic today.
 
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