Despite the debauchery, Athens can be a beautiful place during fest season.
There’s a certain beauty that pervades springtime in Athens. The daffodils stretching out their blossoms toward the blue skies. That first glimpse of students, long sick of the cold, shedding their winter parkas and snow boots for sunglasses and Sperry Top-Siders.
The sight of the weekend warrior, lugging Natty cases down the Court Street sidewalk, headed for a place where the music is loud, the jungle juice is aplenty and the morals verge on questionable, to say the least.
Welcome to fest season. And let me start with a disclaimer.
I’ve been an Athens resident for no more than seven months. I’ve survived Halloween, attended my fair share of house parties and learned the importance of asking the mounted officers before petting the patrol horses.
But as a reporter for The Post, I see a very different side of the party scene. Instead of being a participant, our roles are as observers, or witnesses to all of antics that go down on a typical fest day.
On Saturday, I had the privilege — if you will — of covering High Fest 2016.
My honest first thought? Say what you will about Bobcats, but they’re anything if not tenacious. Let’s face it: The weather was kind of miserable. Nothing but clouds, freezing rain and an uncomfortable chill in the air that made me wonder how so many people were out in nothing but basketball jerseys and cutoff jeans.
Personally, I would’ve much rather been resigned to a couch at Donkey Coffee, enjoying a warm cafe mocha and game of Scrabble.
But anyway: There we were, a team of seven reporters, trekking through the muddy expanse of High Street, armed only with our recorders and our notebooks, eyes peeled for the most fascinating characters, listening for the first hint of an emergency vehicle. Chances are, you ran into one of us. And if you did, you probably heard something along the lines of:
“Why are you out here at High Fest? What’s the craziest thing you’ve seen today?”
And trust me, we heard some crazy stuff. Contrary to The New York Times, not all of the news we hear over at The Post is fit to print.
One fest goer decided it would be a totally decent idea to dance around with “what God gave him” hanging out of his pants. Somebody busted their face open on the concrete. Another was pantsed upside down while doing a keg stand. People jumped off roofs, betted on wrestling matches in the mud, peed in yards and battled with beer can swords.
Some gave in early, heading for the warm embrace of Court Street bars, or called it a day and just went home. Others walked away in handcuffs.
Though my experience with fest season is limited — at least for now — I suspect that none of this is out of the ordinary.
Yes, we’ve seen pretty much every sort of fest-related shenanigan imaginable, and yes, the outrageous actions tend to be the ones that make it into the paper.
But as I said before, there’s a certain beauty that lies in fest season. Maybe it’s not a sort of beauty that’s outward, with muddy side yards riddled with red Solo cups and crushed cans of Four Lokos.
The way I see it, it’s the flock that pours from the sidewalk to help the girl whose case of Budweiser has burst open, sending cans scattering down the middle of Court Street.
It’s the friends who are there to hold each other’s hair back as one of them vomits into the landscape around the Athens County Courthouse.
And it’s the police officers who try not to smile as they’re stopped by students for a selfie, only to be swept into a drunken embrace and assured that they’re loved.
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Love it or hate it, this is the culture that we’ve created for ourselves. It’s given us a reputation — it can be dangerous, toxic and quite frankly, embarrassing at times.
But it’s undeniably a key part of who we are as Bobcats. And who we are is pretty beautiful.
@lauren__fisher
lf966614@ohio.edu
