Tribal Fest

Just arrived back in San Francisco.

We headed up for Tribal Fest by bus last Wednesday - straight over the Golden Gate Bridge - and arrived in Sebastapol a few hours later. The hotel was quite flashy and green which was nice after San Fran city. Stalls were opened from Friday to Sunday and much tribal shopping was done by Fee and Deb. They performed 2 didge tracks on Friday night to a packed audience - who loved Barb's funky didge piece - and there was an audible gasp as they whipped the flags out! It went down very well and they had people coming up to them as late as the Sunday arvo to say how much they liked it. Rachel Brice and Jill Parker were great as was a lot of other stuff. Some was not so great too, but the whole event had a nice relaxed vibe to it and people were very friendly.

Sebastapol looked like a pretty ordinary suburb / town on the surface - with shopping malls and big cars. But it also had a lot of good clothes and art shops, a couple of very good bookshops and a good record shop too, called Incredible Records. Also the countryside north of San Francisco is very pretty. Much of the weekend was wet, but that was ok. Between Tribal Fest and sleeping in I also managed to read my book on why the US should get out of Iraq and am working my way through a very good book on the Abolitionist movement in Britain, called Bury the Chains

There was also a Roma festival in Sebastapol at the weekend. So on Saturday night a lot of people from Tribal Fest joined their party. There was some great fire dancing (see pic above). There was also lots of circle dancing - which made it feel like a Greek wedding, except the music was a whole heap cazier and there were lots of bohemians and belly dancers. Good fun.

Anyhow off to Vancouver tomorrow. Will hopefully go somwhere nice for dinner in San Fran tonight