What are some of the best festivals you have been to?

I’ve been to the, um… Fertility festival in Japan 3 times. It was “Hawt !”

@GloPro You’ve been to Burning Man! I have always wanted to go! I’m jealous!

@LuckyGuy I work the Medical Tent from 7pm to 7am for several nights. My experience has a little extra kick. But yes, I recommend at least one year for everyone.

The fertility festival is hilarious!

The Leaf Festival and Shakori Hills and the Highland Games. The Garlic and Wine Festival was great (what I remember of it), and the Low Country Oyster Festival resulted in massive oyster eating.

The Renaissance Pleasure Faires held in Agoura California in the late 70s.

I had an all access pass to bonnaroo a couple of years in a row. The free beer tent was my undoing. Seeing metallica play a big venue like that was pretty awesome.

The Farmer’s Museum in Cooperstown puts on some nice festivals, like The Harvest Fest in the fall or Candlelight Evening just before Christmas. The Taste of the Catskills in Delhi is nice too. I also like Oktober Fests.

Umm….Cornstock, 1994. It was just a little festival near the small town I grew up. Just local bands. I really despise festivals so I really don’t attend them.

The local historical society’s Blueberry Festival. I do a spell at one of the gates selling tickets. it is old-fashioned fun. The volunteer fire department serves a blueberry pancake breakfast for several hours; many bands (bluegrass, klezmer, jug) play; the raptor guy comes and shows off his hawks and owls; the blacksmith makes horseshoes, the church ladies selll dozens of pies, scones, muffins, crumbles and boxes of naked berries; the cratts people make brooms, scherenschnitte, baskets, jewelry. Rain or shine.

My former husband had a house in the hills above Telluride for years and our daughter used to go that Bluegrass Festival whenever she could.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibetan_Freedom_Concert#San_Francisco

This is going to be a long story and I think we committed kidnapping.

I was around 17 and still getting survivors benefits from my dad being dead. I got 927 per month and pretty much fucked around and skateboarded. I had dropped out of high school by then.

My friend Bill had finished high-school and was in college at the university of Oregon. He was living with a friend from Hawaii aptly named Ralph. I was sitting on my sisters porch one day and Bill pulled up in in his 1986 Mercury Cougar

He was like, “Want to go to SF and see the Beastie Boys live.” I didn’t pack, I just jumped in the car.

So we start driving south. Bill, Ralph, and myself.

We were in Eugene in my aunt lives in Medford and the concert was in SF. Pretty much a straight shot down I-5.

We stop at my aunts and she is concerned and gives me a few hundred bucks so we can get a hotel to stay in Medford for the night. It was around 9pm.

We look for a motel and found a pretty cool skate spot at a bank. So we skate for a bit and meet two girls. We tell them that we are going to the Tibetan Freedom Concert. Being idiots we asked them if they wanted to tag along.

Thing is they lived with their dad in a hotel and had us go to the hotel so they could pack up clothes. Once the dad cuaght on we drove away really fast with them in the car. We totally thought they were legal.

So we end up in SF and can’t find a hotel so we sleep in a hotel parking lot near the airport and get kicked out. So we end up sleeping in Golden Gate park. Bill decides that sleeping in the trunk of his car is best. Ralph has sex with a 16 year old in the car and I sleep under a tree a 100 yards away.

At least I saw the Beastie Boys live.

I don’t know if Bumbershoot in Seattle has grown beyond crazy, but that was my fave back in the late 90s.

Oooh, I forgot, Fantasy Fest in Key West was pretty wild (link NSFW).

Though there are many festivals in India I love Diwali, the Festival of Lights. It’s a five day Hindu festival celebrated to commemorate the return of Lord Rama (Hindu God) to Ayodhya after defeating the demon king Ravana.
We begin to prepare for Diwali nearly two weeks in advance. We clean our homes thoroughly, we buy oil lamps and electric lights, the prayer room is decorated with flowers and indian sweets are made and distributed among friends and relatives. On the festival day, we light up lamps and they are kept on the whole night, and as per tradition some keep their main door open to welcome the Goddess Lakshmi (Goddess of Wealth) who is said to visit our homes on Diwali, bringing with her prosperity and financial luck for the New Year. I also found another amusing thing , at some places, people draw little feet outside their homes, as a way of showing the path to their homes to the Goddess. After prayers, people burst firecrackers, it’s a wonderful sight to see the crackers lighting up the sky.

@Smitha ”...the demon king Ravana.” Is a Rakshasa a flesh-eating demon, with the ability to appear as a person that its victim knows and trusts?