The Hangout Music Festival

This past weekend, May 14-16, was The Hangout's Music & Art Festival. The tickets were expensive ($75 for one day and $179 for the weekend). The RV Park we're staying is so close to that area we could hear most of the bands from our site. Parking anywhere closer than where we were was $20! A couple of blocks north of us the price dropped to $10...still outrageous to us. So we rode our bikes to the beach (free). So many things were added for this event. There were dozens of palm trees planted along the shore (lit with colored lights at night), huge stages built from one end of the area to the other and even grass planted in a large sandy area. To tell you how large this was, it covered the area from the Pink Pony pass the main boardwalk area at the end of the highway pass the next pavillion almost to where the condos began! It was a huge undertaking. They fenced off the area and had the fences covered so you couldn't see inside. Sand sculptures were built that werwe so intricate and gorgeous.

Friday was country night. We rode our bikes down there to hear Alison Krauss. We stood outside the fence and was about as close as we would have been had we been able to go inside...all free! We were not familiar with the other bands but a different band played every hour on 4 different stages for many hours.

Saturday was a VERY busy day for both of us. Doug and Amanda B. came down for the weekend and we had the opportunity to eat dinner with them on Friday. Meg and John came down later. Saturday the men played golf while I had a Healthy Woman's Conference throughout the day beginning with a 5k March of Dimes Race and a banquet that night with Ali Vincent speaking. Go here for details. It was such a busy day. Sunday morning it rained very hard and we just knew the Festival would be cancelled and bands would leave before it was suppose to be over. But the sun came out, the rain stopped and the show went on as scheduled. The hard rains tried to destroy the sand sculptures but didn't destroy them altogether. They were built so well.

That afternoon they opened the Festival to anyone, free of charge. When we found that out, we had to go check out all the "secret" things inside this huge gated area. We liked the bands MUCH better than Friday. It was more in tune with our likes, namely rock. One band we really liked was from South Carolina named Need to Breathe. I loved them!

We couldn't believe how orderly yet laid back everyone was...SOOO different from what we are use to in MS. On top of that, we never heard cursing or knew the color of underwear the male population was wearing! Everyone was cordial and polite. And the number of people that were barefooted was amazing...no way could we do that, we're so tenderfooted. There were many food booths and even a trailer by Play Station that had numerous video games anyone could play. They were on the outside walls of the trailer as well as both sides inside the trailer. Real cool. Day Camp kids would have LOVED this! There were fireworks every night with a grand finale on Sunday. Now let me leave you with a slide of pictures we took inside the area. Hope you enjoy them.