I just want to say what an amazing time I had yesterday stage managing the Side Stage at Sungod. I got up at 6 in the morning to be at RIMAC at 8am and left the field that night around midnight (which was early compared to the rest of the folks who stayed way later to load all the equipment up). I got to meet Ben Kweller and his band, all of Ozomatli, and wear a really big headset that lets me hear everything that goes on behind the scenes of the most highly attended event at UCSD.If you only knew what kind of hard work goes into making this event what it is... Some folks don't sleep for days trying to prepare for this. Some folks stay til the bitter end... til every single piece of equipment is packed up at 2 am. Some folks sacrifice their own safety and well-being when the mob tears down the fence and becoming a human barricade is the only option. It's insane. The festival is so intricately planned and so many people play a part in making it happen. I was lucky enough to be one of these people.
It's such a different experience being behind the scenes at Sungod. I stood backstage while Ben Kweller fans screamed every word of his songs and saw the masses jump up and down to Third Eye Blind singing "Doot doot doot, doot do doot doo, doot doot doot, doot do doot doo..." Right before Third Eye Blind finished their encore performance and Ozomatli was about to take the stage, I looked out from the stage to see RIMAC field filled up by an ocean of people. There were tens of thousands of people there. It was so exciting.
But there was a part of the behind the scenes experience that I really could have done without. It was the fact that all of the stage crew that was hired for the event were pretty much all disgusting pigs. It was hard enough for me as a five foot small woman to command a stage and its crew with barely any experience in doing so... but on top of that, I had to deal with the feeling of sleazy middle aged men looking me up and down and being way too "friendly" with me. At first I thought to myself that it was friendly banter and they were just messing with me just to mess with me... but some of the things that were said were just inappropriate. And these comments weren't limited to females... there were plenty of gay bashing homophobic comments as well. I feel like this is the culture of the folks who run shows like this: to mess around and say really inappropriate things to each other in order to keep the job fun in the midst of the intensely physically challenging work and high stress. But when it comes down to it, these guys just made me feel really uncomfortable, especially when I had to ask them to do something for me.
Of course this wasn't everyone. There were a few people that I didn't feel like I had to act tough around... only a few of those guys were truly helpful, professional, and didn't make me feel unsafe.
Overall the job was such an incredible experience. I wondered what it was like to be able to do this for a living. But at the same time, I wondered why this profession was so dominated by males (besides the fact that it takes a lot of physical strength to move crap around a stage). Furthermore, I wondered why these guys thought it was okay to mess with me like that. Was it just cuz I was little and it's hard to take orders from a tiny person? Or was it cuz I'm a woman?
It's just not fair and it's so disrepectful. It's disgusting the way most men can try and will make you feel like a piece of meat.
Anyway, that is my story for now. I'm so proud of all the people who made Sungod so successful (Seth, Alex, Di, Mary, all the AS programming folks, gosh there are SOOOO many people... the list goes on). I am so thankful for everyone who believed in me and thought that I would be a good stage manager. It was pretty challenging, but so worth it.
P.S. I wanna give a special shout-out to Seth Klonsky and Alex Miller. You guys are my heroes. I couldn't have done it without you guys and Sungod couldn't have happened without your hard work. Oh and just so you know... you both are NOT disgusting pigs... at all. Thank you.
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