dear Outside Lands...

Dear Outside Lands music festival,

I still don't like you because you turn a 5-minute drive along the beach into a 25-minute tortuous crawl, you leave mounds of drug-laced feces in the park, and you sell yourself as the concert for everyone while charging a kidney for a ticket and the firstborn child in the family for a taste of SF's so-called best food and drink. Good thing you only come around once a year, right?

Well, I must admit that you are growing on me. Oh you are still self-righteously expensive and I won't be taking any walks in the park until the Department of Public Works has cleaned up Lindley Meadow, but I must say that something magical has happened this year. Traffic along the beach is not the monstrosity I expected, and I thank you for that. Perhaps I am just lucky, perhaps it is now bumper-to-bumper agony as I sit in my comfy home and type away. The parking lots at the beach are packed for such a nice foggy day but the roads are moving, and that's what matters.

Traffic along Ocean Beach was such a non-issue today that I had time to stop by the supermarket and pick up a few things for my mom. Oh sure, she's much closer to Safeway than I am but she doesn't like to leave the house on "dirty hippie weekend." Hey, you can't win them all.