Ice Cream Man

There’s a few reasons I like Noise Pop!:

1. It’s the first big music event of the year for us and after months off it’s nice to hit the streets and clubs again.
2. It takes place in San Francisco, possibly my favorite city to visit
3. There are always a bunch of great up-and-coming bands on the bill.

For this year I also would have to add another reason, which is that there’s a bunch of cool places to visit up there during the day (check all that stuff here).

I always underestimate the time it takes to drive to San Fran. Take that into account with the fact that I was driving up in Bessie and my numbers end up way off. I had a bunch of dry ice in the freezer but didn’t make it to Wonder Ice Cream in Newark in time to pick up all the ice cream that Blue Bunny had donated. We were supposed to be at the Rickshaw Stop for the opening night party but I was pretty sick and decided to stay inside at my brothers place in Foster City. After resting for an hour or so I couldn’t not go. I spied a Smart and Final on the way in and headed over there to load up on some ice cream to tide us over til we got our huge order in. The line to get into the show was around the corner and it didn’t take long to offer treats to everyone. I didn’t even bother going inside and ended up leaving less that an hour after I got there so I could rest up for the busy days and nights ahead.

For some reason I always think the freezer in Bessie can hold more than she actually can. Blue Bunny shipped out over 2000 treats and I was lucky to get in everything outside of a dozen boxes of Big Dipper cones. Since most of the shows were at night, I knew it’d be hard to give away this much cream. It worked out great that we were able to do a bunch of the day stuff including an ice cream social for all of Pixar. They ended up cleaning out almost 500 ice creams which cleared up enough room to fit the rest of the cones in.

The band I wanted to see most at Noise Pop was Fleet Foxes. I’d seen them a couple times at Bumbershoot and was hooked. After some grub at my favorite restaurant, House of Nanking, I stopped by Mezzanine on the way to catch Fleet Foxes at Bottom of the Hill. Everyone at Mezzanine was super nice to us last year so I made it a point to roll by there as much as possible. It took a little bit to get into BotH but I was patient and before too long I was inside. This might have been Fleet Foxes first show in California and lead singer Robin Pecknold commented on the fact that, even without an album, people in the front were still singing along to a lot of the songs. I wanted to stick around to see Blitzen Trapper but the whole ‘sick’ thing was getting the best of me and sleep was much needed.

Let us not forget the reason why we were here, to sling cream…. right? Since I hadn’t been making too much progress at night, on Friday I decided to see how many clubs I could hit. There were SO many good shows going on, Mountain Goats, The Helio Sequence, The Magnetic Fields, and more. I made the rounds slinging at Bimbos, Great American Music Hall, The Independent, and Mezzanine before returning to my homebase club for Noise Pop, Bottom of the Hill. Holy F-ck was headlining that night and it was sold out. A Place to Bury Strangers was playing as I arrived and it was LOUD. I think I caught most of their set from outside before heading in and briefly catching up with the HF guys. It was great to see a bunch of people getting down up front. At the end of the set I pulled Bessie up front and slang some cream to cap off the night. As much as I didn’t want to stay out late, it was past 3 by the time I got to sleep.

Saturday was fun because the Noise Pop Expo was going on at 12 Galaxies. Last year it was at the Swedish American Hall which was nice because there wasn’t too much foot traffic passing by and we parked the truck out front and gave away ice cream to any and everyone. 12 Galaxies is in the Mission District and there were way too many people around to sling from the truck. Instead I loaded up a cooler bag and found an empty spot at a table inside and setup shop. As things wrapped up there I pulled out my sched again to see what was going on. YEP, you guessed it, back to Bottom of the Hill.

British Sea Power was playing and they were the other band I REALLY wanted to see. I made my way to the front corner of the stage and found myself next to a lady who looked to be in her seventies. Inspiration I tell ya, I hope I’m that cool when I get older. I was diggin’ the set but there were some obnoxious drunk people around that kept bumping into everyone and I wasn’t feeling well. After maybe 5 or 6 songs I gave up and called it a night.

So, the moral of this story is, don’t get sick. It’s no fun. I was hoping to stick around and sling on Sunday at either the She & Him show or Tilly and the Wall but decided to knock out the 10-hour drive down the 101 on a sunny Sunday instead of pushing it on Monday. My only wish was that they made wallets like last year. Guess I can’t have it all.

Big thanks to Blue Bunny and Wonder Ice Cream for getting us treats to give away.