On Saturday, the university’s drug policy reform community, Students for Sensible Drug Policy, along with its listens-to-music community, put on Domefest, a one-day music festival and campout at the Domes of Beltsville. “Dome” is also a slang term for oral sex. It’s better that everyone knows that upfront.
4 p.m.: The Magic Marker signs tacked to trees say “Dome Concert.” This seems like a good move by the organizers, as the posted direction “Domefest this way” might attract too much traffic.
4:15 p.m.: We park, and I walk into next month’s Target catalog. I’ve seen the ads with all the beautiful young (and oh-so-white) people hanging out in forests, camping and listening to live music, and I have always wondered where on Earth these places were. Domefest took place at a self-contained clearing where the ground is impossibly flat. The name of the location comes from two dome-shaped buildings on the property, but it could also describe the way the whole place feels. The festival is in a valley encircled by trees, and the sky seems close enough to touch. Tomorrow morning, they’ll likely take down the clouds along with the concessions table.
6:15 p.m.: The music lineup is mostly made up of student bands, with some standouts. Lion Turf is the only College Park band I’ve ever gone to see twice on purpose, and even without Ricky Alexander’s mesmerizing saxophone, it is criminal to have them play so early in the evening. The band describes itself as “experimental/hip-hop/psychedelic,” and a guy behind me describes them as “like a white go-go band” and “awesome.” If Lion Turf had opened at Art Attack on Friday, I might have attended a Weezer concert.
8 p.m.: The Domefest website says all local laws would be enforced, which turns out to be true if the concerned locality were a particularly liberal coffee shop in Copenhagen. People ask one another what drugs they’ve taken like high school seniors talking about college acceptances, with the same excitement, apprehension and hint of resignation.
11 p.m.: I hear from festival organizers that the Student Government Association ended up spending around $5,000 in student group appropriations on Domefest. Anyone who thinks students are pulling one over on the university by getting it to pay for beer and music needs to think that through one more step. That money doesn’t come from the administration.
3:30 a.m.: Some guy asks if there’s any beer left, and there is. It’s easy to have beer or people who are awake and want beer at 3:30 a.m., but it takes solid planning to have both at the same time.
4:30 a.m.: It starts to rain, as if to say, “Clean up and go to bed, you hippies.” But as long as there are drums and drugs, there will be drum circles. I head to the tent.
6 a.m.: I resign myself to dawn when some people find a rusty trampoline and set it up next to the tent where I’m not sleeping. I try not to begrudge them their exuberance, but it’s hard.
9:30 a.m.: By the time the rest of my tent wakes up, most people are gone. The lawn is clean again, and there are free doughnuts and fast-food breakfast sandwiches. My throat is a tunnel of ash, and I promise never to smoke another cigarette. We pack up and head home, passing the Magic Marker signs going the wrong way on the morning’s backward drive.
Malcolm Harris is a senior English and government and politics major. He can be reached at harris at umdbk dot com.