Now that it’s been more than a month since South by Southwest, I figured I should commit my memories to (e-)paper now or else I’ll never do it. Better late than never I guess, or something.
There’s very passionate love/hate relationship with SXSW here. The festival has truly ballooned to enormous proportions. Just in the time that I’ve been attending (my first being in 2003), the crowds have seemingly doubled every year. There have always been naysayers, but they have been particularly disgruntled/vocal the past two years. Some of the complaints are completely understandable: the crowd, the traffic, the trash, the local bands that deserve some of the spotlight but are denied showcase spots. Accusations of money-mongering, iron grips on what happens on the fringe of the festival (i.e. the smorgasbord of free, unofficial day shows), and political whatnot have been flying, which in my opinion is just to be expected with something as massive as SXSW. …