Best:
The Weather.
My god, when the sun comes out in this beautiful province of ours, in a setting as spectacular as the Squamish Valley, it almost makes you agree with those ridiculous licence plate slogans: This is truly the Best Place on Earth.
Best:
Arcade Fire.
Canada's indie rock world-beaters did what they do best on Saturday night, blowing everybody's minds with a two-hour musical epiphany. We danced, we swooned, we sang along, and as the moon rose high in the sky it illuminated thousands of smiling faces. The band's set featured a healthy cross-section of their decade-long career, starting with the titular opening track of their newest album Reflektor and stretching all the way back to No Cars Go from their debut 2003 EP. "I've been to a few places," frontman Win Butler told the enraptured crowd, "and this one of the most beautiful places on earth and we're so happy to be here."
Best:
Three words: Those Little Donuts.
Best:
The men at the front lines.
As festival young'uns learned the hard way that few can stand in the sun for six hours waiting for Eminem (and that eventually ten thousand people will try to push past you anyway), it was the security team – many of whom stood for three days in front of pounding speakers in the same sweat box – who methodically pulled dozens of sick, sobbing kids out of the crowd and sent them on the road to recovery.
Worst:
The cashless wristbands.
Organizers of the Squamish Valley Music Festival decided to make the event cashless this year, requiring anyone who wanted to buy anything to use a microchipped wristband which they had to load with credits via credit card, debit, or cash. If that sounds convenient, it wasn't. The privilege of loading up the wristband with cash cost you $3.50, and while festival staff were quick to tell music fans that any leftover credits at the end of the day could be refunded, they failed to mention what a ridiculously byzantine process one has to jump through. See for yourself (http://hold.squamishfestival.com/p/cashless-refunds).
The instructions are 700 words long and require those wanting their change back to create an account online, provide their bank account number and direct deposit information, then pay a $2 handling fee.
But don't count on see that money any time soon, it'll be three weeks before your money ends up back in your account.
Organizers are no doubt counting on festival-goers to either throw the wristband out or not bother jumping through the hoops they've set up.
If you do intend to attempt to get your money back, you'd better act fast, you only have until the end of the month to do so.
Worst:
The beer garden lineups.
You can't really blame Squamish organizers for this: BC's beer garden regulations are ridiculously heavy-handed and outdated.
By forcing festival-goers to line up for ages just for privilege of buying beer, music fans end up pounding as many beers as they can before they have to head back out into the crowd, leading to binge-drinking and all sorts of silliness.
A quick look south of the border at large outdoor festivals like Sasquatch in Washington state offers a much smarter, more civilized solution: Those who are of age get a special non-transferable wristband. If you get caught with a beer without one, you get tossed.
Pretty simple stuff.
Worst:
The walk between main stages.
As media, we were among the lucky few who could keep our cell phones charged, and it would have been interesting to track our manic dashes between acts on the Nike+ app (although we doubt it would have turned out as impressively as this).
The Tantalus and Stawamus stages largely felt like the centers of two separate festivals, but we did notice a heartwarming number of Roots fans running down the dusty, drunk-lined path towards the Arcade Fire stage.
