Green Room Lounge Lizard after Grassroots

Orange cones and barrels are still up on the road that goes past Grassroots, but Grassroots isn’t there anymore. Not everything has been taken down yet, and there are a lot of cars inside. I guess it’s the cleanup crew. I’m guessing the cleanup crew is mostly volunteers. Anyone can get a free 4-day wristband in exchange for 14, 12, or 9 (trash and recycling crew) hours of work for the Festival.

Grassroots was a great venue to promote the Anti-Fracking sentiment this area has in abundance, and welcomed CPNY (Coalition to Protect New York) with informational booths hosted by Back to Democracy, ShaleShock, Frack Action, Nyrad (New York Residents Against Drilling), Gas Free Seneca, Frack Off, Neighbors of the Onondaga Nation, Green Umbrella, Finger Lakes Clean Waters Initiative, and Hector Residents Against Drilling. Thank you to all of those people who sat at the Anti-Frack booths getting signatures on petitions and sharing information about the most environmentally devastating act that could possibly take place. Once again, Grassroots will be donating part of the proceeds to various charities “Supporting Arts, Education, and the Fight Against Aids,” and maybe some other things too as they’ve donated to the Trumansburg Fire Dept., LACS Katrina Relief Group, Doctors Without Borders, Porchfest (non-locals: that’s a whole ‘nother story…) and various other awesome organizations.

A lot of people like to take one-of-a-kind items home from Grassroots, and as far as I could see, all the merch booths (except for the CD booth: while the bands are one of a kind, the CDS are made in duplicate haha) features such items. One of the vendors I spoke to, Kevin Gallelli, who sells Batik items, was at the very first Grassroots Festival 21 years ago. He said that booth rental at the first GR Festival was $75 as compared to today’s $425, but GR did so poorly in general that first year that the vendors literally passed the hat to take up a collection for it. Nice vendors!

I was mesmerized by the beautiful jewelry handmade by Robin Marie Sills under the name Soasa. She said of the festival, “It’s my favorite, I look forward to it all year…there are enough families coming to make it really a safe place, but there’s enough young people to bring in really great music.” In spite of the festival starting to come to an end by the late afternoon of the last day, she wasn’t closing up shop until 10pm and was planning on camping right behind her jewelry store tent for one more night. As a full time jewelry maker, doing East Coast Festivals all year except for in the winter months, she says that it’s her dream, with her boyfriend, to someday move to the Trumansburg area.

Yeah, we’re lucky here. We just need to keep the hydro-fracking away.