The new currency of big festivals is electricity. You, might, if you wanted to make a terrible pun, say it is the current-cy. No, keep reading. It gets better, I promise. A few years back, we all had cell phones that could seemingly hold a charge forever. The trade off for this, of course, is that they couldn't do anything beyond the basics. No Facebook, no Twitter, not even so much as a bird being catapulted at an inexplicably green pig.
See also: -The Best from 35 Denton Night One: The Dancing, The Technological Advances and The Artisanal Jello Shots -The Best from 35 Denton Night Two: Metal Wrestling and Fence Repair -The Best of 35 Denton Night Three: Thunder and Other Noises -Interviews with Vendors, Bands, Policemen and Fans about What Makes Denton Great -The Stage Crew Diaries: A Tribute to the Volunteers of 35 Denton
Now, of course, we all have our multi-doohicky-ultra-synced-quad-core phones of death, which may as well be spaceships compared to what we were all carrying in 2007. Technology's moved on. Battery technology hasn't kept up. Few smart phones can carry a charge for a full day with light usage, and as for all the cool things I can see at a festival that people on social networks need to know about? Forget it. You can't imagine how many times I saw a dog in a shirt and decided not to take a picture because doing so would plunge my cell battery to even lower depths. That's not really fair -- people I know must remain aware of dogs in shirts that I can see, at all times. All of our lives would be richer for it.
Thus, we as a people must find solutions for this. If we can come together for a festival such as this, we can come together as one to solve the lack of dog-shirt pictures in my twitter feed. Clearly, battery life isn't going to improve to indestructible ancient Nokia levels any time soon, because soon all our phones will have eight cores, possibly even ten, and a live feed of the planet Jupiter that it's impossible to turn off. So, what can be done to avoid situations like three music journalists subtly taking it in turns to steal electricity (the two not charging had the job of running the distraction) from a plug point behind an ATM at 10pm in the Hive? The following are all suggestions that assume a lack of photos of dogs wearing human clothes is not an option. Which it isn't. Some are serious, some are not. It should be pretty obvious which ones aren't, but if you want to comment to tell me why the non-serious ideas are totally unfeasible, I'd enjoy the debate.
1. Provide more ways for me to charge my phone. Pretty straightforward. At a lot of UK festivals, there is a "charging bus" where you pay like $2, someone takes your phone, and then they charge it in their magical bus of electricity. You come back in a couple of hours, and your phone is fully charged. This also provides you with a bizarro-world two hours where you don't even have a goddamn cell phone, like you live in the jungle or something, and you're forced to converse with people, who will of course ignore you because they're photographing an animal wearing clothes.
Short of a magic bus of electricity, there could be powerpoints around a festival like 35 Denton relatively easily. Outdoor generators (subject to weather, obviously, because, iPhone or not, no-one's charging their phone in a thunderstorm), little tents for charging phones. Even a one-day EDM festival I went to in August had a tent for charging phones, and that's a one-dayer. Indoor venues, even easier. Proprietors could make a fortune by offering phone charges for people at the bar.
2. A blimp, circling the festival, that has a lot of phone-charging cables hanging down, which people grab and then attach their phones to for charging. It would have to be some sort of electric blimp, as hydrogen is not ideal for batteries. Imagine the convenience, though. True, your phone might be taken away with the movement of the blimp, and the stealing of expensive phones would be rendered somewhat easy, but if I could just reach up from a large crowd and grab a couple minutes charge from a blimp, well, you try and tell me that isn't the future. It's the ultimate in convenience and style.
3. Bring a back-up battery or already-charged-battery-charging device. While it's annoying to have to carry another thing, especially in those skinny jeans I've seen that you all love, you'll be the envy of all your friends. You could even sell the charge, in minute increments, to friends you don't particularly like who have just seen a dog in a t-shirt. Furthermore, budding entrepreneurs, if you don't have access to the generator necessary to take advantage of point 1, I suspect selling already-charged battery charging devices at an inflated price would be a real winner come the evening phone-charging panic time.
4. Some sort of healing shaman, who can chant the power back into my phone using ancient rituals of device healing. You laugh (or probably, you don't laugh), but I have no doubt someone in Denton has at least a suspicion they, or someone they know, can do this.
5. Don't bring a phone. Leave it in the car. Can you imagine such a world? A world where you have but a paper schedule to rely on, and all canines in sweaters are your memories to personally treasure forever? No, exactly. That would be crap.
What I'm getting at here, people, is that 35 Denton is a pretty advanced festival. It has a capacity level tracker you can view online. It has an advanced social media presence. It embraces the future. Why not embrace the past that the future has left behind, the poor old battery? At least do something to help us tweet and Facebook to our heart's delight. Here are a few names I've come up with for a phone charging station for 35 Denton 2014, and you can use any of them at almost no cost to yourselves. AC/DC. Current Affairs. In Charge. Assault and Battery. Cell-f Help. 35v Denton.
Cheers though guys. It was great. Just help me out on the hound-sweater front, alright?
