The parking lot after a Phish concert is a notoriously dirty drug scene. I used to feel less disturbed by it than I do now, but I was younger then and I think I glorified the drugs. Now all I see are nitrous-filled balloons that sell for twenty dollars apiece and alcoholics who will grab your ass and may or may not end up passing out in a stranger’s tent. When Phish plays the Gorge in George, Washington, and everyone camps overnight, the lot becomes a virtual no man’s land. The people that you enjoyed the concert with turn into zombies, wobbling around high on cat tranquilizers (Ketamine) or stalking the sunrise on a slow comedown from their long, winding acid trip.
At the Gorge this past July there were two Shakedown Streets, makeshift roads lined with people selling things: food, clothing, fairy wings, hula hoops, ceramic masks, stone jewelry—though it’s a destination best known for the endless array of mind-altering possibilities for sale or trade. Drug dealers will approach your campsite, trying to barter hash for tickets or a gram of Molly—MDMA, or ecstasy, the most popular drug—for around $100 cash. It’s a place where anything can be bought, sold or traded, and for years it operated according to mutual trust; when someone sold you a drug you assumed they weren’t trying to poison you, and that it was in fact what they claimed it to be. Though always illegal, LSD was in fact LSD, opium wasn’t black tar heroin, and you weren’t likely to get crack instead of the cocaine you were promised.
It’s over a mile hike from the Gorge concert venue back to the campground, and the re-acclimation from show to campsite can be as harsh as the unexpected flare of the fluorescent lights. I made the walk back with my friend Ashley, who I’d met a few weeks before at a Phish show in Saratoga Springs, New York. Ashley is beautiful, her parents are prominent government employees, and having recently graduated college, she decided to follow Phish that summer. That night she was wearing a long, button-down black tunic with a pattern of red roses and a $300 leather cowboy hat. I remember because it was my birthday, and though it had only been a few weeks, we were fast friends by the time we got to Washington. Walking back that night, we held a mutual dread for the nitrous hustlers we would have to pass, less so because we’re opposed to nitrous itself, but because in general it makes for a gross scene; they’re selling something most people want, at an absurdly inflated price, and with the Nitrous Mafia can come deaths, unnecessary aggression, and indifferent campsite neighbors who stay up until sunrise giggling and inhaling, keeping you awake with the hiss of their tank. Before we entered the campground (and thus the nitrous), we saw a booth situated at the entrance, the blur of a pink and purple jellyfish-like tent, all good vibes and chill tunes. We went closer, and there, nestled among food vendors, with no line and an austere aura, we found the Bunk Police, selling something entirely different: drug-testing kits.
We knew of the Bunk Police from Saratoga Springs, and also because they’d maintained a constant presence on the Phish tour all summer. They had been at other festivals, from the more mainstream Coachella, Bonaroo, and Wakarusa, to obscure electronic gatherings like Lightning in a Bottle and Firefly. The anonymous organization, run by volunteers, preaches harm reduction through education about misrepresented substances. The kits vary depending on the kind of drug you’re testing, but in principle they’re all the same: you dissolve a minuscule amount of your substance in the chemicals provided in your kit (one is good for about 50-100 tests), and depending upon the color change, you know what drug you’re dealing with. The test kits are essentially the same as what a cop would use if he were trying to test someone’s drugs. The Bunk Police sell kits for $20 apiece to drug users so that they can increase their safety and call out fraudulent (or simply ignorant) dealers.
Jeffrey Bryan Chambers spent the summer following the Bunk Police and filming their experience for his forthcoming documentary What’s in my Baggie? Chambers and his crew traveled across the country shooting the Bunk Police’s work, largely through BP volunteers’ interactions with customers, and the campsites where most of the testing occurs (the BP only sell the kits; they leave the testing up to you). When I asked Chambers what he and his crew found doing this work, he hesitated: “It’s hard to say an actual percentage. It’s difficult to say or even quantify all the drugs even at a festival, say like Bonaroo, where there’s upwards of 80,000 people camping in one area.” I pressed him to be more specific. “I can confidently say that from what we saw, over half of the substances were misrepresented, most commonly bath salts being sold as MDMA,” he said. Of the cocaine samples his crew tested over the summer, only one in over 30 cases even contained cocaine. As a population, we’ve been dealing with cocaine for decades, and when cut, most often it’s with methamphetamine. Bath Salts and other research chemicals—many of which are legal and available in bulk on the Internet—that masquerade as Molly and LSD, pose a more serious threat.
by Kiran Herbert, The Weeklings | Read more:
Image: via:
At the Gorge this past July there were two Shakedown Streets, makeshift roads lined with people selling things: food, clothing, fairy wings, hula hoops, ceramic masks, stone jewelry—though it’s a destination best known for the endless array of mind-altering possibilities for sale or trade. Drug dealers will approach your campsite, trying to barter hash for tickets or a gram of Molly—MDMA, or ecstasy, the most popular drug—for around $100 cash. It’s a place where anything can be bought, sold or traded, and for years it operated according to mutual trust; when someone sold you a drug you assumed they weren’t trying to poison you, and that it was in fact what they claimed it to be. Though always illegal, LSD was in fact LSD, opium wasn’t black tar heroin, and you weren’t likely to get crack instead of the cocaine you were promised.It’s over a mile hike from the Gorge concert venue back to the campground, and the re-acclimation from show to campsite can be as harsh as the unexpected flare of the fluorescent lights. I made the walk back with my friend Ashley, who I’d met a few weeks before at a Phish show in Saratoga Springs, New York. Ashley is beautiful, her parents are prominent government employees, and having recently graduated college, she decided to follow Phish that summer. That night she was wearing a long, button-down black tunic with a pattern of red roses and a $300 leather cowboy hat. I remember because it was my birthday, and though it had only been a few weeks, we were fast friends by the time we got to Washington. Walking back that night, we held a mutual dread for the nitrous hustlers we would have to pass, less so because we’re opposed to nitrous itself, but because in general it makes for a gross scene; they’re selling something most people want, at an absurdly inflated price, and with the Nitrous Mafia can come deaths, unnecessary aggression, and indifferent campsite neighbors who stay up until sunrise giggling and inhaling, keeping you awake with the hiss of their tank. Before we entered the campground (and thus the nitrous), we saw a booth situated at the entrance, the blur of a pink and purple jellyfish-like tent, all good vibes and chill tunes. We went closer, and there, nestled among food vendors, with no line and an austere aura, we found the Bunk Police, selling something entirely different: drug-testing kits.
We knew of the Bunk Police from Saratoga Springs, and also because they’d maintained a constant presence on the Phish tour all summer. They had been at other festivals, from the more mainstream Coachella, Bonaroo, and Wakarusa, to obscure electronic gatherings like Lightning in a Bottle and Firefly. The anonymous organization, run by volunteers, preaches harm reduction through education about misrepresented substances. The kits vary depending on the kind of drug you’re testing, but in principle they’re all the same: you dissolve a minuscule amount of your substance in the chemicals provided in your kit (one is good for about 50-100 tests), and depending upon the color change, you know what drug you’re dealing with. The test kits are essentially the same as what a cop would use if he were trying to test someone’s drugs. The Bunk Police sell kits for $20 apiece to drug users so that they can increase their safety and call out fraudulent (or simply ignorant) dealers.
Jeffrey Bryan Chambers spent the summer following the Bunk Police and filming their experience for his forthcoming documentary What’s in my Baggie? Chambers and his crew traveled across the country shooting the Bunk Police’s work, largely through BP volunteers’ interactions with customers, and the campsites where most of the testing occurs (the BP only sell the kits; they leave the testing up to you). When I asked Chambers what he and his crew found doing this work, he hesitated: “It’s hard to say an actual percentage. It’s difficult to say or even quantify all the drugs even at a festival, say like Bonaroo, where there’s upwards of 80,000 people camping in one area.” I pressed him to be more specific. “I can confidently say that from what we saw, over half of the substances were misrepresented, most commonly bath salts being sold as MDMA,” he said. Of the cocaine samples his crew tested over the summer, only one in over 30 cases even contained cocaine. As a population, we’ve been dealing with cocaine for decades, and when cut, most often it’s with methamphetamine. Bath Salts and other research chemicals—many of which are legal and available in bulk on the Internet—that masquerade as Molly and LSD, pose a more serious threat.
by Kiran Herbert, The Weeklings | Read more:
Image: via:
