Guelph By The Thingies: Hillside Mug

The Hillside Music Festival is just big enough that it sells out every year, and just small enough that I still ended up proselytizing about it to people in Montreal. This weekend-long tribute to music and the crunchy arts is well-known in most Canadian music circles, to be fair. But get away from seasoned CBC listeners, or even just cross the provincial border, and many people don't know it exists.

Which is a shame, because Hillside always has a decent lineup. And it doesn't make you pay 4-8$ for a bottle of water. No, all of its food comes from a rotating roster of local restaurants and catering companies, there's a water truck for you to fill up your reusable bottle and you get a special plastic mug in which to deposit your beer.

You can also take a break from the music whenever you need to, and learn how to vermicompost or parse the difference between brownies and imps. (I wouldn't know, as I couldn't work up the courage to attend Fairies 101 last year.) It's also a good lens on Guelph tensions, as the questions of whether this Hillside is better than the last, whether there should be more people allowed in or not, or even whether the Guelphite to Outsider ratio is too high, all hang over the main stage. However, those issues are also easy enough to forget as long as you've brought your trusty mug and some money along with you.