Say hello to a journey full of interesting homes, lots of travel, and likely some lessons learned.

This past week a lot of killer awesome things happened. I turned 26! The one thing I wanted for my birthday, I got: living in San Francisco et al for the next few months. It was that, a ridiculous car, or a building. Hands down, California won. I'm here now and B-Sides is a place to jot my think thoughts as they happen in real time.

3 Days Before my Birthday...

The girls: @tiflien, @kristantina & I took a jaunt to Chicago where we checked out a great line up of sounds. If you haven't gone, you need to go, I'm now addicted to music festivals, there is a different breed of people there! Insane mayhem, awesome people, and endless eats makes this city one of my top favs. Not to mention, the architecture in Chicago is really inspiring. Two days in, it rained, #lolla had to be evacuated because no ones wants a stage collapse due to high speed winds. What do you do when just under 300, 000 people evacuate a park?! It was chaos, the city during mid-day was covered in bodies moving in every direction. I'm still in shock at how quickly the eery darkness creeped in (I don't know how, considering it was sunny just minutes ago!) I've never seen anything like it. Anyhow, here's some raw footage from the GoPro when The White Panda performed:

#Lolla was a reminder to live in the moment, grab a drink, meet people. It is amazing how setbacks like a windstorm can all of a sudden given people a reason to talk, it's almost like its permission to say hi. We met lots of really interesting #lolla people that evening and had a blast until we found out the festival was back on. What do you do when just under 300, 000 people go back into a park at full speed? You hold on tight, because if you don't, you'll lose one another. We came back to a park that was now filled with mud pits! People get creative when there is music, mud, and a place to gather, the creativity was endless. 

Memorable highlights include the best sushi dinner ever, deep dish pizza until I couldn't eat anymore, wonderful street music performances, and playin' it cool when I met TEED in our hotel elevator. Nbd. Oh, and of course, awesome friends because well that's what made this trip.

Miike Snow, Calvin Harris, Passion Pit, Metric, Bombay Bicycle Club, all soundscape performances, I don't think it could have gotten any better!

I love the plug about bottled water, I don't know enough about it, but I really appreciate this design solution. There was definitely a statement made and the message was loud and clear, packaging is an open invitation for designers to respond. 

All in all, this was an amazing event,  so much culture, so much energy, onward bound to the West for me! We met such genuine people, I'm already looking forward to staying connected. 

Was it worth it? Absolutely. If I'm here next year, then I'm there for sure. Thanks Chicago, you are beautiful :)

@kymchiho