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Meet your tour guides:
In order to walk the talk, Billy and Meighan are off to Detroit and their first stop on the tour in a new 2003 Toyota Prius hybrid. Says Billy: “We're going to see if we can make it all the way to Detroit on one tank of gas. WOOHOO! Wish us luck!” |
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Slideshow! Check out some pictures from the tour. |
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Tales from the road! 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | Wrap-Up |
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Sierra Club / Lollapalooza 2003 Main |
Our Tour with Lollapalooza 2003:
A Wrap-Up from our Correspondents
Highlight of the tour
Billy: Handing Freestyle artist "Supernatural" a hybrid-car speech bubble and watching him rap about hybrids in front of 500 people.
Meighan: Giving Perry Farrell the low-down about fuel economy at Ford Motor Company.
Best food
Billy: The chicken pitas on tour - they cost 8 bucks, but they give you about 3 pounds of food!
Meighan: Billy's grandmothers' chicken stroganoff. The food at the venues sucked.
Worst food
Billy: The vegan "chicken" and broccoli we ate for "vegan solidarity night," in honor of our vegan roadie/intern Crystal Durham. The fake chicken tasted like a salty inner tube.
Meighan: Definitely the sketchy Chinese food we ate in Philly. My General Tso's tofu tasted like one of those bouncy balls and the "spit water" was disgusting.
Best town
Billy: JOY ZEE! We raised over $100 and got over 500 Ford postcards signed at the event! Plus they have the only politically active high-schoolers we met on tour, and they have Dunkin' Donuts every four blocks.
Meighan: I agree with Billy - it had to be Jersey. We rocked out on postcards and petitions. Sold a ton of materials and met the rock stars.
Most memorable rock and roll moment
Billy: Hanging out with Chali 2na (from Jurassic 5) on the lawn before they went on stage, talking about how we're going to get Bush out of office in 2004.
Meighan: Getting my tattoo at the mobile tattoo parlor at Lollapalooza by the artist who tattoos KORN.
Best show
Billy: Consistently it was was Supernatural on the second stage. The guy has more talent than all the rest of the second stage acts combined!
Meighan: No doubt it was Supernatural. I never got to the main stage but this guy was great to listen to while I was postcarding the crowd around the second stage. The worst show was Steve-O. I never thought anyone could get paid to vomit in front of people.
Most memorable quote
Billy: The best ones, of course, shouldn't be published : ). Tom Morello (formerly of Rage Against the Machine), when told of our campaign targeting Ford, said, "Sweet...I like that...fight on."
Meighan: We had a mother signing a postcard with her 7-year-old son, and he said, "My first car will be a hybrid."
The hybrid
Billy: The car ran splendidly. Averaging about 45 mpg, we saved about $50 more in gas than if we had been driving my '93 Altima, and about $100 more than if we had driven my parents' van. The car had enough power to burn up the on-ramps, and had enough maneuverability to work our way through traffic and park in tiny spots.
Meighan: It was great. Billy did most of the driving so I monitored the energy and consumption most of the way. This car is wicked fuel-efficient and saved us so much money at the pump.
Downside
Billy: The rental agreement ($300 more than we had been promised).
Meighan: The CD player was hidden from us for some of the ride up. That wasn't really the car's fault but our stupidity. Good thing we discovered it soon: we were so close to buying books on tape.
Most inspiring moment of the tour
Billy: After we packed up our table at the Jersey show, the five of us (Me, Crystal, Meighan, Katie, Heather, and I) talked about our greatest success on tour. They ranged from the professional (over 1,000 kids signed up for Sierra Club campaigns) to the personal (getting over the fear of talking to strangers). I'm convinced that a small band of young activists can make a tremendous impact in building power to protect the environment. I'm inspired to work my ass off to make sure all these young people get plugged into important, exciting conservation campaigns!
Meighan: Meeting so many young people. From taking a 7-year-old's photo to send to Ford to having 16-year-olds sign up as SSC activists, I knew being on this tour was not only bringing more young people into the movement but bringing more young people into the Sierra Club. I imagine we'll be absorbing around 2,000 new activists once the last concert is over.
(Thanks for reading, yo.)
All Sierra Club Lollapalooza 2003 photos courtesy Crystal Durham/Sierra Student Coalition. Sierra Club collection; all rights reserved.