Porcfest Has Begun

[MaineShark]

PorcFest was amazing.

Huge kudos to Ron and Shire Silver.  It was truly amazing to see the amount of metals being used, and the convenience of the small-denomination Shire Silver cards played a large role in that, in my estimation.  Buying a piece of baklava with a ounce (or even half-ounce) coin is inconvenient.  Buying it with a gram of silver is not.  Folks who had only thought of metals as a theoretical good idea, whet their appetites with actual usage.  I only spent $12 in FRN's on the site.  All the other transactions within PorcFest were silver (largely ShireSilver) or direct barter.

Agora Alley was great.  By the first day, we were already convinced that we wanted to be right there, again, in the same site.  We may actually take the adjoining site, too, if some of our plans work out.  So many sites outside those rows were also set up for sales, that I heard a rumor that "The Alley" will be four rows, next year.  We may even take two sites, next year, if some plans come though.  Hats off to Curtis.

Hats off to Roger's Campground, as well, for willingly telling the local cops not to patrol during the actual event.  While "Lancaster's Finest" have seemed to be a cut above the typical cops, they are still cops, and it was great for Roger's to take the risk of getting hassled in the future in order to help protect their guests from getting hassled, right now.

Still tired and unpacking, so I'm going to skip thanking and congratulating a few dozen other folks who deserve it, but I expect others will fill in for me and thank many of the same ones.

My favorite quote, from this morning, was, "it's like we created our own world here, separate from the Statist world out there."  And that's really what happened.  It's been building for years, and we finally hit some sort of tipping point.  Porcupines aren't a subculture, anymore... we have our own culture.  There were folks there I love like family, folks who are my friends, faces I recognized and nodded at, total strangers, folks I dislike, and folks I really wish would choke and die.  Just like there are, outside PorcFest.

A bit under five years ago was the first PorcFest I was able to attend.  The group was still small, then.  We all pretty much knew each other.  Things were almost totally positive.  Now, there are strangers and even folks who actively dislike each other.  We still made it work.  Like I said, it's now a real culture, not a subculture with carefully-selected membership.  I don't (and didn't) doubt that liberty can work, because it's worked elsewhere.  But now it's worked for the Porcupines.  Now just because we carefully made it work, but because it took on a life of its own, and made itself work.

Joe

[AntonLee]

great observations.  I saw Shire silver EVERYWHERE! 

I also saw something else, or a lack of it rather.  Fighting.  I didn't see one fight.  THere were LOTS of different styles of libertarian viewpoints.  With all the drinking, drugging, etc. .. not even a real shouting match.

the only thing was someone bitching that people with cameras were following around the armed gang the one time they showed up.  At first I thought this was a new person, but I was wrong.  I wonder what was so surprising.

[Lloyd Danforth]

I was talking to some folks about this back at Rogers. I didn't hear about any fighting. This probably defies all of the statistics concerning large groups of people, many carrying guns and many who must be inexperienced drinkers.

[Lex]

Anyone know if Stefan Molyneux keynote address will be uploaded to youtube or some place I could watch it? I'm assuming there were people filming it so it's just a matter of time but was just wondering if anyone knew first hand.

[dalebert]

I'm also trying to get video of the closing ceremonies.