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I had to share this because of how incredible it is. For a point of reference we were staying in Prince Akeem.
Friday late night, get in around 6, head is still off in outer space and going too fast to sleep. I never sleep in a tent at roo, haven't for five years, but i sleep on a cot underneath our shade tent. I took my shorts off to go to bed and laid them out on a chair to dry off from the rain. The shorts were no more than an arm's length away and eventually around 7 or so i fall asleep and wake up 3 hours later.
My buddy was already up, and he asked me to look at my schedule. I reach over to grab my shorts and they are not there. I knew immediately they had been stolen because i distinctly remembered putting them away. In my shorts, and this was my stupid mistake, were my wallet, and my car keys. I knew immediately that we were screwed, but stayed cool about it. Luckily my phone was in my raincoat, so i called someone back home to cancel my credit cards, and then went to our pod and told them what had happened. They sent me to lost and found, nothing there, and gave me the name of a guy who could make me a key for 120. My buddy had 150 in cash on him and if we got the key we would probably not have enough money to get gas on the way home since he had no credit card. Not to mention that now neither of us had a driver's license. And the car wasn't even mine, but my brother's because it was bigger and had more room.
On the way back to camp i start randomly checking trash cans to see if my shorts are there. I start asking people if they had seen a pair of khaki shorts, and most people looked at me and just assumed some idiot had gotten torn up the night before and shed his clothes in some display of stupidity. Nothing turns up. Get back to within 20 yards of camp and there on the ground is my wallet with all of my credit cards, license, everything right there next to it. I immediately called home and told them not to cancel the credit cards, and fortunately it wasn't too late. They took the cash, which was like 80 dollars, but nothing else. I was freaking thrilled, because now at least i had money, but no car keys.
I decide that if they left the wallet, maybe they left everything else, and unbelievably, 30 yards away, in a different direction, there were my shorts, with my car keys, and my belt and my schedule and everything else. It was incredible, and it just seemed to fit so perfectly after having had the wonderful night that i had before where whenever i wandered off into something during the latenight, everything worked out beautifully.
I got back to camp holding my shorts and all of our neighbors erupted into yells of applause and clapping. The next night my buddy's sunglasses got stolen, and sadly, those were never seen again. This was the best roo i've ever had, and i'm so glad that it didn't have to get ruined by negativity or cut short because of this crap. Learned the lesson to always lock up the important stuff though, since it sounds like theft was pretty prevalent this year. Sorry to everyone's whose stuff got stolen and was never found.
Post by dogfighter28 on Jun 18, 2008 0:01:24 GMT -5
I'm glad you found your stuff.
I went to get ice on Saturday night, and my wallet fell out of my pocket on the way back. I noticed something was wrong, patted my back pocket, and freaked out. I turned around, got out my tiny keychain maglite, and started walking and searching, and I found it within a minute. I was so lucky.
Wow, that is a great story. It's too bad that we have to worry about theft but at least you had a happy ending and a great time. BTW, me too!! Best roo ever!
Sorry to hear about the $80, but at least you managed to find the really important stuff. Miraculously, I managed to come home with almost everything I took down there, including both lighters I brought (I know, this last one shocked the hell out of me). The only thing I lost was my sunglasses on the first day, but they were a cheapo pair and I bought some new ones at the general store.
Post by counterproduct on Jun 18, 2008 9:35:59 GMT -5
glad to hear your story had a happy ending. our tent got hit this year. we had a tent lock on the front door and a cheap lantern inside. so they decide to cut open the tent door and destroy a $60 tent to steal a $10 lantern. they also walked away with a handle of vodka from my friends tent and our neighbors said they stole their sandals? had to have been some of the dumbest thieves ever. i mean, who steals a shoe? honestly?
Post by rarelyheard on Jun 18, 2008 10:06:04 GMT -5
I lost my cell phone the first night of Roo when I passed out at Lez Zeppelin, but some kind soul turned it in at the lost and found tent so i was able to recover it the next day. However, my oakley's will never be worn by me again because I lost them in the crowd when I jumped on stage with Robert Randolph. I'm never spending 100 bucks on sunglasses ever again!
I spend 5 bucks on sunglasses at wal-mart...they always get broken or lost. The only thing I lost this year was my ID, but I do have a back up somewhere...hopefully.
Friday nite I slept on my air mattress outside my tent. On the chair next to the mattress was a chair. In this chair I laid my backpack with water bladder. When I woke the next morning it was gone.
Maybe more people on the boards were in more open areas. I've never had a problem before, but I attribute that to being in low traffic areas. This year I only saw three "strange" people walk through our site and everyone was staring at them because we knew they weren't camped anywhere nearby and where we were wasn't just a place you happened to walk through. They looked pretty shady, too, sort of looking around at everyone and being all snoopy. Luckily, we were around our site quite a bit and our neighbors kind of were also. We almost had opposite schedules, so we looked out for each other's stuff.
Last Edit: Jun 20, 2008 12:33:06 GMT -5 by DNA - Back to Top
Post by BonnarooDetective on Jun 20, 2008 12:52:18 GMT -5
I was robbed too! B'astard had the audacity to go through our tent while we were out Friday night. We returned from Disco Biscuits to find all of over stuff scattered throughout our tent. My girlfriend's backpack had been torn open, her clothes were literally everywhere. Her purse had been dumped out as well. They took 40 bucks out of her wallet, but for some reason left the credit cards and other resources. I've always felt really safe at Bonnaroo, but that experience really changed me. I now lock up everything but my blankets and cooler inside the car. The community had changed significantly since my first year (05).
Sounds like a lot of what he is saying is bull hockey, but I do believe that theft and violence were up significantly this year. People can say what they will, but I don't doubt that it had to do with the presence of certain artists.
thursday night someone stole my ENTIRE bag and my friend's backpack. they left his bag but threw his clothes out of it. thankfully our neighbor the next day found my bag underneath is car....the person who stole it had messed up everything in it. the only thing they stole was my multivitamins (looking for drugs obviously).
but they stole some things of tents near us, too. just ridiculous. i locked everything up after that.
thursday night someone stole my ENTIRE bag and my friend's backpack. they left his bag but threw his clothes out of it. thankfully our neighbor the next day found my bag underneath is car....the person who stole it had messed up everything in it. the only thing they stole was my multivitamins (looking for NO NO WORD!!!! obviously).
but they stole some things of tents near us, too. just ridiculous. i locked everything up after that.
hey where did u camp? same exact thing happened to us Thursday night... we were by the blue 6 balloon, 5 bags and contents strewn everywhere...more of an embarrassment/discouragement than anything else since they didnt find anything they were looking for (except a carton of cigs)
my friends found a backpack scattered across our cars when coming back from the saturday late night show.. Really sorry to hear about everyones thefts i was lucky enough to not anything stolen even with leaving all the camping gear out in the shade tent... whats with people these days is the economy that bad??? or is society just going down hill?
Post by tentseasurfer on Jun 20, 2008 19:40:02 GMT -5
LOCK YOUR SHITE UP.
It sucks, and I would love to completely rely on the fact that most people are honest and not going to steal my stuff...but unfortunately when you have that many people partying and leaving their campsite for hours on end it's bound to happen. I have yet to hear of any cars being broken into, so I would imagine that is the best way to avoid this type of situation.
Our camp got raided twice, maybe more. One of my friends lost a LOT of shit. They stole the car keys out of his tent while he was asleep. They didn't go inside my tent that time. A couple of days after I came back to my tent and it was ransacked, but I had nothing valuable inside.
Funny thing is being a Bonnarookie... I expected there to be theft in some capacity at the event... which is very sad so say.
The biggest chance of getting robbed is when there is a big volume of people in centerroo and not at their tents... like when someone BIG is playing at the What Stage.
I noticed people coming back from Metallica and Pearl Jam upset about things being moved around and looked through.
It just makes sense and you have to think like a theif in order to best them. Keep your stuff on you. Sleep with your wallet inside with you or lock it in the car. Don;t leave anything valuable out in the open.
Also if your camp looks upper-class then you are an immediate target. If your camp looks trashy and careless... then you are also a target because you are seen as careless and easy.
I suggest keeping your camps clean and nearly empty of anything when unattended. When this might seem like a painful chore... it could make the biggest difference in the end.
Wow, and here I was thinking that we were tucked away from the madness in Prince Akeem. Were you by the road or farther back into the tents?
We were not by the road at all, we were camped right by the trees, near that little cut through to the big field that had nearly no one in it. I thought we were tucked away as well, until friday night when i was headed in to MMJ around midnight and there were two tanks going off at the same corner. Walking back that night there was a security golf cart going around with its lights off looking under all these tarps and they were saying stuff like "I know i heard something, he's here somewhere."
My camp apparently had a close call with getting robbed. We were at the shows on Saturday for most of the day, and when we came back to the camp to pregame the late night shows and grab some food and our neighbor said he scared off a shady looking character who had approached our tents and was rummaging through our belongings. Thank god for good neighbors, and gladly nothing was stolen that we noticed (we kept all the items of any value in the truck)
On a side note, Bonnaroo's energy and positivity was like something I've never seen at another music festival. The ones I've been to in south and central florida are like nonstop fighting / stealing. This was my first Bonnaroo and I'm hooked. Can't wait for '09!
ps: Don't blame Metallica for the thefts, I am a HUGE Metallica fan, in fact one of the only reasons I came, and I didn't steal a thing. In fact, coming to the festival for Metallica opened my eyes to several other musicians I never knew about before.
When you get that many people together for anything, there's gonna' be theft. I wouldn't leave my stuff laying out on a chair on my front porch, so I sure as hell wouldn't leave it laying out at Bonnaroo.
My friend said that there was an older man going through campsites mid-day when most people are off at Centeroo.
Also friend said a girl was trying to open her backpack while at a very packed show. That SUCKS.
We luckily didn't have anything taken, but we did keep things super tidy, important stuff locked up (put all car keys in one car that had keyless entry and we all knew the code, put all money and iPods and stuff in the cars) and tried to stay aware.
we came back to our camp one night and this guy that was camped by us came over and told us about how he spotted some tents with the sides slashed and empty. when he got back to his camp he watched a guy go through a tent then move onto the next and seeing if cars were unlocked so after hed gone through a couple camps our alert neighbor ended up approaching the dude but the guy took off, he chased him out of our camp area. it was pretty sweet because he hadnt gotten to our camp yet though.
