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Essential Festival Season Gear & Accessories

Posted: April 09, 2019
Essential Festival Season Gear & Accessories

Yarrr! Festival season is upon us, ya filthy animals! And, yep, I did mean that to sound like a cross between a pirate and a gangster in a fake movie within the movie Home Alone, because that's exactly the type of festival goer I'd be. If I were to be a festival goer. If my wife didn't place a boys' trip to Woodstock or Burning Man in the Absolutely Not category.

As it stands, I myself don't need any festival season gear or accessories. Or VIP passes, camping provisions, caravans, molly hookups.... Nope, I'll be home all summer living vicariously through your festival stories. Which is why it's still worth it for me to put together this list of essential festival gear & accessories - the more pimped out you are when you're there, the better the reports and pics I'll see in my news feeds from here.

Loop High Fidelity Earplugs

Loop High Fidelity Earplugs
Loop High Fidelity Earplugs

Loop High Fidelity Earplugs make hearing protection functional and fashionable. Presuming you dig the look of a coupla donuts in your ears (no lobe stretching required!) The new twist on earplugs takes the standard Pac-Man-ghost-shaped canal insert, streamlines them into a more subtle dome shape, and then adds a ring to the end. When worn, the resultant Loop enables a 20dB noise reduction, a comfortable, firm fit in the ear, and simple removal. More importantly, Loop Earplugs look like a stylin' piece of ear jewelry. Or a least a lot better than neon wads of foam sticking out the sides of your head.

$29.95 ➠ Amazon

Customizable Bluetooth LED Glasses

Customizable Bluetooth LED Glasses

The eyes are the window to the...next EDM dance party. Let your shades get loud with text, drawings, or animations scrolling across this pair of customizable LED glasses. They pair via Bluetooth to an app that controls their light grid, letting you type in whatever text or images you want to appear across your lenses. The glasses can store up to 5 messages at a time, accessible for cycling through with a single button.

$69 ➠ Amazon

DolfinPack Extreme Sports Hydration Pack

DolfinPack Extreme Sports Hydration Pack
DolfinPack Extreme Sports Hydration Pack

Yeah, I think you can consider a weekend of boozing, dancing, camping, and getting 3 hours total of sleep in 90+-degree heat an extreme sport. And in this case, my advice is: don't stay thirsty, my friends.

The 1.5L DolfinPack is the airline food & drink cart of the hydration bladder industry: designed to fit perfectly; hold way more than you'd think it would; and not waste an inch of space.

$44.95 ➠ Amazon

Waterproof Outdoor Blanket

Waterproof Outdoor Blanket
Waterproof Outdoor Blanket

Threaten to ruin my music festival, rain?! Well I shake my fist at you and threaten right back! ... To no avail. If you're going to Burning Man, you've got a decent shot at dry weather (for now, anyway, who knows WTF is going to happen with climate change on its hellpath). Anywhere else, all bets off.

So bring your galoshes, bring your ponchos, and bring a waterproof blanket. Not just for protection during the downpour action, at which point you can throw this blankie over your head and shoulders, waterproof nylon/polyester side up, but for post-precip performances, when you can place it blue-side-down to keep the wet and mud from soaking up into your seated butt.

$21.95 ➠ Amazon

Personal Necklace Fan

Personal Necklace Fan

Oh, I look like an idiot wearing a personal cooling fan around my neck? Well you look like an idiot wearing fur boots and hair down to your waist in 100-degree weather, walking around all sweating like a whore in church and rubbing ice cubes up and down your chest.

Well OK, the ice cube part looks fine.

$9.99 ➠ Amazon

Zinka Neon Sunscreen

Zinka Neon Sunscreen

Zinka Neon Sunscreen contains 25% zinc oxide and purports to be the best total block available, reflecting the fatal UVA and UVB kisses of the sun, resisting the SPF-stripping caresses of water, and generally transforming its wearers into the most festive of summer festival warriors. Sunscreen comes in 0.6-ounce tubes.

$22.47 ➠ Amazon

Smuggle Your Booze Sunscreen Flask

Smuggle Your Booze Sunscreen Flask

An even better type of sunscreen! Summer music festivals - not to mention baseball games and days in the park with the kids - are about to get a whole lot jollier. Instead of SPF 30, this innocuous bottle of responsible adult sunscreen contains room for 8 fl. oz. of ABV 40.

If anyone asks why you're pouring sunscreen in your Coke, just give them a superior smile and tell them you're creating a UV ray barricade from the inside out.

$9.99 ➠ Amazon

Bandana

Bandana

Bandana for the sweat, the sun, the special sauce dribbling down your chin. Know Your Knots Bandana for the off-chance the shit hits the fan and someone needs an alpine butterfly, stat.

Or maybe you'll run into a dude in one of the bands who just really digs knots and score yourself some backstage access.

The Know Your Knots Bandana also comes with an Insect Shield coating option.

$13.99 to $15.99 ➠ Amazon

SlapSee Slap Bracelet Sunglasses

SlapSee Sunglasses
SlapSee Sunglasses

Ahhh, they even come in hot pink. This summer's ultimate nod to the 90s is brought to you by SlapSee Sunnies, a clever creation out of Wellington, New Zealand.

The glasses are designed with arms similar to the slap bracelets of my youth: rigid and slightly concave when extended, spiraled up and hugging your handlebars, wrist, or gearshift like a boa on a mission when smacked. A hinged nose-bridge that enables the sunglasses to collapse at the center completes the SlapSee's feat of endlessly entertaining compaction.

$17 to $34 ➠ SlapSee

Blackout Bands - Sleep Mask Sunglasses

Blackout Bands - Sleep Mask Sunglasses

Some strobing nights, and rough next mornings, the festival's so bright you gotta wear blackout shades.

Blackout Bands are hyper-tinted sunglasses that block out 95% to 98% of incoming light. Like a sleep mask, but less likely to get your sanity questioned when worn in public.

$18.92 ➠ Amazon

PixelWhip Fiber Optic Dance Whip

PixelWhip Fiber Optic Dance Whip
PixelWhip Fiber Optic Dance Whip

The PixelWhip's 80+ fibers extend a far-reaching and eye-catching* 6' from its hilt. A single button controls both on / off operation, as well as switching between a full spectrum of LED colors and light modes.

Bring out your inner baton twirler and create a multi-dimensional PixelWhip light show. Snake and thrash the fibers around and through your body, forming an optical illusion of swirling helixes and frozen light points! Or just, like, whip it.

Whip it good.

*Hopefully not literally; be careful PixelWhipping this thing around.

$109.99 ➠ Amazon

Aftercourse Post-Sex Wipes

Aftercourse Post-Sex Wipes

Thousands of 20- and 30-somethings. Mind-altering substances. A long weekend. No facilities but porta-potties.

I'm just sayin'.

$13.95 ➠ Amazon
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