2013 Celebrate Fairfax Guide (Update)

Northern Virginia's largest festival begins tomorrow and runs through Sunday evening. While I encourage you to visit the Celebrate Fairfax website for everything you need to know about the festival, I figured I would provide a guide on things to see and do.

This weekend's headliners are as follows:

Friday, June 7th: Everclear, Live, Filter & Sponge - 7:15 pm

Saturday, June 8th: The B-52s Third Eye Blind at 8:00 pm (see update below)

Sunday, June 9th: Spin Doctors at 4:30 pm

While I shared my thoughts about the Friday night show, I'm also excited about The B-52s Saturday night. Love Shack is a great song, and I hope that this is finally the performance where Shaquille O'Neal joins the band for their signature song. I saw the Spin Doctors open for the Rolling Stones in the mid-90s. Even all these years later, I question the band's credentials. Did they earn a doctorate or is it an honorary degree? If they just have a Masters degree, they really should change the name to the Spin Masters.

One of my favorite annual activities is spinning the Great American Restaurants' wheel. For $3, the worst you can is get a $10 gift certificate. Make sure you get to the festival early since there's always a line for this booth.

- While the headliners get all the attention, there are eight stages featuring both local and non-local performers. There are always really good bands that you have probably never heard of before.

- Underrated aspect of the festival: free Fairfax Water. The water is remarkably refreshing and we regularly use the Faifax Water plastic cups.

- This year, Celebrate Fairfax hosted their first ever Emerging Artist Competition designed in an effort to cultivate and showcase young local artists and create a cost-free way for the artists to show and sell their artwork at a festival. Emerging Artist winners are Nicole Lee, Ashley Morabito, and Kylie Growl. Check out their artwork in the Arts Market.

- There's a Shocktop look-a-like contest this year where you can win a beach town, hat, T-shirt, and cooler with speakers. To enter the "go orange challenge," dress up as the Shocktop mascot and go to the Shock Top Rock Stage from 9:15PM - 9:45 PM on Friday and/or 3:00-3:30 on Saturday. Participants must be 21 and will be judged on creativity, effort, and overall resemblance to the Shock Top Mascot.

- I'm intrigued by the DockDogs competition. I don't really understand how this works, but seeing dogs compete seems like fun.

I wrote about this years ago, but I think it is worth repeating. If you're 11 or older, the cost is $12 at the gate for admission to the festival. How much do you spend on tickets alone when you go to a concert anywhere else (ex. 9:30 Club, Wolf Trap, etc.)? Please also factor in the cost for all of the convenience and venue fees. The answer is more than $12 and often significantly more. Plus, for $12, you get access to all of the other stages and activities. While, naturally, you will pay more if you want food, beer or pop (yes I wrote pop) or ride on the carnival rides, I've never been to a concert that distributes free alcohol or food (or carnival rides for that matter).

If you haven't purchased tickets yet, you can still get discounted tickets at Wegmans in Fairfax, Dulles and Gainesville or on the Celebrate Fairfax website. When you buy your adult tickets online by Thursday and use Promo Code 195, Northern Virginia Family Service will receive $1 for every ticket sold!

Want more?

- The Mount Vernon Patch has your general information

- The Centreville Patch has the kids' perspective.

- Win tickets from Super NoVa Mom.

- The Red Cross will be there.

- NBC4 will be there too.


Finally, during the festival itself, make sure you check out Celebrate Fairfax's blog and Twitter page for updated information.

I hope to see you this weekend!

Major update!

The B-52’s were scheduled to perform at this weekend’s Celebrate Fairfax! Festival (on Saturday night), but had to cancel all of the band's immediate upcoming performances due to an illness to principal band member Cindy Wilson. Cindy’s illness is not life threatening but her doctor has ordered her to take immediate bed rest. Amazingly, in just a few hours time, the festival was able to secure a special return engagement to Celebrate Fairfax by THIRD EYE BLIND. What a get on 48 hours notice!