CRSSD Fest through a Government Photographer’s Lens
Waterfront Park, San Diego | governmentphotographer.com
One of my favorite overlaps between my work and my world.
CRSSD Fest is held at Waterfront Park, which meant this shoot was technically for the County of San Diego. As a government photographer, this was one of those rare gigs that perfectly aligned with my love for electronic music and dance culture.
Years ago, when I was still with the Port of San Diego, I remember getting pulled into early meetings with founder Johnny Shockey and his team. The park permits staff said, “You speak the language of these rave people—sit in on this and translate for us.”
At the time, Johnny explained the vision as: “There’s no reason why San Diego shouldn’t have its own Nocturnal Wonderland.” Loved the crew and their vision but I was skeptical. I’d spent too much time deep inside the conservative layers of local government bureaucracy to know how slow and stuck things could get. I was like ‘hey if you can deal with the politics and mountains of red tape, have at it!‘
But not only did they pull it off, CRSSD changed the landscape of San Diego’s dance music identity and culture forever. Unreal. I’m genuinely inspired. And I’ve learned that anything worth doing takes a little bit of insanity.
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