First off let me start off by saying that there was no AFROPUNK in the traditional sense of the festival. A day before my flight to Atlanta, AFROPUNK announced that they were canceling the entire festival due to “inclement weather.” However, my friends and I decided to thug it out and go anyway. Both my flight and the 3 bedroom house we rented were non refundable and we hoped to still get a chance to meet up with others who decided to brave the weather and travel to Atlanta as well.

We’d been planning this trip for months and were extremely upset that we’d miss out on the experience we spent countless hours talking about. But life happens, and we were ready to roll with the punches.

Email I received on Thursday the day before my flight to Atlanta

As word spread of the canceled event, an “AFROPUNK Plan B” Facebook group popped up detailing new events in Atlanta for those still interested in getting the AFROPUNK experience. There were meet ups, parties, pop up shops, etc, and I must say that each was amazing in it’s own right.

We traveled to Atlanta with a positive attitude and made the best of a failed trip (although it barely drizzled the entire time we were there). The weekend showed me that AFROPUNK doesn’t make the experience, the people make the experience. Regardless of whether the promoters jumped the gun and canceled an event, the people who were dedicated to having a good time still made the weekend a great experience.

I’m still bummed that I couldn’t cross “attending a festival” off my 26th year bucket list [read about that by clicking here], but I wouldn’t change this experience for the world.

At the end of the trip we documented our experience via The Road to AFROPUNk podcast. You can listen to that below.

Here’s a few a lot of pictures from the amazing weekend.

Maybe next year we won’t get fake rained out…