C-A-L-I

I've always had a fascination with California. Maybe it's the raised intonation in those barbie-esque accents, or it could be all the plastic and white teeth that seems so appealing. I mean, the rest of the world is wide-eyed for Kim K's big arse so there's a good chance I might be too.

There is an amazing-strangeness to the place, kind of like watching animals have sex - you're not so sure about it, but it's also pretty cool. Venice Beach being the perfect example of this, you feel uncomfortable at the amount of homeless people just lying on their beach with their shack/home-like constructions whilst you're glamourously cycling past with the wind in your hair. Or the smell of crack whilst you walk past a dog dressed in a glittery pink bikini with dollar bills pushed down it's under-crackers. It's all a little bit odd, but also a little incredible.

There's summat in the air in LA. It could be crack, it could be the car fumes - or as Angelenos like to describe it, 'actually all that haze we get is the heat from the sky reacting with the super cold Ocean'. Yeah, no, it is definitely the car fumes. People from Los Angeles don't get buses and even getting in a taxi seems a bit fucking weird to them.

A couple of hundred miles down the road from LA was Indio, where Coachella festival takes place every year. Coachella has it's differences to many European festivals I have been to and at first glance they seemed fucking stupid. From having beer gardens - separate closed off areas where you could buy and drink alcohol i.e. you couldn't just get a beer and stand in the crowd wherever you want and drink it - or to putting the music on in the middle of the day, when the sun was hottest. But all of these things were just a massive ploy to get people to drink/do drugs/whatever responsibly. There's no way that you could drink to your hearts desire and not die in that 36 degree heat. Then when you compare that to UK festivals, when there's casualties being carried out of the arena at 7pm due to one too many 'cheeky' bevvies, it actually makes sense why Coachella has strict policies.

But then you'd have to put up with all the bullshit 'EDM' Americans love. Calling any kind of electronic music, EDM, is enough to make me shudder myself into cardiac arrest. But Americans love to talk about it like it's going out of fashion and you kind of feel like telling them it's already gone out of fashion. Some people were more impressed with the light shows than what music was playing anyway, and OH EM GEE I was totally rushing my balls off when Martin Garrix came on.....yawn.

Coachella is most definitely a festival I would visit again and although sometimes I might have felt culturally alienated there is no doubt that this is one of the world's most successful and biggest festivals for a reason.