Depending on who you talked to, Camp Bisco was either a chaotic disaster filled with drug-fueled orgies and depravity or just one big party unlike anything that has ever come to The Pavilion at Montage Mountain in Scranton. We suspect the truth lies somewhere in the middle, though there’s no denying that a lot of crazy things occurred over those three days.
Even the bands performing in the Disco Biscuits‘ electronic/jam band festival couldn’t avoid the insanity from the “safety” of the stage – Ryan Null of Zoogma was tackled by a fan mid-set, sending his equipment tumbling down:
There’s no video we’ve seen yet that supports all the gossip and rumors that have been flying since July 16-18 (which Montage addressed today in a Times-Tribune article), but considering the festival’s history of drug overdoses in other cities, among other issues, it’s easy to see how these things get started. For the record, there were no deaths, six arrests, and about two dozen emergency room visits reported. The condition of the festival grounds after the show wasn’t exactly pretty, but they still were able to host the Vans Warped Tour today.
While Reddit isn’t always the most accurate source for information, it certainly attracts some straightforward commenters and conversation. The Camp Bisco subreddit contains quite a few wild stories from the event’s first year in Scranton, and though some of these accounts may be exaggerated or downright fabricated altogether, they all add to the legend of Bisco.
We selected some of our favorite posts, taken with more than a few grains of salt, from “the front page of the Internet” below, edited only for brevity.
Some Redditors shared tales of recklessness:
jerzze1823h2: bribed a security guard with molly to give us a ride to our car, then when he was blacked out drunk in our canopy we stole his golf cart n drove it around every where.
KFizzleKyle1d: I let some kid feed me 2C-E telling me it was LSD, without testing it. Needless to say it was a very rough time.
bagofm3th1d: Going down the water slide Thursday night on 600ug of LSD
ogtogaconvict1d: I was tripping and bought a ball of coke from a bunch of sketchy dudes from Philly. I literally watched him switch the bags out from the one i tested but was too fucked up to put two and two together until after the fact.
Also, earlier in the day I was tripping in the front row of Cherub and tried to do a key bump during “Doses and Mimosas,” I ended up spilling half the bag in my hand and just did it all out of my palm with my friends haha.
KillaBass: i saw this kid it was on saturday around the time we had to stay under the tent cuz of weather and this kid and a couple of his friends were like pretty soberish (like not sober but very in control) but on a dime he could act like he was super fucked up on K. so he started pranking people and he stood in the area in the middle of the tent people walk thru and waited for busy times to go out there and look spun the fuck out and get super weird looks from people. then his friend came out and it was like a tag team prank. he got a ton of laughs. dude had dedication too, he was like drooling really badly too just to make it that much funnier. like 6 inches of drool hanging outta his mouth as people walk right by him
that shit was hilarious
Sagacious_S: Secondhand story but one of my campmates saw a one-punch KO up the hill while exploring after Thursday. Apparently the guy was acting like a jackass, got slumped, everyone was yelling “worldstar!” security ran up, everyone said “nah it’s cool, he deserved it” so the security guy gave out high fives over the knocked out guy.
Also before Bassnectar this guy in front of us did some K and then tried to stand on the chairs but fell backwards into the charis and onto the concrete. Three times. We thought he broke a rib, he agreed, yet ignored our advice to sit down and continued to try to stand on the chairs.
Some went on a long, strange trip:
oosmeven: I saw a snail drop a nuke on a hillside full of innocent bystanders.
munchies777: Some girl was tripping near our camp site and was completely naked and fingering herself on the ground. Her friends didn’t know what to do.
justanaddict: I watched this girl take her Chapstick, roll it out of the tube, and take a bite. Then looked around at her friends like, “oh, is that not a normal thing to do?” This was during the floozies. Almost died laughing.
introverted-mess: In the main stage (Electric City) Saturday night I was walking through the crowd and I literally saw a dude COMPLETELY NAKED head to toe, drenched in sweat, just standing there.
TheVeezKneez: Some dude who tripped his balls off and for 6 hours built a small kingdom of stacked rocks by the lazy river…it was the most impressive thing I have ever seen.
Some felt bad vibes:
soggypoptart: A kid tossed a firework (not the pretty lights kind, sounded like an M80) in a tent just down the slope from us. We thought it was a gunshot at first, watched the guys running from their canopy and one kid hit the floor from getting some debris flung his way. No one was in the tent at the time so no one was seriously hurt, but that was the creepiest thing I think I’ve ever seen. There was this silence for like 30 seconds after it happened where I was just waiting for someone to walk out all fucked up.
Apparently they were selling L and kept getting accused of it being bunk, so they figured it was some drugged out kid getting them back for it. I don’t think they ever caught the guy but yeah that happened on slope 4 (or maybe they were labeled by color, idk but we were right above R).
I had a great time overall but there’s this dark side to bisco that just makes me feel uneasy, thinking about hitting up a different festival in the future. I’ll probably give it one more chance since it’s local/I like the lineups, but everyone I talked to who has been to other festivals says the same thing.
JXEYES: One dude tried to steal another guy’s wallet in the thick of the crowd leaving bassnectar. He got caught by the victim and his friends, and chased after. They did catch him and pack some serious wallops into the kid, but as soon as they left a couple opportunist girls grabbed the dropped and forgotten wallet and quickly removed all his cash and disappeared into the masses.
Not necessarily that crazy but in general, campers seemed especially cynical, sarcastic, and hostile this year. Not much of a community or fam-attitude.
nickeldubz: We were waiting in line for the tractors to take us back at the end of the festival. Some dude got caught red handed stealing a chicks hat and wallet. People started yelling a ‘fuck that guy’ chant and proceeded to pelt him with beer cans and water bottles as he slowly escaped up the mountain in an epic walk of shame.
AJCpittsburgh: On Saturday Before the rain, right after they made the announcement to “seek shelter and thank you for your cooperation” we were at our camp site about to go see the biscuits second set. Of course rumors started going around that because of lightning everything was canceled. Everyone felt the vibe shift on the mountain, it was so tense and some people started to freak out. We were talking and thinking if they canceled the show their might be a riot or a bunch of people freaking out. After a few minutes, I kind of shook it off and thought screw we will be fine. So I yelled really loud, “we are all in this together guys, we will be fine, we have all the drugs we need” Then their was a ripple across the whole mountain. People started cheering and yelling and the whole vibe changed. We felt the whole mountain just relax and go from panic and a near riot to “we are all in this together”. It was the most amazing thing I ever experienced.
It felt like the impeding apocalypse turned back into a beautiful sun set.
Realistically I didn’t think there would be a riot but in my state and our groups state we all thought I saved the vibe of the mountain and possibly prevented a riot. Either way, the vibe shift blew me away. Greatest weekend of my life!!!! Great group of people!!!
Some just made funny observations:
Awhitley8717h3: Over at the wavepool I heard a guy who was soooo stoked to go see bassnectar, even tho nectars set had been over for at least an hour.
getting2birdsstoned: going into security at the top of the hill. a guy asked ‘is this security to get into the festival or do we have to go down there? i don’t even know what to google to figure this out’
princess_pony: Not super cray but while I was chilling in my hammock watching a girl try and set hers up, the tree she was messing with uprooted and fell on her. It smacked her in the head and she was on the ground for a while, but everything seemed ok. No stretchers involved.
fancyclancy9521h2: Sunday morning watched the sunrise in a cuddle puddle that took some alphabet soup on a hill near C. The one dude was a brick and the other a slinkee and one girl was ass naked and thought she was a subwoofer channeling the sounds of the mountain. They were funny and musical which was cool but the other girl started puking so I got her some water and tried to get their heads back to the mountain. Got the brick to say his first word “good” and slinky to say his name which was a big improvement.
SirShootsAlot: Was anyone standing in line to get into the venue Saturday when that guy decided to try to just walk in, and then got mad at security when they wouldn’t let him in. And then felt terrible and started apologizing to security and everyone still in line, promising them “anything they want”, meanwhile crying. He then almost stumbles over and girl sitting on the grass, still crying and apologizing. Then immediately proceeding to vomit several times, almost seemingly due to said crying. After me and my friend lose our shit for 15 feet or so, I look behind me and see the man staring into the sun, with the biggest “I FEEL AMAZING” grin I’ve ever seen.
This all happened within 2 minutes.
Other stories were downright disgusting:
BISCOSON: I saw a K’ed out wook girl take a shit on a dirt road.
introverted-mess: In one porta potty when I was peeing, right around eye level on the wall somebody had spelled out their initials (“EL”) in either period blood or poop, it was definitely written on purposefully it was NOT just a random stain.
kittenfever1d: I saw a girl throw up in her hands, walk over to a trash can, and without dropping any of the vomit, threw it away.
ptiddles757: How they opened the waterpark up to the public 8 hours after the music stopped. Saw that raft pool at 3 am Saturday and it was greenish/brown haha.
And some people just need help:
HailMaryJane: I had an orgy with my boyfriend and his two friends in our tent. In the morning he left me for some slut. I was miserable the rest of the time…
Hopefully we will get back together tho
snerrymunster: I was in line for shitters at the mainstage during Biscuits and some dude was just crushing up this giant bag of powder in plain site and lining up heaters. Talking like a half ounce of powder.
main_source: I saw this girl completely dislocate her kneecap after landing weird from jumping around during Ape Drum’s set at steamtown. The kneecap was a good 5-6 inches to the right of where it was supposed to be and her leg (below the knee) was contorted to the left. When some dude picked her up to bring her to the paramedic she looked completely pale and had this just lost/zombified expression in her face as she was being carried out.
theunbearableone: My favorite bisco moment came late night/early morning in the rv lot during agent zero’s sunrise set in the corner. There was a cowboy there with a grossly oversized spoon. We were all dancing having a good time, then we sit down next to a group of 4 people to relax and hydrate for a few minutes. At this point the big-spooned cowboy comes over, sits down, and put his spoon on the ground in front of us. He then proceeds to dump cocaine into the spoon and tells us if we have any to throw it in; so we do. Once we have a giant spoon filled with scarface amounts of blow, he pulls out his necklace. What do you think is on that necklace? 6 bumping spoons that he passes out to us while screaming everyone eat their frosted flakes! That cocaine cowboy was my bisco hero, bless you sir.
pm_me_cool_plants: A few things I saw, one was at the wave stage for snails. This guy was standing in a his boxers and fell completely backwards onto his head which landed on a rock, I went up to him and asked if he was alright and he yelled that he was fine so I let him be for a bit. After some time he got up and fell into my friend, shortly thereafter he pulled his boxers from his waist looking down at his dick, violently grabbed it and ran as fast as he could up the hill.
another crazy thing I saw was a guy who was almost walking on all fours trying to get back to his camp site, I went to help him because he fell on the ground and in a demonic possessed voice he said “LEAVE ME ALONE I AM FIIIINNNNNNEEEEEEE” and slowly got up and bolted only to fall shortly after.
among all the crazy shit I did see people who legitimately needed help. There was a guy who went out dressed in a full suit earlier in the night and later I caught him walking around aimlessly completely spun out unable to move while saying “where am I, is this it? help me walk” so I guided him to the area I saw him come from earlier. I also saw many people who got sloppy with their drugs and were just naked in the bushes or passed out getting tripped on by others at the stages as people cleared out.
Bisco is a survival camp. We survived bisco.
We survived indeed – and with a few good stories to tell.
