Wallets, phones and jewelry are some of things you’d expect to find in an average Lost and Found bin.
But Bluesfest volunteers have shared a lot of good laughs over some of the other bizarre things patrons have brought in with them.
For the most part, Kathryn Carruthers, who’s been volunteering with Bluesfest for more than 15 years, said this year’s festival brought up one really odd item: a small zippered bag filled with vomit.
She called that find “rather disgusting.”
Over the years, Carruthers says, the Lost and Found bin has contained rather intimate items as well. “We get things that shouldn’t be off people’s bodies,” she said, such as underwear and other clothing.
Hannah Greave, another volunteer at Bluesfest’s administrative department for about four years, said they also received a single cowboy boot turned in this year.
“That’s a new one,” she said. “That’s been the funniest thing so far this year.”
Long after a concert’s over and people begin heading home, Greave says they collect plenty of lawn chairs, especially last year.
“How do you forget and lose a whole lawn chair?” she said.
Greave recalled one year when a gas mask turned up.
“It looked like the old-school gas masks that people wore,” she said, wondering why anyone would bring a gas mask to a Bluesfest concert in July.
“What’s the thought process of wearing that to the festival?” she said. “A cosmetic purpose?”
At the end of the day, Greave said, they’re always happy to give people their belongings back.
“People are very, very relieved when we have the things that they need,” she said. “We like people getting their things back.”
When the venue begins to get cleaned up towards the end of the festival, Carruthers said, they end up finding and collecting even more wallets, identification cards and phones left behind.
“A lot of the time, things will be tucked under a tent,” she said. “When the site’s being cleaned up and torn down, we get a lot of stuff turned in.”
Sometimes people don’t even bother checking the Lost and Found bin, Carruthers said, because they believe their items are lost forever, especially those with sentimental value.
“They just tend to assume human nature is not kind,” she said. “Most people, when they find stuff, they do turn it in.”
