Best friends day: 10 years later
This was so much fun to do - read the full article at here. Thanks always to RVA Mag!
10 YEARS LATER: A BEST FRIENDS DAY CONVERSATION
Recently, BFD alumni Shelley Callahan, Anna Virginia, and Erin Briggs sat down with Richmond photographer and musician Randy Blythe to discuss the beginning of Best Friends Day, how it evolved, and the upcoming Best Friends Day Yearbook, set to be released on June 26th, 2021.
Shelley: So, do we want to hear the real story first or do we want to hear the myth?
Anna: I want to hear the myth first. I mean, the lore will probably be funnier.
Randy: Well, it’s not too in depth, and forgive me if I am wrong, it was many years ago. but I thought it was Tony [Foresta] and maybe you [motions to Shelley] and your sister [Erin] went to Hadad’s [Lake] one day and got wasted, and called it Best Friends Day.
Anna: Just swap Tony for me, that’s the first Best Friends Day. [laughs]
Shelley: Yeah, but there is a little more to it – it was a little more structured and planned.
Anna: Yes, one of my roommates worked for a company that had a work party there…
Randy: So that’s how you found out that Hadad’s existed?
Anna: Exactly! We went and my first thought was, “We need to bring more people back here!” So planning the first Best Friends Day was much more about bringing people to Hadad’s itself. I remember specifically being at 821 Café in the summer of 2001 with Shelley and talking about wanting to have an end of the summer party at Hadad’s and it was a good time because Shelley and Erin’s birthday is at the end of August anyway.
Shelley: Totally – I remember that I thought the idea was great because I was in college at the time and even though Anna wasn’t, our age group had this all-encompassing feeling that the summer was over when VCU started again every Fall.
Randy: That feeling that you wanted to do something before the invasion begins again, because local summer is over when VCU students return.
Anna: Right! While the city still felt like it was ours. So we planned this in a time before cell phones, before social media, and we made handbills and folded them up and overnight went to all our friends’ houses and left them with invitations to the first Best Friends Day.
Randy: How many of these invitations were made?
Anna: Hmmm, well back then, everyone kind of lived in the same house. [laughs]
Shelley: Less than 40 people showed up to the first BFD but maybe we went to eight houses to drop off flyers since most of our friends lived together – and I remember thinking that day that I couldn’t believe 40 people showed up!
Randy: Massive rager! [laughs]
Anna: And the fact that that many people went all the way to Varina – at the time that felt like going out of town to do something.
Shelley: Totally! That was back when we mostly only rode our bikes everywhere – and when people did go somewhere in a car, everyone got in the same car and there was very likely someone riding in the trunk. [laughs]
Anna: I remember that it rained that morning and the general public who might otherwise have come to Hadad’s on a nice day didn’t show up so when we arrived in the early afternoon we had the place to ourselves and it made turning that corner into the park for the first time that much more magical for everyone.
Randy: Well, you guys were really pioneers of Hadad’s. I mean, of course, on top of the Best Friends Day line-ups, later there was GWAR-B-Q and that also brought huge national acts to play in Richmond.
Shelley: Yeah, definitely, and I attribute a lot of it to establishing a very close relationship with the owner, Ron Hadad, that very first year. He was the only reason we were able to come back every year, and he encouraged us to get bigger – to rent out the whole water park. We went from 40 the first year to 130 in just one year.
Anna: Yeah, by the second year I was calling friends in Florida and telling them to come up for BFD.
Shelley: By the second year, Anna really started to make it more of an event by having a show after Hadad’s on Saturday. That was at Plaza Bowl on the South Side, and it was easier to convince people to come from farther away when it was more of a weekend event.
Anna: It was like an exchange program – our friends from St. Augustine and Gainesville came for Best Friends Day and then we went down there to Gainesville Fest in the Fall.
Shelley: For sure – both events were so fun! So, not to jump ahead too much to the end of Best Friends Day, but we started with talking by mentioning the lore of the beginning of Best Friends Day. But I wanted to know from you, Randy, if you ever heard a myth behind why Best Friends Day stopped happening?
Randy: Yes! I have heard rumors – I have described Best Friends Day as the greatest punk-rock-run event in the history of all punk-rock-run events, but let’s face it – between BFD and Gwar-B-Q being held at Hadad’s, both were some of the sketchiest events, and it was disaster waiting to happen. There is no way that anything like that could happen now.
