Swansenreport

 Fear and Loathing on Lake Superior

There is no law north of Ashland — only the smell of caramel apples and the slow death rattle of civic sanity. Bayfield, Wisconsin: a quiet, respectable harbor town for 362 days of the year, suddenly transformed into a swirling, cider-drunk hallucination of Americana for one unholy weekend every October.

You roll into town on Friday night, headlights cutting through the fog, and the first thing you see is a child in a giant apple costume waving a flag like a lunatic revolutionary. The second thing you see is a man trying to parallel park an F-250 into a space made for a canoe. The cops look nervous — they always do during Apple Fest. They know what’s coming.

By Saturday morning, the streets are jammed with families, artists, and opportunists. The air tastes like vinegar and funnel cake. There’s a man selling deep-fried Oreos next to a booth pushing “organic kale cider.” Reality starts to bend. Someone in a flannel shirt tells you it’s “the biggest festival in the Midwest,” and you nod, because he might shoot you if you disagree.

The parade lurches down Rittenhouse Avenue like a fever dream from the Nixon era — marching bands, politicians grinning like overripe fruit, and a local orchard queen perched on a hay bale, waving as if her tiara were made of LSD. Children throw candy. Grown men fight over parking spots. The Lake Superior wind howls through it all like a deranged preacher.

By Sunday, the hangover sets in. The cider turns to vinegar in your veins. The tourists are fleeing south, leaving behind a battlefield of crushed apples, broken corndog sticks, and the faint echo of a polka band playing its last tragic tune. The locals sweep the streets and swear they’ll never do it again.

But they will. We all will. Because the Bayfield Apple Festival isn’t just an event — it’s a ritual sacrifice to the Midwestern gods of autumn. A three-day carnival of chaos, sugar, and capitalism. The Great Red Apple at the heart of America’s psychedelic orchard.

And when it’s over, you can still hear it — the laughter, the madness, the sound of one last brat sizzling in the cold October wind.