This weekend sees the first installment of Longitude festival in Dublin’s Marlay Park. Some people would say it’s the people that make a festival and they’d be right. You’re likely to meet some really cool, like minded people but you’re also likely to meet some absolute tossers. Here’s Wunderground’s list of stereotypical festival muppets!

The Skanger

The skanger has become an integral part of any Irish music festival. Usually you’ll find them robbing or shitting in somebody’s tent but seen as there won’t be any camping at Longitude you’ll probably find them up the front at whatever generic dance acts are playing on the main stage. They’ll most likely be wearing a baseball cap perched on the back of their head with the peak pointed skywards at a thirty five degree angle. There will also be a ronnie, that looks like a good scrub of a facecloth would remove it, crawling along their top lip. With it likely to be sunny this weekend the Unique hoodie will almost certainly be left at home so it’ll either be the new Fred Perry stripey number or the ever reliable Celtic jersey that get’s the nod for this occasion. The outfit will be finished with a pair of cotton tracksuit bottoms and a pair of Air Max with an air bubble that goes the entire way around the sole. No ensemble is finished without a few accessories, an over-sized gold chain and about four sovereigns should do it. If you get stuck talking to one of them and want to avoid being stabbed or having smokes bummed from you then try convince him you’re also a skanger by referring to them as ‘bud’ a lot in your thickest Dublin accent. *They probably, and most likely will, continue to bum smokes from you.

The Hipster

You really can’t go anywhere these days without running into a gang of hipsters, least of all to a music festival. They’ll probably be interpretive dancing their feelings to each other in a circle somewhere because talking is just way too mainstream for these guys. To spot them from a safe distance you should expect a jacket, which has usually been inherited from somebody’s grandfather and is capable of taking sub-Arctic conditions, worn over a t-shirt with B.A. from the A-Team riding a chopper pushbike into Mad Max’s Thunderdome emblazoned on the front of it. This will really look good with the skinniest of skinny jeans (thank God none of these lads balls are gonna work in  later life, killing the hipsters off once and for all) and a pair of Ox Blood Doc Martin’s but it’s the checked scarf and lens-less glasses combined with the curled mustache that really pulls this look together. Who cares if it’s twenty eight degrees out and you’re dangerously dehydrated from sweat loss, as long as you look cool!!

The Underage Drunk

No matter how good a job the security staff at festivals do there always seems to be a couple of underage drunk kids falling around the place. With Longitude’s location being within the Tallaght sphere of influence the possibility of seeing teenagers drunk, and perma-tanned, is likely to increase compared to a festival in some isolated rural area. Expect to see young girls in tiny denim shorts and string vests. They’ll be holding onto a plastic bottle, with half a naggin of Huzzar and redbull in it, for dear life. Depending on the time of day you unfortunately encounter them they’ll either – be singing at the top of their voice, in a tone so high pitched the citywide numbers for cases of dog suicide will triple, – or screaming random, but often hilarious, abuse at anyone who walks within a ten yard radius, – or lying face down in a puddle of their own puke. Whichever it is you’ll be doing well to avoid them.

The Hippy

Hippies used to be dedicated counterculture figures who rallied against the system, or the man, or deodorant, or something. But these days most of the ‘hippies’ you see at music festivals are really just people who went to Thailand once and brought back some loose fitting, colourful clothes. They’ll probably be sitting cross legged in a group of other people with similar clothes who also went to Southeast Asia and ‘found themselves’ a couple of years ago (does getting hammered on buckets and taking some sort of crystal meth tablet at a Full Moon Party really constitute finding yourself?), smoking joints and blowing bubbles. Conversational topics are likely to include fair trade coffee, environmental shit, rainbows, how many things can be made out of hemp and the best types of moccasins you can buy for under €30. These people should be avoided at all costs.

The Crusty

Not to be confused with the hippy the crusty is a completely different animal altogether and an animal that can be seen at every single festival ever. Rumour has it that they hide in the equipment and travel around as stowaways from festival to festival. Imagine a mix of Techno Viking, Johnny Rotten, a homeless person and Captain Jack Sparrow and you have a crusty. Dreads, face piercing and spider web tattoos are big with these lads. The clothes they wear don’t really matter, they can be anything, as long as they’re tattered and haven’t been washed in years they’ll do the job fine. They’ll probably be talking about disrupting the G8 summit and bombing wraps of speed that they carry in their hair because no security guard in their right mind would dare put his hand any where near it.

The Mad Ouvit Cunt

Finally, no festival would be complete without having a good aul laugh at some poor unfortunate fella staggering around, absolutely mashed off his box. The Mad Ouvit Cunt could come in any shape or size as he’s usually just a regular dude who overdid it on the mandy or misjudged the strength of the pills he bought. His jaw is likely to be moving in the opposite direction to his face and his eyes will be rolled so far back in his head that he could actually be counting the brain cells he’s destroying while he’s destroying them. He’ll probably be running his fingers repeatedly through his hair and going up to random people and asking them questions like, ‘Do you know what time the next train to Longford is at?’ or, ‘Have you seen where I left my toolbox?’ He will most likely stumble around in circles for an hour or two, leaving a trail of spilled drinks behind him before collapsing into a ball and finally coming through the intensity of his peak and wondering how the fuck he got here.

So have we forgotten anyone? Let us know in our comments section.