…got a lot of local alt-media hype this year, depicting it as a free-wheelin’, politically-savvy, homespun li’l community gathering.

Uh-uh.

This year’s installment was a little one-block street fair, less than fully bedecked with booths, serving as the excuse for the three blocks of fenced-off, paid-admission music stages and beer gardens.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Block Party ’03 served that traditional Northwestern compulsion–the striving to spend as much time in the summer outdoors as possible, even whilst doing traditionally indoor things such as drinking and listening to rock bands. Many of the bands, such as longtime local faves Maktub (pictured below) put on stupendous sets. Others, such as the D.O.A. reunion, seemed a bit off-putting. (When, exactly, did anti-sentimentalistic hard punk become nostalgia music?)

In any event, there was always the people-watchin’, which the Block Party offered much of, in all the individualistic spectacles that are Capitol Hill hipsters.