As we touched on earlier today, there were plenty of concerts around the area this weekend that weren’t centered around inclement weather. On Friday, you had your choice of a three-hour, catalog spanning marathon by the Cure at the Patriot Center in Fairfax as well as a raucous set by the Drive By Truckers at the 9:30 Club. Saturday night’s big event was the Kanye show, but during the day over 21,000 people made their way to the site of the old Convention Center to rock out for a good cause at the 29th annual DC101 Chili Cook-Off, benefiting the National Kidney Foundation.

With bands like Finger 11, Chevelle and Staind, this year’s musical acts leaned a bit more into the modern rock territory than last year’s bill, which featured Jet, The Bravery and Silversun Pickups. A long, and we mean long, entry line wrapped around three sides of concert site until after 3 p.m. but once inside, in addition to the music, concert goers had their pick of over 50 kinds of chili along with a wide array of other food and, of course, beer. The main event for the food vendors was the International Chili Society-sanctioned cook-off, which was judged by celebrities like local FOX 5 anchor Will Thomas, former America’s top model contestant Sara Albert, DCist food editor Eddie Kim, and Joe Wooten, who donated one of his kidneys to his father, basketball legend Morgan Wooten.

The clouds looked ominous a few times during the day, particularly before Seether’s set, but the weather held up and was actually much more enjoyable than last year’s 90+ degree temperatures. The crowd, the biggest ever, was relatively well behaved, but the lines at the port-o-johns got a bit testy and impatient as the empty beer cups littering the site multiplied. The day’s highlight for me was watching crowd surfing wheelchair dude do his thing, just like last year.