Coachella 2015 >> Another year, another Coachella down. I have no words, though for the first time I can’t say that’s a good thing.
Last year Coachella just happened to be my first music festival ever. It was entirely last minute, the lineup was incredible, and I was never not excited. This year was, well, eh.
Let me take you back to the beginning.
I lucked out by snagging my weekend 1 tickets during pre-sale despite not knowing who I’d be going with or who would be performing. I learned another co-worker was planning to go, as we both had blocked out the same time on our work calendars so no one could try to book a meeting during the coveted purchase time. Fortunately she was well-prepared and had booked all of her accommodations immediately after snagging tickets. It occurred to me she could be an option to go with, which it turned out to be when the time came.
Aside from not being thrilled with the lineup, things were off to a good start the Thursday of Coachella weekend. I carpoolchella’d with my coworker, her wife [yes, you read that correctly], and wife’s younger cousin. We got off work early, though still hit some intense traffic on the drive up as could be expected leaving LA during rush hour. It was a pain, but it only increased the excitement and added to our fun [‘Is that restaurant really called ‘Yung Dong’?].
My friend—who is apparently game for anything—purchased a camping pass for the first night. Yes, we had both hotel and camping accommodations—don’t worry about it. Everything still going good, we arrived at the campground with only two cars in front of us [per search line], which apparently never happens. We also lucked out with the easiest and funniest security searching team.
‘Who brought this?’ yelled the expressive security detail as she grabbed my friend’s stuffed light-up elephant from the backseat. ‘Ya’ll too old for this shit! Hold up—is that a dick on your window?,’ she continued as she pointed to my unfortunate car drawing of our starting point from LA to our end point at the festival. Yes, it largely resembled a dick to our amusement. We had a good laugh, decided to leave the drawing there the whole weekend and continued on to our 30’x10’ space.
[related: Coachella Addiction >> How Festival Junkies Are Born]
To keep the good-vibe momentum going, we ended up being neighbors to a cool truck of kids who had cheered our car art on the way in to the search line. We were stoked! The foursome had driven in from San Diego and couldn’t have been better. We drank together; we shared stories; we exchanged Instagram accounts. We got our tent, canopy and sleeping arrangements squared away quickly enough so we could begin the night of pre-festival partying. Normally I’m not a camping person [I like hot showers and being pretty—it is what it is], but I figured one night would be fine and it was worth the experience.
Day 1 of the festival, and all went downhill from there.
We learned we could check in early to the hotel, so we got our shit together and found a pedicab to take us to the Uber queue. I’m not exaggerating when I say that we went to a minimum of 3 different exits and every single time we were told to go elsewhere. No one would let us leave! After about an hour [at least] of sitting in the hot sun with our luggage on the back of the slowly breaking pedicab, we gave up and returned to the campsite. We had circled the parameter of the polo fields and couldn’t leave. (more…)
