If you haven't heard of Lollapalooza, it's a four day music festival that takes place in Grant Park, Chicago and attracts around 100,000 people each day. Musicians this year included Muse, Lorde, Chance the Rapper, and Blink-182. This year I went with my friend, Josie, to my first Lolla. We decided to go on Thursday since we couldn't afford the whole 4 day pass and Lorde was headlining.
We arrived pretty early since one of the bands we wanted to see, Honne, started at 12:15. If you go to Lolla it's best to avoid arriving from 2 to 5 in the afternoon since that's when most people come, and to also bring the least amount of stuff to avoid getting a bag checked.
The first thing I noticed is the stereotype that all boys wear jerseys at music festivals is 100% accurate. Also everyone is really drunk (which should be no shock), but generally well-behaved, which was so surprising. We only saw two people throw up, one person pass out, and only one guy touched me. The most annoying person there was some girl standing in front of us during Capital Cities who had a helium balloon tied to her backpack so no one behind her could see anything. One middle-aged woman behind was like "I should've brought my knives." (????) Eventually some old guy started yelling at her and she put the balloon away.
Another thing to know when you go to a music festival like this is the lineup looks great when you're reading it on a poster, but there's just no way you're seeing every artist you want to see. We saw almost everyone we wanted to, but in a lot of cases didn't see the whole set. Plus, later in the day walking across the park is such a struggle since it's so crowded and it's about three blocks long.
Also make sure to get some food at the festival. We had some awesome deep dish pizza and some ice cream during the day, but there are so many good restaurants with a booth set up.
Throughout the day we saw Honne, Hippo Campus, $uicide Boy$, Gibbs, Capital Cities, Arizona, Migos, Jon Bellion, Cage the Elephant, Pham, and Wiz Khalifa. At the end of the day we were all set to see our queen, Lorde. Then the worst thing happened: it started to rain. You don't know heartbreak until Lorde comes on to the stage, plays three songs and they are amazing, then leaves the stage because of lightening. It still hurts.
Overall, it was a great experience. Lolla is probably the biggest I would go in terms of size of a music festival, but I would recommend it to any live music lover.
