For the second consecutive year, I get to post nonchalant Facebook updates throughout the weekend about how I’m chatting up bands in the VIP cabana and logging inventory of all the free swag I’m accumulating at the Outside Lands Music and Art Festival in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park today through Sunday. I’m anticipating this year to be even better, now that I’m a semi-established NorCal girl.
Last year, as you may recall, I managed to maneuver my trusty cobalt Camry, “Blue Steel,” to the complete opposite end of the Bay before finally arriving at the park. This time I fully expect to make it to the festival without incident, unless you count me self-mutilating with a Starbucks stir-stick as I languish in Friday-night traffic on the 101.
Dubbed “the world’s only gourmet music festival,” Outside Lands dishes up a bill that is first-rate and diverse, food and vendors that are uniquely San Franciscan and activities aplenty to occupy your time. Skeeball at the Barcade? A kinetic playground? Complimentary glamour shots at the onsite salon? (Most people tend to wear the same plaid flannel for three days straight at these things, but at least they’ll have fabulous hair.) I’m almost more excited about the skeeball than I am about the music. And I’m definitely more excited about the skeeball than I am about Phish and its obligatory three-hour jam session.
Co-founded by Alan Scott of Another Planet Entertainment and midwifed by artists such as Radiohead and Beck in 2008, the weekend-long shindig is now in its fourth year. It now features headliners such as Grammy darlings Arcade Fire, Garden State survivor the Shins and indie phenoms the Decemberists, as well as local acts and bands that fly under the radar, such as the Limousines and the Stone Foxes. More than 70 artists and an estimated 150,000 music enthusiasts will descend upon the formerly undeveloped hinterlands of San Francisco, now home to various museums, city dwellers looking for a respite and, yes, tons of outdoor concerts.
“It’s a major project to put on a festival like this,” said Scott. “I mean, we are creating a city within a city.”
Organizers have assembled a Joey Chestnut dream spread of food with A Taste of the Bay Area, featuring distinctive local fodder that includes everything from 100-percent grass-fed frankfurters to falafel and schwarma sno-cones. The Decemberists’ Nate Query described it perfectly in a recent interview, “It’s, you know, foody nerd heaven.”
It wouldn’t be San Francisco without a little green, and I don’t mean the kind you acquire from the droopy-eyed hippies that line the pathway entering the festival. Conscious of its carbon footprint, Outside Lands offers bike valet and shuttles to and from the city center, as well as a solar-powered stage. “We spend an inordinate amount of time and money to be as green as possible,” said Scott.
With the swirl of activities, art installations, vendors and the inevitable acid-dosed, body-painted folks at the festival, it will be easy to get distracted from the reason I’m going: the music. Thankfully, the schedule is pretty manageable. The only time I forsee myself sprinting from one stage to the next, mid-set, is for the very last acts on the very last day. I’d rather not choose between Arcade Fire and Deadmau5, and I figure I could use the exercise after gorging myself on the plethora of smores, grilled cheese and gourmet pizza they’re offering with the Taste of the Bay Area brigade.
If you’re going, I’ll see you there. If not, I’ll be your Outside Lands bon vivant and bring you the taste, sounds, sights and (hopefully good) smells of the festival.
—Maureen Coulter
