Riot Fest 2022

[venom]

Sept 18, 2022 8:34:28 GMT -6 ferro_man said:

Sept 18, 2022 8:26:54 GMT -6 venom said:

yesterday was a pretty good day. lines were much better for food, water, and merch. it didn't seem nearly as crowded as friday. i enjoyed all of the bands i wanted to see.

is it just me, or are there a lot of small children this year? i've seen many babies and toddlers. i can't imagine bringing a kid that young, especially the ones that can't walk yet.

there was a 9 year old in the Madball pit

i was next to the sound tent for madball and there was a kid about that age raging with his dad too.

for the kids that freddy pulled on stage, did he get both of their names wrong? i swore the first kid said his name was jackson and freddy called him jason. and the girl definitely said her name was cassidy and i think he called her kathleen.

[mookie]

I'm just now noticing that the Charlotte Adigery/Boris Pupul show at the Bottle tonight starts at 8:30, so I'm barely going to be able to see any of it. Oh well.

[Pale Hose]

Pack your ponchos friends.

[Tweet]

I tested again and came back positive after 3 days of negatives so I won’t be there today. Hope y’all have fun and it doesn’t rain

[krentist]

Damn I knew it

[Tweet]

Man’s wasting no time claiming his W and I can’t blame him!

[concertgoer]

Worried about the thunderstorms forecast for tonight

[Tweet]

Sept 18, 2022 11:27:39 GMT -6 concertgoer said:

Worried about the thunderstorms forecast for tonight

Yeah based on everything I know about this fest this could get real dicey real quick

[concertgoer]

I'm noticing a lot of complaining about food vendors not listing their prices. Is this true? I didn't eat Friday night at the fest so I have no idea.

[munkivelli]

Sept 18, 2022 12:03:05 GMT -6 concertgoer said:

I'm noticing a lot of complaining about food vendors not listing their prices. Is this true? I didn't eat Friday night at the fest so I have no idea.

A good number of them don't, or they'll have them listed on a piece of paper taped onto the ordering counter

[concertgoer]

Sept 18, 2022 12:20:22 GMT -6 munkivelli said:

Sept 18, 2022 12:03:05 GMT -6 concertgoer said:

I'm noticing a lot of complaining about food vendors not listing their prices. Is this true? I didn't eat Friday night at the fest so I have no idea.

A good number of them don't, or they'll have them listed on a piece of paper taped onto the ordering counter

That seems pretty shady. Oh well I cooked a big breakfast and I'll probably just get one of those big ass slices of pizza at the fest

[mookie]

RIP cg's stomach tonight

[thebosma]

Sept 18, 2022 12:03:05 GMT -6 concertgoer said:

I'm noticing a lot of complaining about food vendors not listing their prices. Is this true? I didn't eat Friday night at the fest so I have no idea.

Yeah the Italian beef guy just took my card and didn’t tell me and did the tip
himself. Was approximately what I expected when I looked at my online banking so I let it be lol

[fivehole]

In one of the more Riot Fest moves I've seen them do, they just straight up closed the "official" parking for today and then removed it from the map and removed any mention of it from the website without saying a word.

[dij22]

Was there any YYY merch the last two days? Don't see any today. Might be blind though.

[Tweet]

Been reading around on Reddit and seems like most merch sold out super quick today

[thebosma]

Favorite addition to the fest is the water volunteers fucking screaming at you to keep your ass moving like the line at the single refilling station is your fault

[rango420]

I got an extra rosenstock ticket free.99

[nanatod]

action bronson today, was the worst rapper I have ever seen live.

[clouddead]

It’s Barry Horowitz rap, I pat myself on the back.

[mookie]

Holy shit did we luck out that this rain did not come 2 hours earlier

[ferro_man]

Sept 18, 2022 14:40:35 GMT -6 dij22 said:

Was there any YYY merch the last two days? Don't see any today. Might be blind though.

yes, there were two or three different shirts Friday and Saturday.


There was not any Alice Glass merch at all this weekend

[Pale Hose]

I had a great time at Riot Fest yesterday. Some thoughts & observations:

-I had no trouble with lines getting in, for water, for beer, the bathroom etc. This has generally been my experience with the fest, although food lines have historically been terrible, especially around peak times (I planned on not eating at the fest this year).

-Beer prices used to be reasonable at this fest, but that is no longer the case. They also added a 3.5% processing fee for using a credit card. That doesn't amount to a lot of money per transaction, but it certainly feels like Riot Fest is nickel and diming attendees.

-The music was great but for whatever reason the Roots stage continues to have sound issues compared to the Riot stage. Also, Coolio only played 20 minutes even though he was billed for 45 for some reason? I was dead center from the stage and parallel to the sound booth for NIN. They were awesome as always but there was lots of overlap from the Red Rocks show.

-Leaving was bad but not as terrible as some of the stories I've heard. The Kedzie stop is clearly not a secret anymore, I left after Head Like a Hole and by the time I got to the platform it was already 2/3 full. The east bound Pink line took 20 minutes to arrive and by the time it did the platform was bursting, but I was able to squeeze my way on. When we rolled up to California I was surprised to see very few people waiting, I guess people realize not to even bother trying to board there anymore. I got lucky timing with my Ashland bus connection and was home by like 10:40.

It seems to me that the CTA is never going to be willing or able to accommodate this festival. Given the logistical issues and the grievances expressed by the local community I really do think it's time to move Riot Fest. Given Lolla's lock on Grant Park it seems the suburbs are the best bet, probably Brideview I guess. It was great seeing so many of you yesterday, many of you for the first time since before the pandemic. I hope everyone enjoyed their weekend and got home safe.

[venom]

my sunday schedule had a pretty big gap in the afternoon, so i just went late once i wanted to see back-to-back-to-back sets. that worked out nicely. my friends were scattered through the crowd, so i was solo for the day. not bad, though.

was artist merch in any type of order? it seemed random. do any big fests line shirts up alphabetically or in any order? i feel like that'd cut down on some of the queue chaos.

i biked each day and was about a mile from home when it started raining last night. it was very welcomed by that point.

[ferro_man]

Sept 19, 2022 7:34:28 GMT -6 venom said:

my sunday schedule had a pretty big gap in the afternoon, so i just went late once i wanted to see back-to-back-to-back sets. that worked out nicely. my friends were scattered through the crowd, so i was solo for the day. not bad, though.

was artist merch in any type of order? it seemed random. do any big fests line shirts up alphabetically or in any order? i feel like that'd cut down on some of the queue chaos.

i biked each day and was about a mile from home when it started raining last night. it was very welcomed by that point.

Lollapalooza tries to organize theirs by the days the bands are playing with the headliners in the middle, but I don't think I've ever seen a festival do alphabetical order

[ferro_man]

Apparently the rumor on Twitter is that someone in the crowd up close to the front for MCR had a gun in their waistband, but I can't seem to find the source of the rumor... just people repeating it

[neader]

Happy to finally see the YYYs, they were awesome just wish we would have gotten Sacrilege. NIN great as always.

[brainloading]

If you didn't make it in on time for the Ukraine Tribute on Saturday afternoon you missed something special.

A crowd standing together hoping for peace for the brave fighters from Ukraine.

[thebosma]

Will clarify before I say any of this that I had an extremely nice weekend and it was great to see all of you! Most of the music I saw was great as well. However, the logistical failures paired with the neighborhood disruptions proves that this fest can no longer continue in this location. Also if they book a band as big as MCR again they shouldn’t oversell it (rumor being about 15k over normal capacity sold). Clearly they do not have the infrastructure to handle this big of a crowd or this dedicated of a fan base. The water station issues, the food issues, the exiting issues, all of this was a huge mess on Friday. There are fewer and fewer employees at this thing every year and it’s really starting to show. Saturday and Sunday were much smoother. Sound issues were the standard problems for this fest, not much else you can do about it I guess.

All the headliners put on killer performances. MCR put on a pretty perfect set, one of the best I’ve seen at this festival if not the best. Danzig rocks. I know that the extremely out of breath complaints that he would get cancelled for writing these songs now isn’t a bit or a joke but to me it is maybe the funniest thing in the world. I’m not a huge NIN guy but that show may have converted me. Helped that Neader and I were up close. Was sick to finally see the Yeah Yeah Yeahs as well.

See you all in bridgeview next year or optimistically, Madison WI

[Tweet]

Sept 19, 2022 8:42:52 GMT -6 ferro_man said:

Apparently the rumor on Twitter is that someone in the crowd up close to the front for MCR had a gun in their waistband, but I can't seem to find the source of the rumor... just people repeating it

fwiw I’ve seen the same thing floating on Twitter