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I was at Woodstock ’99 and it destroyed my innocence
- justinator 4y agoLooking back on it today, Woodstock ’99 was one of the greatest experiences of my life. This... no.
- hwestiii 4y agoLol. Griffis AFB, recently retired by the US govt. and the home of Woodstock ‘99 was my actual birth place, 40 years earlier, nearly to the day. August 3, 1959. My dad was an enlisted man in USAF and base medical services was all they could afford.
- dymk 4y agoGreat photos. Really captures a feeling of an era. And it's always fun to see personal, specific recollections of big events that have entered the collective consciousness.
- pohl 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- smm11 4y agoNeither do. They've taken their shirt off in public.
- pohl 4y agoYou've peeled away my sarcasm to reveal the subtext below. I feel so naked. I need a black rectangle.
- water-your-self 4y agoWearing a dress doesnt constitute consent to take upskirt photos. Not wearing a shirt doesnt constitute photographic consent
- tokai 4y agoBut its not in public. It was not open to the public, only paying customers with a ticket.
- postalrat 4y agoCould you somehow get in trouble if it was your personal site and you didn't include the black rectangles for historical reasons?
- everyone 4y agoWe are born into a world already populated with nonsensical rules and status quo. I'm not gonna dedicate my life to trying to fix these things, but still one should never tacitly accept them, and always question them.
- cowtools 4y agoI've read somewhere that humans are of the few (only?) mammals with permanant breasts. So that might suggest that breasts are something of a sex symbol and that there is some precedent to having women cover up their breasts. At least it seems to make our cultural standard logicially consistent.
- mrits 4y agoThere seems to be a lot of evidence that everything we cover up in a society becomes a sex symbol.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- crazygringo 4y agoNo. The author who is shirtless -- he doesn't need to give himself a black rectangle. Unidentified women who didn't consent to topless photos of themselves being published get black rectangles for both nudity and identity (black rectangles over eyes). Do you really not see how a woman having a good time expressing herself in person at a music festival might not want identifiable topless photos of herself uploaded for eternity to the internet? Don't you think the black rectangles could actually be a sign of respect here rather than some affront to gender equality?
- throwamon 4y agoThey didn't consent to photos of themselves smoking a joint either, so why not censor the joint? The other shirtless men probably didn't consent either, so why not censor their breasts? Etc. As far as we know, they didn't consent to anything, so why publish it at all then?
- jjoonathan 4y agoI've seen this thread. Next up: photoshopping male nipples onto female breasts.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- bigpoppa 4y ago
- halfmatthalfcat 4y agoWas '99 any worse than the original? I seem to remember hearing similar unsavory things so I guess why was there an expectation that '99 would be any less tenuous? Either way, these large festivals are almost a self-parody at this point and all have stories about how the venues were unprepared, the festival goers using them as justification to do all sorts of illegal things and just a general shit show.
- nend 4y agoI can't give a first hand account of either, but yes Woodstock '99 was generally considered much more violent than the original, which was expressed in various ways: vandalism/looting, setting fires, rapes. Maybe the original festival had some similar instances but the intensity and frequency of them was considered much greater in '99.
- boredtofears 4y agohttps://www.hbo.com/movies/woodstock-99-peace-love-rage https://www.hbo.com/movies/woodstock-99-peace-love-rage This is a great documentary if you want to see video footage of just how much of a disaster it was.
- kindatrue 4y agoI remember hearing about Woodstock 99 in the news during that time. That there were "problems". That documentary was pretty shocking. I hadn't realized it was that bad / chaotic.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- colechristensen 4y agoI've been to several big festivals and they were run just fine, I didn't see anything I hadn't also seen on busy streets in SF (less actually). People without the proper experience hosting a festival for tens of thousands of people does end in failure, but plenty of festivals are actually prepared and organized for what goes on. If people taking off their clothes and doing drugs while dancing and experiencing music disturbs you, a music festival isn't for you, but it's also one of the oldest organized human activities.
- AdmiralAsshat 4y agoKerrang still exists? Huh. I thought the magazine was out-of-print.
- chasd00 4y agoi remember that, why would you book bands like limp biscuit and korn for Woodstock? To me the original Woodstock vibe was the peace and free love part of the 60s counterculture. peace and love is not a feeling you get from korn in those times. didn't Blind come out about that time? The cover art was an implied violent abduction of a little girl. i doubt that would fly these days...
- giarc 4y agoWoodstock 99 was more of a commercial endeavor and they booked the most popular acts of the time, which happened to be bands like Korn and Limp Bizkit unfortunately.
- justinator 4y agoI mean they also booked Guster, P-Funk, and Jewel - not exactly powderkegs for revolutions.
- throwaway17_17 4y agoBlind was released in 1994. The albums Follow the Leader (1998) and Issues (1999). Not really important, just clarifying to be pendantic.
- pipeline_peak 4y agoHow could you possibly forget Life is Peachy?
- boomboomsubban 4y agoBoth tried to get some of the largest bands of the counterculture, the sixties version of that had far more "peace and love" vibes. They could have done a new Woodstock where they went for reviving the hippy festival, but it was more profitable to go for relaunching the massive festival. Plus a billion hippy festivals exist.
- sophacles 4y agoWhy wouldn't you book Korn (et al)? Woodstock 69 was a music festival for major rock headliners with a goal of making a pile of money & advertised using the zeitgeist of the time. Woodstock 99 was a music festival for major rock headliners with a goal of making a pile of money & advertised using nostalgia for the previous one.
- pipeline_peak 4y agoLast night I watched the new Trainwreck : Woodstock 99 doc on Netflix. I completely recommend watching It exposes John Scher and all the greedy individuals that permanently destroyed Woodstock. Instead of pointing the finger at the Nu metal artists they deliberately chose to perform and the $4 water dehydrated, trench mouthed, fecal ridden kids who inevitably became disgruntled enough to raise chaos.
- chasd00 4y agoi remember it was really really hot and water was basically like demand priced and then i think there basically a handful of porta-potties for everyone. Everyone was already miserable and then a couple bands whipped things up, things just broke down, and everyone went nuts. I remember the MTV people live on-air having to run off stage because people started throwing rocks and batteries or something at them. I may be remembering wrong, that was a long time ago.
- pipeline_peak 4y agobased on the doc that sounds about right lol. For me, it was the stupid smiley faces on the porti potties that add salt to the wound.
- brabel 4y ago90's teenagers trying to restage what they thought the 70's (1969 actually) Woodstock was like in a really distorted manner... I think they should've asked their parents what peace and love really meant... they just remembered about the sex and rock'n roll, but didn't realize that the sex was supposed to be consensual, and freedom didn't mean use of violence.
- justapassenger 4y agoIt sounds like "good old days" and "back in my days" to try to imply that there was only consensual sex and no violence at the original Woodstock.
- tomuli38 4y ago
- libraryatnight 4y agoFreedom being synonymous with violence is a continuing problem in the US. Most of the people I know that wear a different "freedom" tshirt every other day are open champions for objectively less freedom for most individuals that aren't themselves. Gadsden flags and stickers abound, their particular interest being on the "me."
- kasey_junk 4y agoTheir parents could have told them about Bull Island. A disaster perhaps worse than Woodstock 99 headlined by those peace & love ambassadors Black Sabbath. https://www.openculture.com/2021/06/the-horrors-of-bull-island-the-worst-music-festival-of-all-time-1972.html https://www.openculture.com/2021/06/the-horrors-of-bull-isla...
- naillo 4y agoThis makes it seem so underwhelming and overhyped. This just sounds like any ordinary festival.
- pipeline_peak 4y agoWatch the Netflix documentary, you have no idea.
- cbanek 4y ago> If anything, Woodstock taught me that nothing in this world is black and white; the capacity for both love and greed exist to some degree in all of us. The highest highs can come with the lowest lows; beauty can be corrupted. But mention Woodstock ’99 to me, and my initial feelings aren’t of guilt or disgust. They’re of joy, nostalgia, and the thrill of being able to utter the phrase, “Dude… I was there.” I honestly don't know how I feel about this conclusion. It seems like a very whitewashed (pardon the pun) thing to say. You could talk about the corporate gouging for water and food, which was extravagant. Or the lack of planning and safety traded in for profit which was so in vogue right before the dotcom boom and bust. They were supposed to provide free drinking water fountains, but provided like 1, and it didn't work right. Bottled water was ridiculously overpriced. Even the Simpsons ragged on this, in 2001 in the episode "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Marge", Otto is at a concert where he gets set on fire and runs to the concession stand where Becky pours an 8 dollar bottle of water on him to put out the fire. That's when he knew it was love. Or you could talk about how people can easily resort to mob action at a person on a stage shouting at them. That would have been a good lesson to learn maybe 20 years ago. Or how consent has radically changed over the years, or if you will, consent is more respected than it was back then, and how that's a good thing. This feeling of nostalgia almost points to the fact that we didn't learn. We just watched it go by and did what everyone does. We go home. We turn on the TV. We make the same mistakes again. It's almost this feeling of "yeah, there's good and bad on both sides, but let's not try to do better next time. it is what it is" Maybe there was supposed to be another paragraph after this one (it feels like the article ends in a weird place, maybe got edited)? The title is that it destroyed your innocence. Which I guess is true, but usually you don't just lose it, you trade it for knowledge, and experience. In this case, I'm just not sure they did.
- pessimizer 4y agoWoodstock for frat boys and suburbanite MTV addicts. At best it would have been awful, at worst (and in reality) a rapefest.
- ubermonkey 4y agoIt was obvious even running up to the '99 festival that it was going to be an utter shitshow.
- francisofascii 4y agoWas in Bethel Woods for the first time this summer to attend an Garbage/Alanis concert. Incredibly beautiful and large venue, in the middle of nowhere. The location is much more rural than I expected. Unfortunately missed the Woodstock Museum on site.
- matthewdgreen 4y agoI was there in a semi-professional capacity. AT&T Labs had developed a multi-channel 3D microphone array and we hung it above the emerging artists' stage. I didn't stay overnight at the facility, so I only saw the degradation when I arrived in the morning. The second day we came in, all the commercial tents were soaked with urine and every trash can had been dumped out and piled up to form a massive all-day drum circle. We left before things got really bad, but it was obvious they were headed in an ugly direction (largely, I think, due to deliberate neglect and extractive behavior.) On the bright side: the scientists at the Labs were very pleased with the microphone's performance, since (sitting in a room with six speakers) you could clearly hear the drum circle behind and outside the stage doors.
- lostgame 4y agoThat’s a fascinating perspective. Can I ask how this technology differed from 5.1 surround? I assume you must have had many more than 5 microphones?
- matthewdgreen 4y agoMicrophones in all horizontal directions and two in the vertical, hung by a wire from the ceiling of a venue. We recorded the results using an Alesis ADAT 8-track multitrack (swapping VHS tapes was my very important job.) The "secret sauce" was some kind of binaural post-processing that allowed you to hear all three dimensions through a horizontal array of speakers, but I never got into those details. The goal was ultimately to stream extremely high-quality concert audio to the home: people felt that stereo and even 5.1 was too restrictive. This was in the early days when everyone was trying to find killer apps for high-bandwidth broadband connections, so sure, why not. ETA-- Another memorable experience in this project was playing the Woodstock tapes for Jimmy Buffett when he flew his seaplane in to check out the technology. We were very careful to point out that you could hear the drum circle :)
- Dracophoenix 4y agoAny published work on this? I'd definitely like to read about it.
- afpx 4y agoI worked concession at Woodstock 99 (and 94) for a non-profit. Woodstock’s management, to maximize their profits, required attendees to exchange their currency for wooden scrip which they’d use to purchase merchandise from vendors. The non-profits would get allocated food and beverages to sell. However they didn’t plan for there to be enough vendors or change boxes to meet the demand. Lines grew extremely long. And, riots would break out because people wouldn’t have enough water and food. To deal with the riots, the management would just shut down all of the vendors and take their change boxes. I would have this parched mob groping me for water, but had no means of exchange. Customers just started throwing $20s and $50s at us just for bottles of water. We didn’t know what to do, we were just kids. But it made sense to keep taking their money just so we wouldn’t get mobbed.
- justinator 4y ago> Woodstock’s management, to maximize their profits, required attendees to exchange their currency for wooden scrip which they’d use to purchase merchandise from vendors. Not in '99 they didn't. There were ATM machines everywhere, and famously, they were the first things to be set on fire and plundered. If they had, seems like there would be more memorabilia of keeping these tokens? There are many from 1994 - are you misremembering? https://www.google.com/search?q=coins+tokens+woodstock+94 https://www.google.com/search?q=coins+tokens+woodstock+94
- afpx 4y agoYeah, thanks for pointing that out. my memory is mixing the two up. Sorry
- justinator 4y agoYeah, no big deal, really. The addition of Woodstock Bucks would have made '99 even more crazy. I couldn't imagine the backlash from thousands of people holding onto worthless tokens after what happened on the last night, and management potentially making the worst decision possible on if they should/should not trade them in for cash (saying nothing about you, the vendors!)
- justinator 4y agoI was at Woodstock '99, and I was fine. Things were hot, expensive. Moby asked everyone to pick up trash, I saw some good bands, I saw some bad bands, it was a long drive home. As far as crazy events in my life, it barely registered. 9/11 wasn't long after and nothing could impact you like living through that. Hell, being in a band touring the country had more crazy things happen then just going to some dumb pop festival.
- drcongo 4y agoI have to ask, did you leave before the end?
- colpabar 4y agoI don't understand how anyone can enjoy themselves in crowds that big. It sucks! Maybe it's just because I'm short, but being in between that many people is just not fun at all, no matter who's performing. You're totally surrounded by strangers who are bumping into you the entire time and it's way too easy to get separated from your friend group.
- chasd00 4y agowhen it comes together just right the huge crowd of strangers you're packed in with ceases to exist and that whole blob of humanity becomes one thing participating in an experience. It's rare but when it happens it's truly amazing, i think a lot of festival and concert goers chase that feeling.
- marssaxman 4y agoI am on the taller side, but I feel the same way you do. All the bumping and shoving is so distracting that it's hard to enjoy the music. Crowding makes any event a tiring and stressful experience. Beyond that, if the music is good, I am going to want to dance - but how can you dance in a crowd? Any way you move, you're going to bump into someone. So you are stuck just sort of awkwardly standing there, pulling your elbows in, nodding your head a little. I basically just won't go to indoor shows or mass events anymore. Give me the wide open desert sky and a couple hundred technohippies with a bonfire and a sound system instead; that's heaven.
- MarchKilroy89 4y agoWow haven't seen kerrang in a long time. Many fond memories!
- Razengan 4y ago> Kerrang Now that’s a name I thought lost to the mists of time
- mytailorisrich 4y agoI've watched the Netflix documentary and as someone who was 20 in 1999 I can only say that it played out exactly as expected considering the 90s, the bands and the organisation. It's really all on the organisers and it was shocking that they still completely refuse to acknowledge any responsibilities. Now, I obviously wasn't there in 1969 but it's also possible that things like sexual assaults went unreported at the time because, realistically, people drunk and/or on drugs plus nudity is not the best combination at any time...
- daenz 4y agoHonestly reads like some bizarre social experiment by the organizers. Conditions degrade for a few days and then put Limp Bizkit on stage to play "Break" for an angry audience. Give everyone candles and then have RHCP play "Fire". C'mon. Crowds are incredibly stupid and malleable. Someone knew things would get out of hand.
- dieselgate 4y agoDidn’t think of this at all reading the article but your comment made me think of recent Jan 6 events in DC
- xxr 4y agoI'm imagining a Let's Do It And Be Legends type with an extra dash of sociopathy who had just watched an edgy Discovery Channel show about the Stanford Prison Experiment and thought, "If we don't call it an experiment, we don't need to worry about experimental ethics [taps head]."
- mherdeg 4y agoThe 50th anniversary of Altamont came and went without much notice.
- jonathankoren 4y agoIt blows my mind that they thought hiring the Hells Angels to run security was a good idea.
- jandrese 4y agoReputable security companies probably wanted nothing to do with the event.
- jonathankoren 4y agoNope. The Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane suggested them.
- projectramo 4y agoI was trying to destroy my own innocence around then, but sadly I was less successful than I would have hoped. I did think about going to Woodstock to get it destroyed, but thought it might be too corporate for said innocence destruction. Turned out, I was wrong.
- linuxftw 4y agoI don't think people appreciate just how violent the late 90's hard rock shows routinely were, and the mindset of the majority of the people attending them. Venues would routinely get trashed, large fights would break out, it was something else. Woodstock 99 turned out much like everyone would have expected it to at the time, just on a scale not previously seen.
- chasd00 4y ago> I don't think people appreciate just how violent the late 90's hard rock shows routinely were this is true, i remember coming out of shows with blood splatters on my clothes. The mosh pits and things in front of the stages were basically just riots set to music. edit: i may add that i distinctly remember walking on top of broken glass in those crowds. It's life threatening to fall down when it really gets going.
- aaron695 4y ago
- tptacek 4y agoWhat most strikes me about this write-up is how awful the bands are. 1999 was clearly a nadir for mainstream rock. Even a truly graceful piece of writing (which this is not) is going to have trouble building a dramatic climax if it has to be soundtracked by Sevendust.
- kasey_junk 4y ago1999 was clearly a bad year for music but there were sets at that concert that would be great to see. The west stage closers were George Clinton, The Chemical Brothers and Megadeath. You could also see Al Green, Willie Nelson, Ice Cube, Elvis Costello, etc. Lots was wrong with that festival and dunking on Korn is as far as I can tell a universal indulgence but there was good music to be seen.
- tptacek 4y agoSo, I hadn't looked, and now that I have, what we've established is that this is a writeup about how transformative Woodstock '99 was from someone who could have seen George Clinton, The Roots, Wyclef Jean, Metallica (albeit '99 Metallica), Rage, and Willie Nelson, and instead wrote about seeing Lit, Bush, The Offspring, Limp Bizkit, RHCP, and, again, I can't emphasize this enough, Sevendust. I can't stand Korn (I've had the misfortune of seeing them live opening for other acts), but I don't begrudge anyone for liking them at the time, though I do begrudge anybody who enjoys Korn and finds a way to dismiss The Roots and Wyclef Jean. Al Green, as it turns out, had to back out of the show. If you have an opportunity to see Al Green and you see Bush instead, you're not allowed to write about music anymore.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- agentultra 4y agoThere might be a content-warning flag or something for the unwary on this site. This comment is about the mentions of sexual assault in the post. > the subsequent sexual misconduct According to some other first-hand accounts of the people who were victims of this "misconduct," it would be more accurate to call it _assault_. > And while I didn’t personally witness anything as serious as those accusations, I don’t find them at all hard to believe, given the tenor of the event by the end of the weekend. You couldn’t go more than five minutes without seeing a topless woman being fondled by a random stranger. It sounds like the author may have witnessed sexual assault several times and it didn't even register in their minds. Update and the author is writing this as a person in their 40s now with the gift of hindsight, #MeToo, etc.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y ago> with the gift of hindsight, #MeToo, etc You can judge the past by modern values, but you’ll never understand it by doing that.
- agentultra 4y agoThe author is literally saying they didn't witness any sexual assault. The next sentence they describe witnessing sexual assault. That might not register to a 17 year old who was raised in a culture that minimizes/hides sexual assault but the author is 40 now. They should be able to recognize what they saw for what it was and not continue to minimize it. If they haven't learned that fondling someone without their consent was wrong then and is wrong now they haven't learned anything.
- jessep 4y agoMy best friend's dad was high up in Woodstock 99 corporate, which means he was responsible for making much of it run (yeah, I guess there were some issues ). We had backstage passes, a house, and a ... weird experience. Did some stupid things. Some highlights: - We were on stage in the famous closing Red Hot Chili Peppers show (like in the wings, looking out on the audience from behind the band). That was surreal. We could see the fires start in the distance, stuff getting ripped down, things starting to sort of go to hell. All while, the most amazing band of the moment is playing the most amazing songs 30 feet away from us. Quite a contrast between awesomeness and ... whatever the strange mix of emotions riots give. - We learned that there was no Mountain Dew in the whole event because Coke got the contract, so we went out and bought many cases, drove it in through our special entrance, and basically auctioned it off. People were willing to pay $5 a can. We made a lot of money. Pretty sketchy. - Worse/weirder, we had a backpacks full of ice to hold the Mountain Dew in while we walked around the crowd selling it, and people started to offer to buy ice from us to cool off. So once we ran out of Mountain Dew, we started yelling "Ice is nice! We got ice!" and selling it. That ... well, I feel like that was me experiencing a real microcosm of capitalism and the allure of artificial scarcity ... and not acting the way I would hope . Give away the damn ice man. - We kind of just walked around backstage and there were so many super famous people that none of them felt very special, and they'd just kind of talk to you while you were in line for food. Ice Cube had some cool sneakers that my friend chatted with him about. George Clinton was chill. I think we talked with Erykah Badu for a while at some point. (Stars are not at all like this backstage at a normal concert, btw, which we also did a lot because of his father. A their normal concerts, these same performers are the center of the universe, and don't have time to chat with a bunch of high schoolers running around.) Anyway, it was a very strange event, and we had a very strange vantage point.
- exolymph 4y agoThe scarcity wasn't artificial. People genuinely didn't have ice and you were compensated for making it available. I don't see a problem with this.
- jessep 4y agoTrue! I meant "artificial scarcity" in the economic sense of monopolies reduce supply of an abundant material to drive up prices.
- acomjean 4y agoI didn't go but remember it being the end of the 90s decade with a thud. I've been to few festivals that decade and beyond (Phish in Worchester/Maine/NY, Lalapoloza in NJ, Solid Sound). Those seemed pretty well run, compared to what I'v heard about woodstock. The one day festivals are easier. Anytime you have people camping out you can have problems (the solid sound and phish were well run but had camping). For the last Phish show we rented an RV and had 3 tents set up around it, instead of just tents. I guess we were porta-pottied out. Though were woken up from the hissing that some entrepreneurs had decided to set up a nitros tank/sales behind our RV (we asked them to move, they said sure, but did not, when 2more of us awakened and showed up around them, they moved...) The bands you bring, bring their audience. Some audiences are more trouble than others. In my years at Boston Calling you could tell the headlining Metalica and Tool fans apart from a lot of the rest. To be fair everyone at those shows was well behaved and you could see those fans at a lot of other bands shows. One of the Documentaries on the woodstock 99 points out, just 3 female bands, and a lot of bands popular with young guys might have been part of the issue. I mean mosh pits were a real thing in the 90s. I went into a few, but some shows I honestly wouldn't go near them. [1] Having a concert continue on when the fans are actively setting fires seems so surreal. Bradley-J (a boston DJ) was there behind the stage, and had some good commentary on it which I can't find. My cousins friend (VH1 Matt) was there and had some scathing commentary when he talked about it. There is a decent documentary about woodstock99 on HBO Max. Worth a look. Its somewhat telling Coachella was also in 1999 and is still going strong. [1]https://247sports.com/college/kansas/Board/103726/Contents/Best-concert-youve-ever-been-to-72420927/ https://247sports.com/college/kansas/Board/103726/Contents/B...
- rambambram 4y agoNice pictures! Reminds me of my own Love Parade pictures I took in Berlin some years after. Berlin was good by the way, even more years later I experienced the tragedy in Duisburg from close up. One thing I vividly remember from my first time at the Love Parade in Berlin is - just like this author tells about Woodstock '99 - all the trash knee-high in the gutter.
- aidenn0 4y agoI had friends who went and they saw the writing on the wall and left first thing Sunday morning.
- falcolas 4y agoI love how bared breasts makes the byline, when there were rapes happening. Important for the editor to establish that it was their fault early in the article? sigh
- spicybright 4y agoRight? Bare chests are easily one of the tamest parts of these sorts of festivals.
- taurusnoises 4y agoSo, here's some cringe I didn't expect to read today: >"Tragically, following the festival, there were also reportedly allegations of rape.... You couldn’t go more than five minutes without seeing a topless woman being fondled by a random stranger. >With all of that said... there were still some beautiful moments during the concert’s last day." Yikes.
- apeescape 4y agoWhy is that cringy?
- tomuli38 4y ago"Other than that, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln?"
- apeescape 4y agoNot sure if you're just trolling, but that's quite a different scenario. Mrs. Lincoln had a horrible personal experience, whereas the writer here had a great time personally. Though he recognized that the atmosphere surrounding the event was messed up, his prevailing memory of Woodstock '99 is that he got to see his favorite bands and be a part of this massive, generational experience. I don't see why that'd make him cringy, it's just human and honest to me.
- taurusnoises 4y agoThe author suggests that he witnessed multiple instances of sexual assault. It's pretty much right there in the text.
- wawjgreen 4y agothis makes me ask: "all that for what???"
- ezekiel68 4y agoInnocence is like the crust of a pie: made to be destroyed.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- nvarsj 4y agoI was there too. I was also 17, and went with a group of friends and a dad who was an MD that volunteered for the medical building. We met Wyclef Jean who got treated there after burning his hand. It was quite an experience. Being a relatively sheltered nerd it was pretty mind blowing. Drugs, naked people everywhere, it was like this insane debauchery I had never encountered in my life before. Everything people say about the mismanagement is true. I've never since seen such a badly managed event. I have no idea how the organizers avoided prison sentences for their neglect. It was super hot, and you had to pay some insane price just to get a bottle of water. People were literally passed out from dehydration. For food, you could get a bag of fries for like 8 bucks. None of the porta potties were cleaned out after the first day, and there was water flooding all the tent areas. We left a day early cause it got so bad, so I fortunately missed the complete meltdown that happened.
- GoodbyeMrChips 4y ago> you had to pay ..... just to get a bottle of water. The fact that somebody even tried to do this suggests the organisers were dangerous fuckwits. The outcome was unsurprising.
- dymk 4y agoFyre Fest had to take inspiration from somewhere!
- rejectfinite 4y agoThe pictures make me so sad, broken. I am too old to experience that, too bitter, too broken. Even though my country has festivals I was and is too afraid to go.