Chicago, I Love You: My Lollapalooza Experience

It’s Tuesday. Lollapalooza was over on Sunday.

And I’m still drunk.

IT WAS ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING.

The most amazing music festival that I’ve been to thus far! I don’t even know where to start! I guess the beginning will do….

I’m a live music concert kind of girl. I came out of the uterus loving live music. I suppose I could blame my mom for that. She was pregnant with me at a Prince concert. She even caught a towel he threw out in the audience. And yeah, she had to fight off a few other women for it – but it’s a towel from an icon. And she still has it to this day. I’m pretty sure she had a couple drinks too. This is a full circle story already, hmm.

But anyhow.

One of my goals is to go to all the major music festivals. Lollapalooza is my fourth one, so I still have a couple left. After viewing the lineup for this year, I was sold and ready to head up to Chicago. Luckily for me, I have two friends who live in the Chicago area and surprisingly they were down to go! But, like most group trips one friend didn’t make it.

My friend Dolores, however, came through in the best possible way. She previously mentioned she had a surprise for me, but I didn’t think much of it. Maybe a bottle of some yummy tequila or edibles? But it was way way better. She was bringing along a friend who upgraded our cheap general admission tickets to VIP for two days and platinum for one day. Like seriously? Little old me in VIP at Lollapalooza? I was just too excited!

Even though VIP was everything and more. I’m glad that I was able to experience the 3 tiers (Its four total, I didn’t do GA+). But GA+ kinda sucks anyways, it’s usually just a sitting area off to the side with better bathrooms. Save your money.

But back to the festival.

Well, a little bit more before that.

During this trip, I stayed downtown because that’s where the festival was held – at Grant Park. I stayed at the Marriott Downtown Magnificent Mile and The Gwen. The Marriott was the Marriott, but The Gwen was amazing and connected to Nordstrom and the mall. I totally recommend it if you’re in the Chicago area. Transportation to the festival was a breeze and we walked to the festival most days or took a $6 Uber.

And walking in on day one, I can’t lie the crowd was a bit overwhelming. It was just so many people! It was mostly a mixed aged crowd, but it was people everywhere. While watching the local news, it was reported that each day over 110,000 people attended! I’ve never been anywhere with that many people. Although, once I began walking around it wasn’t that bad, it was eight stages, so everything was spread out. The line for food and drink were 5 mins tops. It was plenty of hydration stations, latrines and security around. I felt safe the entire time. The only true craziness were the main stages. And really, only one stage, but we’ll get to that later.

With some careful planning I was able to catch most of the musicians that I came to see. My first and favorite was Chappell Roan, it was my first time seeing her live and she was amazing. I saw her on day one in general admission, so I didn’t get as close to the stage – but it was still a vibe. The crowd knew all her lyrics and she’s a newish artist. I feel like she’s the next Katy Perry/Lady Gaga pop queen.

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I was able to see Kesha and Benson Boone and then we called it a night after experiencing the dreadful Perry Stage.

The Perry Stage was complete madness. It was giving Black Friday, ten years ago before the online sales. It was literally like being in a mosh pit of drunk teens and smelly shirtless frat bros. But then again, it is an edm and house music stage. I can’t even lie though; it was so much fun for the first hour. The music, the beat drops, the lights, the energy. It was amazing, until all the liquor sweated out of me, and I was sober yet again. Getting out of the middle of the crowd was absolute hell. I gotta give it to Delores though, she was fearlessly pushing people out of the way and close to the end was about to get us jumped by some tenth graders. But we made it out unscathed and called it a night.

And of course, we went back to the Perry’s stage the next day, because why not?

The night was still young. After we made it out of the festival we went to the after party at TAO. We partied for a few hours there and was able to see Loud Luxury, who also performed at the Perry stage earlier that day.