I have been an electronic music fan for years, and as long as I can remember my friends have all made fun of me for it. That is until it became insanely popular. I returned from my time in Germany a couple of years ago to find that in the months I was gone, "edm" had become more and more popular in the US. This was no longer an underground thing that ravers and Europeans liked, it was now mainstream. When I went to Electric Zoo, an electronic music festival here in New York, immediately after my return, it had not gotten so out of hand and I had a really good time seeing DJs that I've always listened to. The same holds true when I went to Ultra in Miami a couple of months later. Though it was really crowded, there was a good variety of people. At the shows I have been to in New York since then I could tell the dynamic was changing. The crowd was getting worse and young, fucked up kids in neon were becoming the norm. I still loved the music though and since I had missed Electric Zoo last summer due to my lack of funds, I gritted my teeth and purchased the $350 3-day pass for this year's Zoo. I had my qualms but I never realized that it could be so bad.
GF was to be my partner in crime and he was pretty pumped since he had never been to a festival before. I got out of work early the Friday of Labor Day weekend and rushed home to change into a sparkly gold shirt with short shorts, with the grinch backpack as my accessory. We met up and felt like complete idiots walking down my street to catch a cab. We had a couple dranks in the cab on the way there, since we both like to stay away from the hard drugs (usually). I had brought an airplane bottle of tequila I had recently brought back from Mexico which was a real struggle to get down. Some young bros in the cab next to us started waving when they saw me trying not to gag, We were taking a ferry to Randall's Island where the fest was located and we spotted the line of neon well before we even drove up to the dock. We joined the masses and immediately felt old. Everyone around us was the exact same person--an 18 to 22 year old wearing minimal neon clothing and looking like they belonged to Gamma Phi Beta or Sigma Chi at Syracuse University. I was not impressed but hoped that things would improve once we got on the island. (Spoiler alert--they didn't).
GF and I still managed to have a good time though, as we always do, despite literally being some of the oldest people there. We danced around and drank and saw some of our faves like Hardwell and Ferry. A couple of people took some pictures with the grinch, but that was the only attention I got, since everyone assumed GF was my boyfriend even though he was wearing a midriff-baring lacrosse jersey and a pink bandanna. Or it could've been the fact that I was old enough to have babysat most of the other concert goers. Now for those of you that have never been to a festival it is pretty tough to deal with at times. It was roughly 150 degrees outside and very crowded. You are constantly getting bumped into and since I was drinking I spent a good amount of time in the bathroom line. Everything is overpriced so GF and I wanted to avoid eating. We went the whole afternoon doing so until we hit a wall and wondered why we were wandering around like zombies. We sucked it up and gobbled up some bad pizza like we would never eat again. We were instantly revived and were able to finish out the last couple of sets before heading home where I collapsed into bed, exhausted.
We had a whole other day ahead of us, so after stuffing our faces with brunch in the morning, we decided the only way to push through was to take a bunch of aderall. Back to the zoo we went, with me decked out in my neon Hello shirt, since we were going to be seeing my fav, Martin Solveig. Since this was a Saturday, it turned out to be even worse than the day before. It was just as hot, but even more packed with youngings and I literally felt like I was at a frat party at NYU. Every teenager from New Jersey, Long Island and Westchester had their parents buy them a ticket and give them spending money to purchase an insane amount of drugs. The scene was not pretty. Still, GF and I persevered and managed to see some awesome sets, like Bingo Players' and Sasha's (who is an oldschool dj and had been one of my faves when I saw him at Ultra). And of course Martin Solveig was awesome, as usual. This was the third time I was seeing him with GF and each time had been a crowded sweaty experience. This time was no different. We got there early and squeezed our way towards the front of the tent. It was about 20 degrees hotter under there than the 90 degrees outside and we were absolutely soaked. During my fave song, GF hoisted me up on his shoulders and I almost slipped off. I bounced around up there for a few minutes and was ecstatic when of the photographers in the booth came over and snapped a photo (I have been scouring the internet and have yet to locate this photo--I will love you forever if you do). But a minute later one of the bouncers motioned for me to get down, yet he did not chastize the 17 year old with the huge boobs waving around the French flag. (Boob Girl's pic did make it in the internet). Unforunately, GF and I made the decision to leave halfway through Martin's set to see Dada Life, who sucked big time. I also wasn't impressed with some of the others whom I normally like, including Benny Benassi. I noticed that even the music had changed--rather than the sets being a variety of styles, everyone seemed to cater to Americans' loveof testorone-esque, intense beats, which resulted in all the sets sounding pretty much the same. This was no longer music inspired by European nightclubs--it was the same beat played over and over at the Jersey Shore.
For the final day, GF made the wise decision to stay home. Luckily there were visitors in town who would be attending with me--MM and Same Name Friend were coming up from Baltimore and DC. After a sleepless night, I put on my neon halfshirt from Thailand and headed to Midtown to meet Same Name Friend for brunch. We were waiting on MM and her college roommate Raver to meet us at the hotel. After brunch, the two of us ate a bunch of pot brownies, since I could no longer endure this festival sober. This day was going to be particularly tedious since it was....Dubstep Day. I cannot stand dubstep but there were a couple of djs I did want to see playing and since I had spent so much on the ticket, I was getting my money's worth. After the two of them arrived and Raver donned her amazing rave outfit (skintight bodysuit with a light up bra, accessorized with about 100 bracelets aka candy) we hopped in a cab and were deposited at the gate. It seemed to be just as crowded as the day before, but luckily the crowd wasn't quite as young as the day before. Still a bunch of underdressed teenagers though so I popped another aderall and went on in. The day was what I expected--lots of insanely loud, nerve-grinding "music". We wandered around for a lot of it in a daze since the whole thing was a lot to handle. Everyone stopped to take pictures with Raver and her ridic outfit, which is saying a lot for these types of fests. She met up with one of their friends who had drugs aplenty for everyone, and despite my general rule of not doing hard drugs, I relented, since this was the only way I was going to make it through the rest of the night. This time actually wasn't bad, like it was the other times I have done these, and I was in a good mood just chatting away to whoever would listen. MM was on the same page with me though and halfway through Tiesto's set (which was nothing like the amazing set he played when I saw him in Switzerland) we decided to park it in the grass on the hill overlooking the fest. We sat there for awhile, like two old hens, bitching about how the scene had changed and it was just a bunch of kids. To emphasize our point, a girl came up to us and asked if she could use one of our phones because she was "16 and needed to call her mom". Of course we were the oldest and most responsible people there and we both agreed that if anyone from either of our very professional jobs could see us at that moment we would probably be fired.
Luckily soon after everyone else had had enough too and we all left early. We couldn't take the ferry back since we didn't all have the passes so we walked across the bridge into Harlem where we spent a few nerve-wrecking minutes looking for a cab. We then went back to the hotel, looking ridiculously out of place in our neon dirty clothing. We feasted on pizza in the room and chatted until I went home and manically cleaned my apartment for half the night since sleep was not an option with all the substances in my system.
So was Electric Zoo worth it? No way. It would have been if I was 20 or the scene was still the same as it was when I was 20. But a time-weathered 26 year old like me has no business being at an event like this. Unless I'm VIP....
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