Day 4: Chicago - Riotfest
Nau mai
Yesterday we played at Riotfest in Chicago’s Douglas Park.
I woke up at 4:30am after another huge, wild swing in my bout with jet lag. I spent the next four hours attempting to sleep before getting up at 8:30am and heading downstairs for breakfast.
I had credit with the hotel cafe after the previous afternoon they had forgotten to make my meal and then closed the kitchen. They said I could order as much food as I liked throughout the day and so I went crazy with a double order. For my first course I picked the Crisp Cauliflower with parsley, lemon, spiced walnuts, crispy chickpeas, date glaze, and tahini aioli. For my second course I had the Buttermilk Pancakes with Vermont Maple Syrup, butter, and powdered sugar.
It was Riotfest day. Afterwards we called it the day of a thousand rain drops. The day where Douglas Park was turned into a sea of mud. It began in a similar manner to any other festival we have attended. We arrived and passed through moderate layers of security, the obligatory metal detector and sniffer dog to make sure we weren’t carrying contraband into the festival grounds. We got to take a ride on one of the little buggies, because we are artists and we don’t like to walk anywhere.
The festival organisers were preparing for their war against the rain and the defenses were being shored up throughout the afternoon. Large metal sheets were laid out atop the grass for the buses to park on so they wouldn’t sink into the rapidly softening ground. There was a big dump of fresh mulch that had buggies and barrows shuttling it around to spread across the most sodden thoroughfares. Tarpaulins rigged above the backstage area were gradually starting to balloon with water and stagehands worked with brooms to empty the suspended puddles safely over the sides.
On the previous day of the festival a lightning storm had arrived in the evening and the whole schedule had been moved earlier with many artists having their sets cancelled. We were praying this wouldn’t happen to us.
This is the ground in front of our stage before the festival kicked off for the day.
The rain continued through the afternoon. Sadly, the first couple of bands on our stage were cut but the downfall eased just enough for us to go on at 3:30pm. A good sized crowd were in attendance, poncho clad and seemingly in good spirits. The ground still had some firmness at this point. A circle pit was established in the centre of the crowd and a flailing mass of people began to rotate in an anticlockwise direction like a hurricane driven by the pressure of the music. It wasn’t a violent circle pit though, and the flailing was dainty with soft elbows. Occasionally someone would rise out of the fray and crowdsurf, floating on a sea of hands to the front where they would be cradled by a huge security guard and carried away before being safely reinserted into the edge of the crowd.
Still clean and dry, preparing to go onstage.
After our set I decided to get out and watch some of the festival. The ground in Douglas Park transitioned through many different states throughout the day. There was quite a bit of green grass before we played and there were many areas that could be described as firm clay. When I headed out into the field the first time I was careful with my shoes, trying to stick to the high ground and keep the leather upper dry. The mulch that had kept some of the busiest routes dry had been overwhelmed by the sheer amount of rain and foot traffic. Soon it became apparent that my feet were going to get wet. The route to the stage I was trying to reach was through a bog. The grass was gone and the topsoil was being steadily turned over as more and more water was worked into the mixture, creating a perfectly homogenous texture. It turned out that the bog didn’t really end. As the rain and the trampling continued, shoe sucking mud gradually encompassed the entirety of the festival grounds.
These shoe cleaners were simply not up to to the task of dealing with the quantities of mud available at this festival.
Eventually I aclimatised to the conditions and resigned myself to the fact that my shoes would require a deep clean. I moved through the deepest parts of the mud on tip toes so the water wouldn’t seep right over the sides of my shoes. My leather shoes did okay though and I was able to clean them in the shower at the end of the night. The sneakers in the tour party were hit hard though, and many are still awaiting a proper stain removing soak.
The state of the ground during the final set of the night.
Here are the BOTHEW points from the day.
