Pitchfork Music Festival is this weekend in Chicago. If you are going, I’ll see you there. If you are not, I feel sorry for you, and you should go next year. I’ve been to Lollapalooza, SXSW, Eaux Claires, and others and my favorite music festival is Pitchfork. This is why.
There is breathing room.
Pitchfork undersells tickets. They aren’t squeezing every penny out of the audience by packing people in like sardines. There is room to walk around, room to lay down, room to breathe.
It’s small.
The whole festival takes place at Union Park in Chicago. Union park is a green space in the city and it’s pretty small. Lollapalooza and Summerfest are long and narrow. You are exhausted just going from one end to the other. Not at Pitchfork. It’s a nice little square with three stages where no band is playing at the same time. You can virtually sit in the middle, never move the whole weekend and be just fine.
There is cool non-music stuff.
They have a pop-up record store under a tent where labels hawk their wares. There is local goods and screen printed posters available next to reasonably priced craft brews.
The whole thing is pretty chill.
Pitchfork isn’t about 17 year olds taking molly and struggling to find their friends for three days. (Though you certainly could do that) It’s more about just hanging out and being there. The people are beautiful and lots of people are dressed up, there is a very casual vibe to the whole thing.
The line-up always kills because Pitchfork knows what they are doing.
Before I started working for 88Nine, I rarely checked Pitchfork and thought they were just a bunch of stuck-up know-it-alls. But what I’ve come to realize is that Pitchfork covers music better than any other periodical, blog, or other organization. They know their stuff, their writing is great, and I trust their opinion. So you can go every year, knowing that they are only bringing the best of the best in music.
