Once upon a time, going to a music festival in Golden Gate Park meant scoring acid from a wizard on a unicycle on Haight Street, shaking a tambourine in a drum circle on Hippie Hill, and dancing your way into a communal gathering of free love and music.
But the 12th annual Outside Lands—which kicks off Friday and runs through the weekend in Golden Gate Park—is a far cry from the Summer of Love in the 1960s and the festivals of San Francisco’s past, which were built on radical liberal political thinking, communal living, ecological awareness, and a search for a higher form of consciousness through psychedelic drugs, with the entry cost being nothing other than a hairy hug.
It’s also come a long way from where the festival started back in 2008. Today, Outside Lands has transformed into a more bourgeois experience with gourmet food, wine, and VIP experiences. It’s brought to you by Uber,® Chase,® Verizon,® and other sponsors of corporate lounges, full of ways to pay more for more luxury. Take the Golden Gate Pass, which costs $1,595 (plus fees) and will grant you access to upgraded bathrooms with sinks, mirrors, and flushable toilets; an “express staircase” to viewing areas; and an exclusive entrance to the grounds, ensuring that you won’t have to rub shoulders with (or piss next to) the plebs, who shelled out only $385 for the regular general-admission weekend pass.
We can’t necessarily blame Outside Lands. This is what the people demand. Here in San Francisco, we like our fancy coffee and fancy cannabis, and Outside Lands is only reflecting the gentrifying forces that have swept through other festivals as well, including Coachella and Burning Man.
To its credit, Outside Lands features a slew of local businesses and brings in $3.4 million for the city’s Recreation and Park department, as well as tens of millions of dollars into the local economy, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. But it’s worth remembering that Golden Gate Park’s other hugely successful annual summer festival, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, is still 100% free. The Stern Grove Festival series, which has been running every summer since 1938, is also admission-free.
There’s plenty to celebrate at Outside Lands this weekend, from great eats to great music to great art. In a major first, it will also offer legal weed sales. But we can’t help but notice some of the more questionable luxury branding going on. So without further ado, here are some of the more bougie things you can enjoy in the meadows this weekend.
The Chase Sapphire Lounge
It used to be that getting a good view of the bands onstage involved the awkwardness of asking a tall stranger if you could hop onto their shoulders. Now all that’s required is a prestigious metallic credit card that’s popular with millennials (and paying the appropriate annual fees). Flash this weighty status symbol, and you and a friend will be granted access to what’s officially called the Sapphire Lounge, presented by Chase, wherein you can swill an Aperol spritz on the elevated balcony, nosh on “light bites,” and discuss your crypto portfolio with your beautiful privileged pals. To be fair, the lounge does offer a convenient place at which to pee and one of the best views at the festival, even if it’s limited to Chase cardholders.
The Support Lounge Powered by Uber
The blurb for this tent tells us that you can “ensure that you and your phone are recharged and ready to go by stopping by the Support Lounge Powered by Uber.” Ready to go where? You’re already at the biggest festival in San Francisco. Find a patch of grass; put some flowers in your hair; and turn on, tune in and drop out. They do promise some free swag and friendly staff to provide “tips and tricks to help make your Uber ride from the festival as seamless as possible.” Given that traffic around the area is a nightmare, though, we recommend that you bike or take public transportation instead; Muni will be offering extra service throughout the three days of the festival.
The Elevated Cannabis Experience at Grass Lands
The spirit of the ’60s is alive! A whole section of the festival dedicated to weed! This must mean bongs passed around under clouds of Purple Haze? Maybe handcrafted joints made from Humboldt’s finest being shared in the transformative spirit of free love? While festival goers will be able to consume this year at Grass Lands, they’ll be alongside brands selling their schtick and “educating” the public on the newly corporatized and legalized devil’s lettuce.
Over at the True Terpenes Scent Wall, you’ll have the opportunity to sniff and guess the strain of various botanical terpenes (the fragrant oils that give cannabis its aromatic diversity). The folks from ONA.life, a boutique cannabis concierge, will also be there to educate festival-goers on the newest strains of marijuana. And at Farm to Bong, you can express your creative side and carve your own bong out of local produce.
Instagrammable Spots
Strike a pose. It’s not about the experience; it’s about looking like you are having an experience, with a Juno filter. Like Coachella and Burning Man, Instagram influencers have infiltrated every part of festival life, and Outside Lands is no different.
When walking the trails between any of the many stages at the festival, you’ll notice that every passing wall is painted in what at first looks like graffiti, but on closer inspection, you’ll see that they are, in fact, carefully curated backgrounds for your selfies. Several art installations and sculptures spotted around the grounds also provide the perfect opportunity to hashtag your pretty life and harvest those likes.
The Members Lounge by Verizon
These companies love the word “lounge,” even though, for the most part, these are not lounges at all. They’re branded huts hawking corporate subscriptions with not much more than some seats and a place to stand. This particular space is open exclusively to Verizon customers — and a pal — who sign in through the My Verizon app. The venue does promise “a great view” (though we don’t know of what), phone charging, and—um—shade.
Posh Food
If you’re going to attend a bougie-ass music festival, you may as well partake in some bougie-ass food, like Malaysian lamb curry sandwiches. And Charles Chocolate’s gourmet s’mores. Food at the festival is also wide-ranging, with 80 local restaurants catering the event — and supporting Bay Area restaurants is something we can get behind. Beyond the curry sandwiches and fancy s’mores, dishes include Hopscotch’s buttermilk fried chicken and Little Star’s delicious deep-dish pizza.
Fancy Wine
Forty-six Napa and Sonoma vendors will be providing 125 different wines for festival-goers to taste, buy, and imbibe on the grounds. Even cool kids Scribe Winery and Ashes & Diamonds will be making pours. Is it cheap? Of course not. In fact, it’s almost comically expensive, last year an eight-ounce glass of Ashes & Diamonds’ Grand Vin (a blend of Cabernet Franc and Merlot from Napa Valley) set you back $80. Yep, 80 bucks. That would have scored you enough LSD in 1967 to float 50 feet above the Polo Grounds and talk to God. And as Esther Mobley in the Chronicle noted, a one-ounce glass still costs $8, a hefty price for what amounts to a shot.
