A STROLL THROUGH THE BELMONT-SHEFFIELD MUSIC FESTIVAL
Published in AXS.com, May 2015
In a neighborhood that both defies and defines popular culture, the 2015 Belmont-Sheffield Music Festival added a unique blend of people and food to the sounds kicking off Chicago’s renowned outdoor summer celebrations.
The event’s main attraction, as the name implies, is music. Among the groups and artists performing this year were a handful of favorites like Catfight, an all female lineup of fun loving solid cover musicians, and Trippin Billies, the Dave Matthews tribute band. Rounding out the selection were mid-day performances from pop artists like Hello Weekend and energetic sets by the ambitious whippersnappers from the School of Rock Chicago. Music-related sponsors included 101.9 The Mix, K-Hits 104.3 and 97.1 The Drive.
Besides music, the event served up plenty of food and drink, most often cooked on grills or mixed in buckets or poured from taps in tents leased by real brick and mortar establishments and occasionally served on a stick or in a pineapple.
For the people who needed time to decide what to get, Coca-Cola offered free samples in miniature plastic cups from a booth playing dance music near the event’s southern entrance.
Of course it wouldn’t be a festival unless a bunch of people showed up in a festive mood, and on that note Belmont-Sheffield delivered harmoniously.
Nestled within stumbling distance of Boystown, Lakeview and Wriggleyville, the intersection of Belmont and Sheffield boasts not only one of the busiest stops on the elevated Red Line train bit also one of the most definitively undefinable varieties of cultures and lifestyles in the nation.
Yuppies and punks mingle with jocks and LGBT’s, crowding fancy ethnic restaurants, well known dive bars, vintage live music venues and drunk food cafes on streets that never seem to sleep. When these Chicagoans converge on a festival in the neighborhood, the old-time pastime of walking around to see and be seen is almost as enjoyable as listening to rock and roll, eating chicken satay and drinking cold beer.
The main drag at this year’s event stretched down Sheffield Avenue from Belmont in the south to Aldine in the north. A huge variety of attendees sashayed among the sights and sounds and smells. The only things that seemed to pique curiosity among the tattooed boleristos and stroller-pushing soccer moms were two pet ducks going for a walk with their tie-dyed owners.
Photos by Dan Patton
Photos by Dan Patton