FIVE WAYS TO ENHANCE YOUR LOLLAPALOOZA EXPERIENCE
Published in AXS.com, June 2015
There’s all kindsa ways to liven up your Lollapalooza experience, but many of them involve total strangers and a strict no refund policy. Here are five enhancers for your trip to the Chicago musical sensation that don’t require you to “wait over there for someone to come by.”
1. Map out the public restroom situation
Downtown Chicago is full of old school porcelain thrones surrounded by elegant marble walls in buildings of historic architectural significance. Although many of them are located in establishments that uphold the “customers only” rule, you can overcome that restriction by purchasing a bottle of water. Before the show begins, scour the area surrounding Grant Park to locate the loos that are not molded out of plastic and designed to be trucked away at the end of the show.
Most of the larger retail stores on Chicago’s legendary State Street have back doors on Wabash Avenue, which conveniently runs about a half block west of Grant Park. Macy’s on Wabash and Washington contains a cafeteria, a bar restaurant and a coffee stand. Target at Madison and Wabash is a two-story haven of customer service.
When the call of nature grows louder than the bands onstage, those few minutes of pre-show reconnaissance will enable you to leapfrog over the stigma of lavatory interloper and relieve yourself with the full comfort of a paying customer in air-conditioned nirvana.
2. Walk around Grant Park
It’s nearly impossible to walk more than a hundred feet around Grant Park without coming across a flower garden, a bubbling fountain or a marble statue. If you arrive at the show early or want to get away from the occasional eruptions of outdoor concert buffoonery, take a stroll.
Directly north of Grant Park is Millennium Park, where the beauty exceeds description. The world famous chrome “Bean” sculpture — officially known as “Cloud Gate” — is just the beginning.
In the Crown Fountains, two 50-foot glass block towers play videos of Chicagoans showering water from their mouths onto the people wading through the pool underneath. The Pritzker Pavilion opens onto a green lawn that connects to the running streams and exquisite fauna of the Lurie Garden. The serpentine, chrome-paneled BP Pedestrian Bridge winds over Columbus Avenue to Maggie Daley Park and Lake Michigan, where Burnham Park Yacht Club hugs the shoreline and Columbia Yacht Club floats in a former ice-cutting ferry.
Further north, Friendship on the Lake serves Asian fusion cuisine and offers a full bar with live music and flaming tiki torches. Chances are, you’ll meet Alan the owner, who recommends the chopped salad prepared by the restaurant’s French trained chef.
Take a left at the Chicago River, pass the electric Wanderbikes and Urban Kayak stands, and you’ll soon come across the Island Party Hut, where buckets of Mai Tais flow with calypso music until 11 p.m. According to Captain Steve, the Hut’s founder and proprietor, “We had a full house after the Grateful Dead show.”
If you seek intellectual stimulation, just across the street from Millennium Park is the Chicago Cultural Center, a hundred and eighteen-year-old neoclassical fortress of art and music.
Originally dedicated as the Chicago Central Library upon its completion in 1897, today’s Cultural Center offers more than 1,000 year-round programs, exhibitions and concerts, most of which are free. “Archibald Motley: Jazz Age Modernist,” is on display in the Sidney R Yates Gallery on the 4th Floor until August 31.
If fine art doesn’t grab you, Chicago’s SummerDance — where people of all ages gather on Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings to “jump, swing and step” — offers free lessons and live bands in Grant Park directly east of Lollapalooza.
And when the music stops, you can keep the good times flowing with a drink at one of many nearby hotel bars. The air conditioning, plush seats and fancy drinks may be the perfect compliment to your rock and roll perspiration.
3. Leave the electronics at home
There’s nothing rock and roll about a hand-held digital gadget manufactured by poverty-stricken laborers in Asia using precious metals strip-mined by even less fortunate workers in the Congo. Even if it does play music and take photos, sticking a cell phone between yourself and the performers onstage not only violates the whole notion of a live concert but also represents a dangerous step towards hiring a surrogate to experience the show for you.
Dedicate one or two people in your group to be the official keepers of the cell phone and identify a specific location to serve as a recovery spot for if and when a member of your party strays.
You might miss your chance to be the person who captures the outrageous concertgoer on a cell camera, but that gives you all the more time to be an outrageous concertgoer.
4. Play a game at Touch and Go Chess Party
Occupying a stretch of sidewalk on the east side of Michigan Avenue in front of the Art Institute’s South Garden, a few steps north of Lollapalooza, Touch and Go Chess Party offers a tradition of laid back mental calisthenics that will put your smart water and energy drinks to the test.
Founded 17 years ago by Cecil Locke, who built several chess boards onto a continuous playing surface, the pieces are available to players of any level for the incredible non-price of whatever donation you’re willing to give.
In addition to employing strategies inspired by the game’s invention in Asia more than 1,500 years ago, customers and viewers enjoy non-stop classic rock and dance music. According to Locke, who describes his chess style as “wild, create and opportunist,” the dial is set to the most commercial-free stations available because “that’s what chess players like.”
5. Revitalize at a Chicago Farmers Market
Chicago, the City of Big Shoulders, is surrounded by the Midwest, a land of bountiful harvests. On Saturday and Sunday mornings throughout the summer, farmers bring the fruits and vegetables of their labor to open air markets in the city, where shoppers enjoy some of the most wholesome nourishment around.
Besides apples and pears and berries and corn, many of them offer a selection of cheeses, pies and meats, quite often served by people who are keen to the culture of the city. The Stamper Cheese Company, a regular vendor at the Printers Row Farmers Market on South Dearborn Street, actively recruits employees who offer more than just knowledge of dairy products.
“We hire a lot of artists and set builders and people who are interesting,” says Cory, who works the stand. “It’s better for everybody.”
Photos by Dan Patton