As the sun dropped in the distance this weekend of May 25 and 26, so too did the beat at Live Nation’s I Love This City festival featuring a slew of electronic musicians who rocked three stages of Mountain View’s Shoreline Amphitheatre. Into the masses of +16s decked out on furry leggings and minimal clothing, Intermission sent Sasha Arijanto to explore the laser lights and pulsing bass with only a cell phone, fanny pack and photographer. This is her diary of that fateful journey.
6:01 I’m late to pick up Maddy who will be photographing the night’s show. We aren’t quite sure what to wear to this. I’ve heard it’s rave-y, but I can’t tell if that means rally or straight crazy. We test out the waters in semi-rally, fit for perhaps a Volleyball game but not quite for Band Run. I use the drive to wonder what this will be like. I think the only thing that makes outdoor concerts any different must be that you can smoke outside and sit on the ground, and it doesn’t even seem that different from a Stanford party, except that you don’t have to be squished up next to people like Ellis island immigrants or worry about creepers asking to dance.
6:25 Maddy and I meander down to the Main Stage, where a long-haired Asian man in sweet skeleton pants works a beat to a half-full stadium. The half bowl extends high up into a lawn like a roman coliseum, which separates the classes with the most daring in the heat of a pit before a man I deduce to be Steve Aoki. We find a place to stand and groove for a moment before a gaggle of girls grabs us to take their photo. One girl in cheetah print lingerie discovers we’re covering the show for The Stanford Daily and confesses she just graduated from Cal. “Go Bears!” she screams into my face and admits her whole family attended Cal.
I wonder what went wrong. She starts to ask me about how hard it is to get classes and I am caught off-guard, trying to understand the appeal of Steve Aoki, Chewbacca-in-the-making, and this chick’s inquiring about the difficulty of getting into a seminar. Then I get it. She sprays into my face “You have to understand that you go to a private school and it’s a blessing.” Who knew the epiphany I’d find in an EDM concert would be about the luck of Stanford. I’ll take it!
It’s hard to take her seriously with the acrylic silver face paint suggesting her sexy-cat/bunny/cheetah-ness distracting me; I wonder how healthy that is and if she’ll die of clogged pores like that Bond girl. But I can feel her sincerity, and I do feel blessed for my sweet education and for the divine press-passes that let me meet this Cal girl with Tree-envy.
7:03 Main Stage. After chucking two bottles of water into the crowd, Aoki comes to Champagne shower, to the beat, the entire crowd. It’s just like a post-rush party. This isn’t so strange.
7:24 We venture to the Bass Stage for Crystal method. It’s what it sounds like. Lots of bass. There are food trucks, though, which is cool if only for novelty.
7:35 Park Stage, literally a parking lot, where less than 50 drugged-out hipsters sway around to Holy Ghost! with no inhibitions. This is strange.
7:58 Duck Sauce will be taking the stage, and concert workers are throwing out plastic duck bills to the crowd. These, like masks, are strapped to the face. The crowd suddenly becomes ducks, like some post-Bird Flu-apocalyptic Asian country and where, in an ironic turn of events, those blue health masks are replaced by actual bird bills. This is swell. I applaud the creativity and only wish that Stanford games entailed crazed cheerleaders throwing us fake axes to strap to our bodies, or at least branches and leaves.
8:03 We jam.
8:28 Some girl asks me if I’m rolling. That, of course, if the same as asking if I’m on ecstasy. I tell her abashedly “no,” to which she replies, “You have great energy!” Now this is the type of perceptiveness I wish for my future employers. Right before they recognize I don’t have enough industry experience.
8:36 A fight breaks out between several very tall, very attractive men in bro tanks. Maddy and I retreat in fear. Sparks literally fly from cigarettes. Perks of outdoor concerts?
8:37 They fist-bump it out.
8:42 These Duck Sauce guys, otherwise mediocre entertainers, start to bump along to it. The seem like they could be those Stanford guys—you know the ones—who come to Stanford and think they’re DJ’s or something, and the next thing you know they be posting Sound Cloud links left and right. Or at least they could be Berkeley guys.
Cue the strobe lights. It’s amazing how much your perspective can change when you see yourself only part of the time.
9:02 Sebastian Ingrosso immediately has the crowd jumping.
9:50 Florence + the Machine “You’ve got the love” cover.
9:53 “Somebody that I used to know.”
10:16 Creeper asks me to dance. So much for that perk.
10:50 We dip lest we wade through traffic and hit several pedestrians.