The Great Lollapalooza Evacuation of 2012

Aug 9, 2012

I'm not sure if you heard of the freak monsoon that came through Chicago Saturday afternoon, but because of the insanely weird evacuation of Lollapalooza, I believe this little storm made the news.
. . . and by the news I mean social media.

I came across this impressive time lapse video of the storm on twitter.

Following the storm, I received this email from my new Chicago bestie, Morgan (A City for Two):

Do you realize that the craziest things seem to happen to you guys?? 
I mean only yall would get two random extra tickets in the mail + happen to scalp affordable artist wristhands + come home to a dead car sans jumper cables.... haha. 
Your presence is probably what brought that freak storm to Chicago!!

She has a tendency to describe everything so darn adequately, I couldn't say it better myself.
We are avid festival goers and we've never experienced anything like this.
I think they were just trying to be extra cautious due to all of the stage crashes that have happened recently, which I completely agree with.

We were preparing to watch The Tallest Man on Earth (remember when I said he was on the top of our to-see list for the past two years?) and we only look up to ironically see this.
We immediately thought it was a cruel joke from God (similar to God cruel joke of letting us hit a elk and total our car therefore not letting us make it to Havasupai Falls, which was also on our to-see list for two years)

We initially hesitated, and tried to wander our way around the park without actually evacuating (thinking Ellie and Michael's artist wristbands could give us some superiority over the impending storm)
. . . only to get forced out by some pretty scary yelling individuals repeating over and over that "It is raining on Belmont! Do you know even know what that means?"
No ma'am, I'm sorry, we don't.
We are Chicago illiterate pretend "artists" who don't have a clue what you are talking about and we really don't want to leave this lovely park when it isn't even cloudy outside.

After a while the festival began to look like the rapture happened.
(Lots of left behind shoes and clothes and food)
There were no vendors in sight and all the stages were covered.
Needless to say, we left. 

There were people scrambling around everywhere.
. . . and there were also impromptu dance parties in intersections.

I have never seen longer lines at liquor stores.
Nearby hotels were packed.
Our hotel was about a mile away, so we joined in on the fun and took shelter in the Hilton across the street.
We searched for an uncrowded floor of the hotel near an outlet and the ice machine (thank goodness we had an iPhone charger in our bag)


Our proximity to the ice machine led to one of the funniest moments of this weekend.
Messing with drunken hipsters is fun stuff.


Oh and then two hours later, once Twitter informed us that the festival was back in action (thank you little birdie), Ellie met Mr. Cappy himself in the hotel lobby.

While we waited out this mysterious storm, we never even witnessed rain, but we did witness a lot of wet, not sober people running around the hotel, so I guess we kinda believed the evacuation was necessary.
After watching that time lapse video, I'm pretty darn sure it was a very appropriate call by the festival head honchos.

We were very relieved to find out that they condensed/intermixed the missed shows with the later shows, so we were still able to see our main man, The Tallest Man, that is.


Oh and then we saw the muddiest woman.
She kinda looks like one of those painted statue people you see on Bourbon Street that do weird robot movements and ask you for money.
Not to be confused with a homeless person.

9 comments:

Alissa said...

I think your sister wins the "meeting the most random collection of celebrities in one trip" award. Guy Fieri? Cappie?! Your trips always seem to turn out to be crazy adventures & I am jealous of them...

Laicie said...

"ENOUGH, Perry Farrell. Shut it down."

I love this. ;) Looks like it was still a good time though!

Kim said...

You should be a writer....you missed your calling!!

onedcco

tiff@thecoffeehouse said...

oh my gosh ... this is awesome.
"wet, not sober" people are the best! ok, so maybe not. I'm pretty sure that muddy girl wins ... hands down. OMG.

Heather Grace said...

Goodness, what an experience! It sounds like witnessing all the things that happened post-evacuation were worth seeing though. And I'm so jealous about The Tallest Man On Earth... one of my favorites!

Lisamarie said...

Oh my gosh... this is the craziest post I have ever read.

"Messing with drunken hipsters is fun stuff." <----- Best quote ever.

I'm your newest follower just because you are too funny.

Anonymous said...

Just stumbled upon this blog and can not quit reading every single post....AHHHHHHH

Ariel Tyler Henley said...

holy moly. that sounds like one hell of an experience!! Looks like an insane, but amazing time! Glad you now have so many stories from your adventure! :)

Morgan said...

Hahaha this made me laugh out loud! What great finds with the tweets and awesome video! ...it's raining on Belmont??!!

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