This is our intern Max. He's a fine art major at UCSD, who also enjoys surfing, bike riding, co-eds, and concerts. We sent him to the desert last weekend with a couple disposable cameras to cover the sweaty madness that is Coachella. Luckily he survived. Here's what he saw...
Here are my supplies: Lots of water, a little too much peanut butter and jelly, a substantial beer supply, a handle of Jack Daniels (hiding in a very large water bottle since glass was not allowed), and some assorted fruits and snacks to keep the good times and energy going through the whole weekend. Next time I'm defnitely bringing a cooler. Drinking extremely hot whiskey and beer is a challenging task for any man.
The windy road from San Diego into Indio. It's really beautiful out there and a nice change from the coast. We pulled over briefly to enjoy the view. There were even rams running around butting heads on the hillside. This little pitstop was a great way prepare us for the chaos at Coachella.
If you camp at Coachella, the party never really stops. The campsites were perpetual debauchery. People are running around bellowing and doing absurd things at all hours. Here is the line of cars waiting to get in to the campsite, and people are already blasting music from their cars, drinking beers, and warming up for the whole weekend. We were definitely enjoying our still-cold beer before everything got hot.
I'm sure everyone knows it's hot out there in Indio, but really, it's extremely hot. The above photo was taken with a black and white disposable camera, and not photoshopped afterwards. Pretty sure the heat compromised the film in some way. More night vision photos to come...
Here's Nic Offer from !!! marching through the crowd right past me. He has got some pretty sweet dance moves and he had everyone up and moving in the intense heat.
I've been wanting to see the Radio Dept. for a while now and I was really glad I got the chance this weekend. Whenever your favorite bands played in the tents during the middle of the day it was a huge relief. Anything to escape the intense sun and avoid excessive sun burn (more on that in the photo album).
The Drums. I really enjoyed how intense Jonathan Pierce was. His dance moves were great and his singing was passionate. They played with tons of energy from one sad pop song to the next.
Tame Impala's psychedelic rock was great in the warm, late-afternoon light. Everyone was was happily grooving along. There were a surprisingly large amount of Australians at Coachella, and they defintely came out to support their countrymen for this set.
The people-watching is superb at Coachella. When the sun gets lower in the sky, it's easier to relax and check out the scene without overheating. Here's some long shadows and some crazy coachella-ites probably suffering from drunken heat delirium.
Whenever you wanted to a see band on the main stage, getting up to the front was an experience of its own. Here's Broken Social Scene as we zigzagged our way through to see Animal Collective and Arcade Fire later that night.
Animal Collective was a set I was really looking forward to seeing, and we definitely snuck our way up close since they were playing back to back with Arcade Fire. As I had heard from others though, their live set really didn't live up to the energy on their recordings.
This is definitely my WTF photo of the weekend. People fist pumping with plants and tossing blow-up dolls above the crowd during an amazing set by The Strokes.
Kanye definitely put on a show. Here he is levitating over my head towards the stage. The whole set was full of fireworks, barely-clothed dancers, and grandiosities of all sorts. My friend Andrew almost got assaulted by a tall sassy woman with Kanye fever. Despite Andrew's respectable composure, the smell of hot Jack Daniel's brought up concerns of vommit. Thank god everyone kept it together and the sassy woman's Kanye experience was succesfully undisturbed.
Once Sunday came to an end, everyone shufffled out of the venue in a large, buoyant, yet exhausted dust cloud. Here's the masses of happy zombies filing out behind us.
Check out a handful more photos in the Photo Gallery below.