The BEST Three Days Of Summer

Every summer since the summer before college my two best friends and I have spent one of the last weekends of summer sweaty, dehydrated, and exhausted. Why, Chloe, would ANYONE want to spend some of the last few days of summer miserable like that? Well, my dear readers, I can assure you that I was never once miserable because I was attending one of the most incredible music festivals in the United States.

Lollapalooza, originally a traveling music festival, has settled in Grant Park in my home town of Chicago. For the past five years the festival has expanded to hold over ten stages, bring in incredible headliners like Kanye West, Pearl Jam, Rage Against The Machine, The Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Tool, The Killers, The Kings of Leon, and Radiohead. People spend three days enjoying music on multiple stages from artists who travel from all over the world to perform. Over the past couple of years more and more people have been coming from out of state to enjoy the festival. This year I shared an umbrella with two chaps from England and took pictures with guys in dresses from Florida. It has become a phenomenon that lights up and shuts down Chicago for three magical days.

But what I really want to write about is what the festival means to me. It is not just about seeing a TON of great bands and experiencing the hippie side of me. Its not just about trying to chug water and running into EVERY single person from my high school while waiting in the porta-poddy lines. I can also tell you that it’s not just about saying, “oh yeah, I saw them at Lolla,” even though it does make you sound a lot cooler. This music festival to me is like closure. It is like the last, most incredible way to say goodbye to the city I love before I return to the school I love. It’s a goodbye to my best friends from home who will in the next few days return to their schools in St. Louis and Rhode Island. It’s another end, another goodbye to yet another summer that brings us all closer to adulthood and…gasp…the real world. But it is also about the fact that this festival fills me with this magical feeling that I’m leaving one of the most special places in the world to go to a place where great leaders are born, presidents are made, and change and progress happens every day. Lollapalooza is a music festival that I plan to attend for as long as I possibly can. Even though I have invited friends from school in the past, for me, it will always be about me and the city of Chicago. Lollapalooza is a festival that reminds me that there are events in this world that are bigger than me, and W&M is the kind of place that reminds me daily that I should strive to be a part of them. So, I’ll see you in Williamsburg readers. Goodnight!