I was on my way to the biggest fest in the west, traveling by air on the cheapest flight out of Eugene. It was the Friday of Halloween weekend, and in a few short hours, Outside Lands would kick off in Golden Gate Park in the heart of San Francisco. Joni Mitchell’s “California” blared through my half-busted Hello Kitty headphones as our wheels touched down in a city so weird it gave Portland a run for its money. Honey, I’m home.
Worlds were rocked in February of 2020 when the pandemic hit, and catching a favorite band in concert was hardly the greatest concern of the public while living in a state of national emergency. That philosophy doesn’t take into account all the people who lost their livelihoods and their sense of selves when their careers in the entertainment industry were taken off the table. Artists of course took a hit, but the real loss came for the people behind the scenes.
The Save Our Stages Act stepped in to help take care of preserving venues and promoters, but industry-reliant individuals still couldn’t put food on the table even with this aid. Online streaming platforms and virtual concerts made bank for some while others took to working outside of their field to make ends meet. Common folks of humble status were left in the dark as to when or if they would ever work again as they had before. As things slowly start picking back up in a post-pandemic world, a huge weight is beginning to be taken off the shoulders of those who felt they’d never return to their careers and passions again.
Since the first festival in 2008, Outside Lands was always a much anticipated wild weekend that closed off the summer. When its usual August slot fell in line with the year’s victory lap of COVID uncertainty, festival organizers had to go back to the drawing board. With no fest at all in 2020 due to the pandemic, it was simply not an option to wait till 2022 — the show must go on. The Halloween dates were picked, the lineup secured and the tickets sold so suddenly; it was clear people had missed it.
Flash forward and there we were, all together at the first fest the famous park had seen since 2019. As I made my way through the gates of Outside Lands, smiles from every direction beamed from folks decked out in Halloween costumes that ranged from absurd to vulgar. Always scraping together an eclectic mix of acts, this year’s lineup ranged from Mongolian death metal to rap and had something for everyone.
For the attendees, this weekend festival symbolized the cherry on top of a mostly controlled pandemic and a much needed distraction from the stress of the past two years. For the festival crew and the performing artists, this weekend meant the return to stability within their fields and the much needed assurance that there is still a place for their work on the other side of all this.
In front of the Twin Peaks stage, one of the six stages at Outside Lands, sat a red haired woman adjusting the lighting after rapper Rico Nasty closed out her set. “How long have you been doing lighting for?” I but in to ask. “It’s not polite to ask a woman her age,” she replied with a laugh.
This is Dee Stone’s seventh time working Outside Lands, and this year she is the director of lighting for the stage that hosted Tyler, The Creator, Troyboi, EARTHGANG and more. Though she has worked on more than half of the Outside Lands festivals ever hosted, Stone explained this year had a different feel to it than years prior.
“The last few years have been looking bleak, and we are all so excited to be back. I was lucky enough to have work, but a lot of people I know weren’t working. A lot of people lost their homes. A lot of people dug into their retirement,” Stone said. “Some people didn’t come out on the other side. A lot of these people use their work as self identity, and when you take that away there’s a lot of mental struggle on top of the financial struggle.”
Ariele Dowgaluk, who was working audio at the same stage, walked closer to Stone and nodded while he listened to her speak, understanding the hard times he’d felt for himself in the industry. “We were the first ones to go and the last ones to come back,” Dowgaluk chimed in. “It took us a long time to recalibrate. In this line of work, there are really long mornings and really long nights. But the first time everything came back, it was like, ‘This is where we belong; this is what we do.’”
Jogging away from Twin Peaks to try and catch the last few minutes of Portland’s own Aminé, I had to stop and chat with the guys in the two best costumes I’d seen all weekend: a giant inflatable peach paired with an inflatable eggplant. Decked out in the garb were Gabriel Hill and his friend who’d flown in from Los Angeles to attend Outside Lands. “It’s my first post-COVID event, and it is bizarre — but bizarre in a good way,” Hill said. “It’s overwhelming. It’s rivers of people, but the people are one of the best parts.”
Another audience member commented on the power of the release and energy that comes with being in a festival. That release for everyone in attendance came in a different way.
For the audience, it came by dancing it out, for the crew, it took the form of an exhale after holding their breath for stability and for Sofia Vargas, a 21-year-old performing artist from Panama, it took the form of finally feeling like her career was on its way up after the rollercoaster of making of her debut EP “Ventura” during the pandemic.
“I was in my second year of university in England, and I was still struggling to figure out how I was going to do music. I was balancing it with school, thinking it could maybe happen. And then the pandemic hit, and I had to leave England and go home to Panama,” she said. Everything was so up in the air at that point; her goal of a career in the American music industry felt like it was slipping through her fingers, and she got on her plane to go home. With her gear stuck in England while she was in Panama, Vargas was left with no choice but to record the EP on a very DIY level and change her course of action entirely.
Now Vargas is beginning to feel like there are opportunities coming her way with the public’s newfound post-pandemic hunger for music. Gaining traction with her new EP and sorting things out in her new home in Los Angeles Vargas expressed the hard times of leaving school and having to record her album in her bedroom instead of a studio were well worth the struggle. “For me this isn’t just the restart after the pandemic, this is the best place I’ve been in the last four years, five years,” Vargas said. “All of those roadblocks happened for a reason, and I feel like coming here and doing this has been worth it.”
I’m looking down at the moonless evening on my flight back to Eugene. It’s Halloween, and I’m still dressed up in my festival costume as Lou Reed in the back row of economy class, bleached eyebrows and all. With the first big post-COVID West Coast festival coming to a close tonight, it appears we’ve finally neared the light at the end of the pandemic’s two year tunnel. Whether they ventured for business or for pleasure, this year’s show meant more to folks than possibly any of its previous years did before. The slow but sure return of the entertainment industry is under way, and for whatever reasons there may be, it sure means a lot to a lot of people.
