Outside Lands: The Experience

I didn’t know what to expect from Outside Lands in San Francisco, but the lineup was so good and I had a free place to stay within walking distance of the event so I absolutely had to do it. California is now the furthest I’ve traveled for a music festival and it was 100% worth it. Here are all the details.

Check-In/Security Even on the most crowded day of the festival, apparently the largest crowd Outside Lands has ever seen, in fact, there was still never a line to get in. We had to go through metal detectors which isn’t super common in festival-land but honestly makes me feel safer and I wish more events would do it.

Crowd Looking around at the Friday crowd vs the Saturday crowd, it felt like 2 completely different festivals. Friday was full of chill older people and Saturday was a more standard group of teens and early 20-somethings who were dressed in insensible outfits and lacked spatial awareness. Sunday was a mix of the 2. Saturday’s lineup was full of electronic heavy hitters like Flume, RL Grime and Justin Martin which I imagine was the reason for the severe drop in average age, but even though it wasn’t my ideal crowd it was honestly fine because I am more than used to it at this point. Friday really did feel like a treat, though.

Fun Stuff Outside Lands had a small wooded area covered in lights, with food and drink vendors, sitting areas, art, and even a small semi-secret stage where you could dance to fun DJs among the trees. It was like a teeny tiny fraction of Electric Forest and it just made me so happy.

Outside Lands is also the first festival in the U.S. to actually sell marijuana! I didn’t participate in that but I did visit that area, called Grasslands, which had tons of weed-related sponsor booths, presentations, a “consumption area,” and budtenders to help you with your purchases. It was a pretty large area and really offered so much more than just the marijuana equivalent of a beer booth. This is a really exciting development in the festival industry and as more and more states have legal recreational marijuana I think we’ll start to see more like this.

One final cool thing they featured there were billboards of the festival lineups from all previous years. It was fun to look at them as you walked the path between stages and to think about which years you would have loved to attend, which artists have since risen or fallen in the festival ranks, and sadly, which artists have since passed away (RIP Tom Petty).

Water Summer weather in San Francisco isn’t all that hot so I wasn’t particularly desperate for water. They did have lots of free water stations though and lines seemed pretty short.

Layout Outside Lands is not huge but is one of the larger festivals I’ve been to recently. Getting between the 2 main stages is pretty straightforward but it really did take me the full weekend to get a sense of the rest of the space, which includes 2 side stages for music, an indoor area for comedy, the cooking demo stage (which I never visited), and of course the middle ground with the forest. There are multiple pathways between some of the areas which is super convenient but it can be easy to lose your bearings.

Transportation I was thankfully able to walk over to the grounds, but they did a great job of setting up Uber/Lyft areas, plus there are a number of public transportation options. My transportation to San Francisco itself, however, was a huge shitshow and it took me 2 extra days to get there, thanks to some thunderstorms on the east coast. But that is unrelated to Outside Lands.

Price This festival is EXPENSIVE. I bought a cheap-ish ticket on Stubhub but the standard ticket price for the 3 day pass was about $425 which is just unheard of for a festival that doesn’t even have camping. Definitely something to plan for if you ever want to attend this event.

Bathrooms There were a ton of port-a-potties but I still think it wasn’t quite enough, particularly on Saturday, the day that was sold out. There were some solid lines at times and I was thankful that I was drinking neither water nor alcohol. I have a theory that every festival has “secret” bathrooms that are always being underutilized, but even my secret bathrooms had a line on Saturday. I’m convinced I just hadn’t found the right group of bathrooms and the true secret ones eluded me this time.

Misc. This festival takes place in Golden Gate Park and the grounds smell like pine trees! It was so wonderful and delicious. I’ve been to a number of city festivals and this one felt the most like you were NOT in a city.

Stuff I Sacrificed to the Festival Gods Nothing!! I didn’t lose, break, or toss any of my belongings. I think the only thing would be shreds of my sanity when I was supposed to arrive in SF on Wednesday and didn’t make it until Friday, but 3 days of good music was able to restore that.

Overall, Outside Lands is a really well-run festival and I’m so glad I made the trek. While I don’t know if I would go if I had to pay for the festival ticket, a flight, and a hotel, I would 100% go back if my friend is still living in San Francisco next year and I could stay with her and have her as my awesome festival buddy. I’m already sort of hoping the 2020 lineup brings me back to California.