Going to Coachella is too complicated if you do not live in California

Let's be clear: the people of Goldenvoice, the organizers of the Coachella music and art festival, know how to organize a big event.

I attended the festival for the first time this year and I found it, in many ways, as good or better than advertised. The performances, from Janelle Monae to Kacey Musgraves, were extraordinary.

While great artists usually give good performances wherever and whenever they occur, the atmosphere at Coachella encourages them to take their performances to a higher level. I had the impression that every interpreter took the responsibility of the Coachella invoice very seriously. They want to scare away the 50,000 festival attendees – as well as the celebrities, influencers and the fierce industry in the VIP section -.

The value of the production, from Childish Gambino having a track that stretched deep into the crowd until Ariana Grande and NSYNC, was unmatched by any other festival I attended. Coachella is truly a class apart for her star power and outstanding talent.

That said, I will probably not participate anymore. My decision has nothing to do with the organization of the event nor with the quality of the art and music. It all depends on the amount of production needed to achieve it.

A lot of what I'm going to say does not really apply to Los Angeles car owners. However, as a national of a state, going to the festival is a major pain.

I had to fly from New York one Wednesday two days before the festival and two days after the festival. Flights closer to the event were prohibitive. That allowed me to sleep on a friend 's couch to save a few dollars.

Then, on the day of the festival, I had to drive three hours (including traffic) to get to Indian Wells, pick up my bracelet and walk 45 minutes back to Palm Springs to get to my hotel (which was conveniently double or triple its usual price for the weekend). The only hotels near the festival at a reasonable price (300 to 400 US dollars) seemed to have seen better days.

To get to the festival from Palm Springs, I bought a $ 80 pass for the Coachella approved shuttle. The shuttle itself is well organized and its price is reasonable, but do not forget that the shuttle takes an hour to get from Palm Springs to the festival site.

Taking the shuttle on the way home once the music finished was a more trying experience. There is simply no way to handle 50,000 people who leave one event at a time, but the result is that it takes an hour or more to walk with the crowd on the move in order to take the shuttle line. The first night of the festival, I started leaving the premises around 1:00 am and I did not go home until after 3:00 in the morning.

Skipping the shuttle to Uber or Lyft is an easy way to empty your bank account unnecessarily. This is not much faster, waiting times exceeding one hour when the festival ends each night.

The best way to mitigate all this by driving (and spending a lot of money on expensive hotels) is to camp on site. But as someone going to the festival only with my partner and no friends from the area, it would be an even more exhausting effort to try and concoct the necessary camping equipment for the festival to be a comfortable experience.

I could be one of the few to feel that. Most of the participants I met traveled long distances to attend the festival, from Denver in the UK to Australia. One of the first things I noticed during my participation was the number of different languages ​​I heard from the participants. Many of the participants I met were at Coachella for the third, fifth or even tenth time.

Because of its remote location in the desert – certainly a beautiful canvas for a music festival – Coachella is testing the nonsense you are willing to undergo to experience some of the best performances in the music industry. Add to that the $ 2,000 that I had to pay for accommodation, car rental, flights and other logistical services, and it seems to me that it requires me too much. ;efforts.

Next year, I will probably see a festival near New York, like the Firefly Festival or Bonnaroo, to see how it compares.