It’s noon on a Thursday at Lyft HQ in San Francisco, and most employees are filtering through the main lobby toward lunch. But in a parking lot behind the building, the ride-sharing company's newest fleet sits, arranged in a semicircle. There are seven pink, logo-emblazoned passenger vans and three larger black ones of the sort that a mid-level band might use on tour. The pink vans are decorated according to various styles of music, from EDM to hip-hop to The Grateful Dead, even boy bands; the seats are covered in pink fuzz, the walls are lined with patterned fur, and the larger vans are equipped with either karaoke machines or videogame consoles playing Rock Band. They're not part of a new party shuttle fleet, though; these are earmarked for the Outside Lands music festival, which starts the next day.
Lyft created a similarly one-off detail of vehicles in March at the South by Southwest conference with vintage cars, but as "the official ride-sharing partner of Outside Lands," they wanted to mimic the feel of going on tour. Sorry, wait, no. Did we say "mimic the feel"? We meant "craft the branded experience." And it's just one small way that, for better and worse, tech companies are using Outside Lands this year to leave a handprint on your concert-going experience.
Outside Lands isn't quite like any other weekend music festival. On one hand, it’s in an urban center, like Governor’s Ball on Randall’s Island in New York City or Lollapalooza in Chicago. However, being in the city's Golden Gate Park means that its stages are interspersed throughout a wooded area, which gives the illusion of more out-of-the-way festivals like Coachella or Bonnaroo.
There's also the fact that, caught between San Francisco’s artist-friendly, anti-corporate history and a tech boom that's significantly altered the city's demographics and dominant industry, Outside Lands is happening in one of the most fraught cultural spaces in the country. And that's obvious from the marketplace stands on the Polo Field; you can find booths for Soylent 2.0, Nordstrom Rack, and Pandora around the corner from silk-screened shirts and (take a deep breath) artisanal jewelry made from reclaimed copper cable that used to carry signals for nuclear weapons systems.
Nowhere is the clash of buzzwords and vibes more apparent than at the StubHub tent. In previous years when the company partnered with the festival, it tried to evoke a sports-bar atmosphere. But with the company attempting to expand beyond sports tickets—StubHub launched a music app this year—the 2015 edition is a small music and comedy stage called #NoMoFoMo. At the rear of the stage, there's a lighting rig in the shape of a giant hashtag, and tent's interior walls are covered in tongue-in-cheek statistics citing how many people engage in social media on the toilet or how few experience a fear of missing out after using StubHub.
“It’s certainly a culture shock,” says Chaz Bundick, aka Toro Y Moi, who moved to the Bay Area four years ago from South Carolina. “Where I live [in Berkeley] is not like this at all—it’s a very DIY lifestyle setup.” Bundick performed at one of the main stages Saturday under his Toro Y Moi moniker, but also did a DJ set at the #NoMoFoMo tent as Les Sins. Still, he doesn’t see a huge problem with sponsors carving out some real estate on the festival grounds. “If they book a good bill at a tent, there’s nothing wrong with putting their name all over it,” he says. “But tastefully. Don’t put your logo all over the background—and don’t put it on the drum head.”
But sometimes "synergy" turns out to be more than just a logo. The Family Crest, a local band that opened the main stage of the festival on Friday afternoon, has seven members—two of whom are Lyft drivers. “About two months ago I gave a woman a ride to headquarters,” says Charly Akert, the band's cellist. “She asked me what else I do…so I turned on The Family Crest, and she loved it.”
According to lead singer Liam McCormick, becoming more engaged in driver-passenger interactions has helped create new fans in a tangible way. “We played [SF music venue] The Independent," McCormick says, and Charly had somebody in the front row yelling, ‘You’re my Lyft driver!’”
For a band on the brink of larger success like The Family Crest, a music festival is an opportunity to mainline exposure: Over the three days of Outside Lands, they will play on the main stage, at the Toyota tent, the StubHub tent (along with students from West Oakland Middle School), and an off-site recording studio gig. They even recorded a video while riding in one of the Lyft Magic Mode vans, upright bass and all.
At the highest point within the festival grounds, on a hill surrounded by trees that obscure the stages and soften as much sound pollution as possible, there’s a yurt with sign that reads “No WMDs (Wireless Mobile Devices) Allowed.” It’s the hideaway for Digital Detox, an organization headed by Levi Felix and Brooke Dean, who run weekend-long events called Camp Grounded—"summer camp for adults"—where participants “disconnect to reconnect.”
Inside, there's an area full of manual typewriters for “text messages." Before walking up the last part of the hill to the arts and crafts areas, entrants must recite a pledge titled “I Am A Human, Not A Robot.” Its key moment: “I cannot be defined by 140 characters. I am not a status update. I am not a product or an advertisement.”
In a festival that runs on a tight schedule, spending time at the compound is like the inverse of Wet Hot American Summer’s going-into-town montage: an oasis of calm that feels much longer than the duration of your stay. The Digital Detox yurt has its own performance lineup, mostly folk or bluegrass; the bands play for small crowds seated on pillows, and in as the audience sings along, the bustle of a corporate festival seems miles away. But even Felix talks about possible future brand sponsorship—for cubbies or lockers to secure devices for however long someone wants to spend unplugged in the Digital Detox area.
Other than areas boasting food, beer, or port-a-potties, the most crowded non-music spot at the festival is PayPal's tent, The Recharge Spot, where people can boost their batteries to keep the Instagrams flowing. The tent also features temporary tattoo stations; this year’s options include emoji—of which our friend Smiling Poop is by far the most popular—and the performance schedule for that day's festival lineup, which people wear on the forearm. (Hipsters, you've found your wearable.)
In a less analog vein, 2015 marks the first year that Outside Lands is using RFID tags in its wristbands. Coupled with online pre-registration, they're your admission ticket, but you can also load on “Bison Bucks” to spend at wine-tasting tent Wine Lands—with all transfers handled via PayPal.
That Disney Magic Band-style convergence certainly suggests the potential for a frictionless festival, in which attendees can wander around and listen distraction-free. However, it's also essentially a debit card on your wrist, with all the concerns that entails. One side-effect of that future became apparent on Saturday afternoon, when Oakland musician Xavier Dphrepaulezz, aka Fantastic Negrito, was detained by the San Francisco Police Department for three hours, forcing him to cancel his set.
In a statement, SFPD claimed that it had detained "three subjects…pertaining to someone selling non-transferable artist bands.” It turned out that a 22-year-old intern had obtained an artist wristband and sold it on Craigslist; when Dphrepaulezz showed up for his set, he was surrounded by police.
Fence-jumpers and patrons attempting to sneak into the VIP are typical of urban festivals, as is scalping wristbands, but Dphrepaulezz's detention raised the specter of San Francisco's boom-related woes, from tech-enabled gentrification to unfair police treatment. For an event that wants to remain as business-friendly and apolitical as possible, it's an uncomfortable reminder that there's no such thing as being truly frictionless.
Sunday always feels like a hangover day at festivals, and crowd numbers decline accordingly. Onstage, Dan Deacon energizes the day with his usual mix of dreamlike soundscapes, encouraging the crowd into performance art displays. Nate Ruess mixes in a deep cut from his beloved band The Format between fun. hits and new cuts from his solo record. Hot Chip covers LCD Soundsystem’s “All My Friends” in a respectful way that mostly makes everyone painfully aware that James Murphy is trailblazing compositions for subways instead of headlining festivals.
But across the field at StubHub’s NoMoFoMo tent, there’s loud music thumping. Unlike Friday, when the tent was mostly empty, or Saturday, when it was half-full for an improv performance by Upright Citizens Brigade, it’s now full to the brim with dancing people. Tent attendants have been waving sprays of bubbles and passing out light sticks branded prominently with StubHub logos. Outside, on an empty patch of grass, a group of teens dance to the music bleeding out of the tent. There are no thudding speakers, no accoutrements, no enveloping light show—but no brand symbols or phones either. For now, they're content to simply enjoy the music, confident that they're not missing out on anything.
