Jessi Roti

Yeah, I said it. Riot Fest is Warped Tour for elder millennials—complete with a skate ramp—and the last bastion of whatever an “alternative rock” music festival looked like for Gen X and hip Boomers. So much for no nostalgia in punk. It now revels in it.  The festival and carnival returned to Douglass Park for its 17th edition with headliners The Cure, Death Cab for Cutie/The Postal Service and Foo Fighters. Since returning post-pandemic, it’s faced continued—and increasingly contentious—pushback from residents of North Lawndale and Little Village. Walking down California Avenue, protest posters listing headliners as “Yte [a stylization for ‘white’] Punks,” “The Displacements” and “Too Many Cops,” just to name a few, decorated streetlight posts and newspaper boxes outside of the Pink Line station, while “Real Punks H8 Riot Fest” and “Go Back to the Burbs!!” were spray-painted on the fencing down Ogden Avenue. They’re refrains the fest has heard since it first relocated to Humboldt Park from the shuttered Congress Theater. Still, it has persevered when other festivals once also housed by Douglass Park, such as Lyrical Lemonade and Heatwave, have moved on. This year in particular, organizers pointed to what they view as concerted efforts to more fully embrace the community it disrupts for a solid month annually (not factoring in post-fest restoration, which some argue has never fully happened since the festival moved there in 2015).  Apart from the music, a slight re-organizati

Lollapalooza is a marathon, not a sprint. Walking through the gates at Grant Park on Thursday, August 3—the first of four days that swallowed downtown Chicago—it was something I wanted to shout via megaphone to the throngs of young, hyped and bedazzled attendees already running full-speed toward headlining stages, sponsored activations (of which, there seemed to be more than ever before), merch tents, and beer and cocktail gardens.  It comes with the territory. Something, I think, seasoned festival-goers (those who remember what it was like to go to an event before the days of social media) and founder Perry Farrell have seemed to finally accept. Now in its thirties, Lollapalooza is no longer the celebration of alternative music and culture it once was. Some argue it shed that skin long ago—more than half of the time, there’s too much going on and so many people waiting in line for other things, it’s barely about the music at all. But this year was the first I never heard Farrell even attempt to hold onto such sentiments in interviews. Instead, it’s fully embraced globality; curating a lineup that speaks to its last 10 years as an international festival as well as changing tastes and TikTok trends informed by those who are incredibly (literally) plugged in. I mean truly, I’ve never met so many influencers (real ones). For better and worse, the new digital age’s influence on music and the entertainment industry at-large has permanently altered things. And I have a list of ques

The thump of bass and clang of more than a few guitars echoed down Lake Street, signaling Pitchfork Music Festival had returned to Union Park. This year, weekend headliners included The Smile, Big Thief and Bon Iver, and the promise of some serious music discovery with mid-day performers such as Grace Ives, Koffee and Soul Glo—to name a few.  While everyone in the city knew (deep down) that the weekend really belonged to Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour (and arguably Barbie), Pitchfork Fest—now in its 17th year—managed to keep its signature taste-making universe intact. Even despite a very Condé Nast sponsorship hawking “smart, preventative” facial filler consultations to Millennials and Gen Z in exchange for sitting in air-conditioning and receiving pink-themed beauty treatments … to which someone said, “This is still the land of hipsters. There are no ‘smile lines.’ Some of these people haven’t smiled in years.” One thing that did feel immediately different this year compared to Pitchforks’ past, at least for this writer (who hadn’t been back since pre-pandemic)? Its expanded family-friendliness. Everyone brought their babies. No seriously, when did everyone have kids and how are they so big already? The Kid Zone by Music House takeover on the lawn was real and adorable, no matter its proximity to folks sparking blunts before hitting the food vendors. Despite an emergency evacuation on Saturday due to lightning nearby and a peppering of weather delays robbing everyone of wh