Escape Velocity by L.A.-based Poetic Kinetics was just one of more than a dozen art pieces at this year's Coachella festival, Indio, Calif. (VT Photo)
REPORTING FROM INDIO, CALIF. — By most accounts, Coachella is a massive commercial success. Staged over two weekends (April 11-13 and April 18-20), the three-day festival has earned its place as the top-grossing event on the planet, according to Venues Today’s 2013 Year-End Hot Tickets chart. Last year, Coachella grossed a staggering $67.6 million.
New Eats
One of the most important initiatives for the Goldenvoice team in 2014 was to raise the bar on food and beverage offerings. From small plates and curated cocktails to a four-course meal in the VIP Rose Garden with beer or wine pairings, Goldenvoice made a considerable upgrade of the culinary experience for the 2014 event.
Past years featured food trucks and a beer garden, but this year well-known Los Angeles-based restaurants such as Baco Mercat and Night + Market showcased specialty items in an expanded food court known as The Terrace. For those with special food diets, vegetarian, raw vegan, gluten-free and kosher food vendors were grouped together in The Terrace for easy access.
For the first time in 2014, a specialty beer garden serving craft beer from 17 different L.A.-area breweries offered festivalgoers an alternative to domestic beers, while an air-conditioned cantina provided a guacamole-fueled respite from the blazing hot temperatures.
For those looking for a totally new kind of experience, roving dining organization Outstanding in the Field offered up a $225 sit-down dinner experience that could be purchased prior to the festival. Only two seatings were offered each day, one at 5:30 p.m. and another at 7:30 p.m., and each dinner was limited to 12 people.
“This is our first year partnering with Coachella and our first year partnering with a music festival,” said Shaina Anderson, director of private events with OITF. “Not only is it a chance for campers and guests to sit down and have a nice meal while they’re in Indio for the weekend, but it’s a chance to experience a new chef from the L.A. area and learn about Southern California farms and the incredible products that are coming out of those farms.”
Keeping the Grounds Grounded
For many, the star attraction of Coachella is the venue itself, the combined Empire Polo Club and Eldorado Polo Club, which make up the one-square-mile footprint of the Coachella event site.
“We continually work to improve the location and this year we launched two large scale beautification projects,” said Justin Ferreira, site manager for Goldenvoice. Ferreira lives in Indio and works year round on making improvements to the venue. This year, his team replaced an 800-ft.-long chain-link fence (“it was a major eyesore”) with a tidy block wall.
Ferreira’s team also removed about 100 horse stables from the Terrace, a large space where guests enter the grounds.
Of course, protecting the grounds is an ongoing effort — the festival attracts 90,000 people per day and, this year, Goldenvoice deployed its largest team ever, a 600-person Total Resource Staff, dedicated to diverting 90-percent of the 577,720 tons of ‘resource’ left behind by Coachella visitors — Production and Resource Manager Brian Valdez said his team prefers the word ‘resource’ over ‘trash.’
In addition to the work behind the scenes, Valdez said he tries to involve more fan participation in recycling. In 2014, he created a new color-coded receptacle system to divide aluminum, cardboard, plastic, scrap metal and glass.
Safety and Security
This year’s Coachella wasn’t without its bad news — a few days after being rushed from the festival site because of a possible drug or alcohol overdose, a 24-year-old woman died in the hospital.
Carl Monzo, president of National Event Services, oversees security and medical operations for Coachella and a number of other festivals, and said the death was the first in the event’s history. He also noted that part of his responsibility is to make music fans feel confident that they will have a safe and secure experience.
Planning begins as much as a year in advance, and involves event producers, safety/security pros, state and local law enforcement and emergency management agencies, and even local hospitals. The safety program begins during the site build-out, and ramps up as fans arrive, creating the first logistical crowd management challenge.
A camping festival requires more staff than a non-camping festival, “because we're putting together a small city, and it has to be staffed 24 hours a day,” Monzo said. Adequate staffing is an expensive proposition, but it's an expense most top producers are willing to pay.
Messaging about drugs and alcohol and other safety issues is prevalent throughout the Coachella website and on email communications sent to fans. Monzo said the goal is to create a trusting, non-heavy-handed environment.
“We’ve gone so far as to put slogans on the back of the safety and medical shirts, saying ‘Hey, we’re here for you, we’re judgment free,’ because we don’t want them to be afraid to ask for help if they need it,” Monzo said. Artful Existence
Many of Coachella’s most buzzed about artists aren’t actually listed on the iconic concert lineup poster. This year, Goldenvoice spent more money than ever on bringing in interactive art exhibits that have become a critical component of the Coachella experience.
“There isn’t another music festival that spends the money on public art like Coachella,” said Paul Clemente, Coachella’s art director since 2009. “While some of the pieces do travel to other events, most begin with us. Since I came on board, we have commissioned the vast majority of the pieces visitors see at Coachella.”
It’s a system utilized by another major West Coast festival — Burning Man, held every year around Labor Day Weekend in Black Rock Desert, Nev. Clemente said his team recruited two prominent ‘Burner’ artists this year — Charles Gadeken and Keith Greco. Other new artists for 2014 include Phillip K Smith and James Peterson.
Interviewed for this story: Rick Mueller, (323) 930-7181; Shaina Anderson, (831) 443-3294; Justin Ferreira, (323) 930-6531; Carl Monzo, (610) 284-3000; Paul Clemente, (213)488-8890