With Hurricane Rita fast approaching the Texas coast, half of my immediate family is evacuating Houston and heading to my house in Austin. If Rita (which is also my mom and my older sister’s name) continues as expected, it will make land fall at Matagorda Bay—which is only 144 miles from Austin.

With that said, I will miss the ACL Festival for the first time—I have attended ever single day of each of the first three years of the music festival (which is only 3 miles from our house). Between having my family here, there’s a good chance that the storm is going to shut down the festival on Saturday too (expect severe thunderstorms, tornados, and projected 70-80 mph winds here in Austin).

Since I won’t be going to the festival this year, I’m reposting this post How to Do the ACL Festival, which I wrote last year.

If you’re going this year: have fun, be prepared, be patient, and on Saturday, be careful.

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Getting to the Festival

Do not plan on driving up to the festival gates. Do not plan on taking the shuttle bus with the other 225K people who are also planning on taking the shuttle bus.

I figured out the first year that the easiest way to get to the festival was to park my car at a friend’s house about .5 mile away (in Rollingwood), unload my bike, and ride right up to the front gate. Total time to park, unload, and lock my bike up at the entrance? About 8 minutes. If you can, ride your bike. Even if you have to drive to within a mile or two of the park, and then ride from there. But ride your bike.

How to Do the ACL Festival

The following list details what turned out to be the perfect plan that optimized my enjoyment of the ACL Festival this year. Your mileage and preferences will vary.

• Take off work on Friday, and get to the festival no later than 1:00. The bigger acts might play later at night, but Friday afternoon is the least crowded time of the entire festival. Which means that there are fewer kids crowding the stages, so you can sit back, relax, and enjoy some of the outstanding—if not slightly more obscure—musicians that play on Friday afternoon. I remember in 2003, getting there early on a Friday afternoon, and setting my chair up with an unobstructed view (read: no idiotic, unaware, and self-entitled teens crowding my space) about 75’ from the front of the stage to watch Liz Phair.
• Come alone–I’m there to listen to and enjoy the music. Not to socialize. There are way too many bands that I want to see, and the more people you have in your group, the more likely you are to have to miss out on one of your favorite bands to go watch something else with your buddies. Besides, moving through the immense crowds is much easier when you’re moving solo.

How to Maximize your Fun at the Festival

• I rode my bike, parked in Rollingwood
• Bring a small back pack with your two allowed bottles of water, a camera, cell-phone, sunscreen, sunglasses, a big-brimmed hat, a towel, and some swim wear. If you’re a guy, the shorts you’re wearing to the festival should double as swim wear.
• Go swimming. The temperature in central Texas in mid-September is hot. This year, in the mid-to-upper 90s. One of the truly great swimming holes in all of central Texas (Barton Springs) is about a 2-minute walk from the front gates of the festival. But it seems that NOBODY knew this. Around 5:00 p.m., I strolled over to the springs, and submerged my sweaty, hot body into the year-round 68 degree clear water (oh, bring Tevas or some other type of sandal that you can wear into the water…Barton Springs is not a barefoot-friendly swimming hole). I was surprised by how few people were swimming…considering how brutally hot it was. Use the cold water to wash away the dirt and grime and sweat from the mid-afternoon heat. Get your body temperature back in check, relax, and then head back to the festival as the sun and the temperature begin to drop.
• Leave before the end of the last act. Trust me, especially on your bike, you will not want to negotiate the mass exodus.
• Repeat on Saturday and Sunday.

Posted by Robbie Cooper on Wednesday, September 21st, 2005 | Trackback |