SPRING AWAKENING WEEKEND

Last weekend was the annual Spring Awakening Music Festival held at Soldier Field, thrown by React.  I was lucky enough to go  and check it out.  If your not familiar with the festival check out the flyer below.  It’s more of an EDM (Electric Dance Music) festival, super fun, 3 days of turn up.  It starts on Friday and ends on Sunday.  The dope thing about the festival location is that its right down the street from the shop.  See, one thing you must understand about Chicago and the downtown area, and that is that everything is like 2 to 3 miles away, maybe 4.  But to travel those 2-3 miles would take like 20-30 min because of traffic, especially on a busy weekend like this one.  Soldier Field is 2 miles form the shop, but because of the traffic during this weekend, its like a 30 min car ride.  There lies the dilemma how to get to the festival the fastest way possible.  Churro suggested to rent a divvy bike.  I never did that before, so I said fuck it and started my adventure.  To check out pics of the festival and to keep reading hit more after the jump.

 

 SAMF Line up

The first thing you must know before going to a musical festival, is what to wear, the fashion, lol.  Lots of options, but for me its usually shorts, a cut off shirt (or Tank), cause it’s always hot, and my festival shoes.  You gotta have a pair of shoes that are comfy and that you don’t really care about, because they will get fucked up, especially if it rains, the mud will kill them.  Don’t wear some limited super rare, white shoes, lol, rip.  Oh and sunglasses, you need sunglasses, a pair you don’t care about cause if you get fucked up, you will lose them.  I forgot to put the sunglasses in the pic. With that said, lets get into it.

Before going out and finding a Divvy bike station, to get my Divvy bike, I decided to hit the local wine/liquor store.  From going to last years Spring Awakening Festival, I learned that VIP doesn’t get you free drinks, its just gets you close to the stage and allows you to buy mixed drinks, and those drinks cost dough, savemoney, lol.  So I decided to pre game right quick before heading out to meeting the homies.  I copped a bottle of Pinot Grigio, the plan was to kill it before arriving at Soldier Field.  Pinot is super good, I was just put onto it like 2 weeks ago by Joe’s (Joe is our lawyer btw) girlfriend while having drinks over at Soho house.  I’m like on this white wine kick right now.

The power of the brown paper bag…looking like a wino out here, but whatever, I was ready to find a bike.

So after walking around to a couple of Divvy stations I finally found one that had some bikes, such a mission, smh.  I guess everyone downtown had the same idea, to ride a bike down to soldier field.

After walking around and finally finding a bike, I ended up back at the shop, so pissed, I wasted like a good 45 min just hitting up different divvy stations trying to find a bike.  I fucked up and didn’t download the app which tells you where all the stations are located and also tells you wether or not they are full or empty.  Super Treated! Yeah but that’s what the bike looked like, a smooth ride, like a beach cruiser, def comfy.

I saw this while riding up to Soldier Field.  Right in front of the field museum, I thought it was cool.  I forgot to take pics of the city skyline view from up here, such a dope view!

So the whole Divvy bike adventure was a bust, :(.  I rode all the way to soldier field, just to find out that all the stations were full, so I couldn’t park the bike, again if I had downloaded the app I would have know this, treated :(.  What ended up happening was I rode around trying to find an open Divvy station to park the bike.  I finally found one over by Roosevelt and Indiana, about a half mile from the stadium, not bad, but still had to walk.  This was the view  on my walk to the stadium.

Had to take a flick of these guys walking in, first cause they were repping the mother land, and second, because they were not wearing festival shoes, they were rocking the swaggy shoes, lol.  Probably their first time.  One had on the retro Jordan 13’s and the other has the retro Jordan fire red fives, no no no, they about to get them fucked up, lol.  RIP retro J’s, lol.

Finally made it to the entrance, just to see that it was jammm packed, treated. But luckily I had the VIP band, so I was able to finesse and make it in really quick, maybe waited for 1 min tops.  To the left of all this fuckary was the VIP entrance, (emoji prayer hands would be placed here, haha).  Thanks Pat from React!!!

The first thing I had to do was head over to the Silent Disco stage, had to check out the homie DJ White Owl, he had a set. I was bummed I missed my other homie Dj Kite aka Corn, he also had a set here.  PHNM and Zebo also had a set but at a different stage, I also missed their set :(.

Oh the Silent Disco was dope, you get to hear the DJ’s set on a pair of wireless headphones, and turn up on your own, lol.  Pictured above is the cool girl handing out the party for your ears, lol.

Wireless head phones for the silent disco.

DJ White Owl always repping! (Wild Things Jugrnaut S/S button up)

Spotted some Hoosier fans in the building, check out their writst, not their first time to one of these.

The stadium was supper packed, on the walk to the VIP area.

Ran into some true festival goers…hella arm candy.

These guys were ready for the festival, shout out Hundreds!  One thing you will notice quickly, the true festival girls are pretty much rocking like nothing almost naked, just bathing suits with either raver boots or crazy skirts.  Most likely because they wanna keep their bodies cool, because of the recreational vitamins they be taking, lol.

The view from the top, the goal was to make it over to VIP.  They had two sections, the right side and left side.  I went to both, right side was supper packed so I ended up on the left side.

Made it!  VIP guest area was over past that gate. Security was super tight you had to scan in and out at all the VIP/Guest areas.

The VIP area over by the main stage had the free juice.  They had all the phones covered, it came in handy on Saturday night.

Ay let me get a drank, the buzz from that bottle of wine was wearing off.  I actually drank about 85% of it before getting in, savage, lol. Def got a couple Jack and cokes.

It got real. These dudes wanted a better view I guess.

Later Saturday night it started to rain but people were still having fun, it didn’t matter that it was drizzling, people were there to have a good time.  The VIP area was sponsored by T Mobil and they were giving out rain panchos, so that helped, Shout out VIP.  I got a pic of Flosstradamus when they hit the stage but missed it when they brought out Vic Mensa.

Floss repping!

This was the T Mobil VIP area, this festival goer (Marianna) was ready for the rain tho, she had that umbrella, thinking ahead!

The cool thing about Spring Awakening is that they had multiple stages through out Soldier Field, I believe 4 small stages and then the main stage.  3 out door stages, the main stage and silent disco stage.  This is one of them. This one was to the left as you entered the festival.

This stage was off to the left over at the end of the stadium.

This  stage was one of the other bigger ones, next to the entrance on the left after the first smaller stage.

This is why you don’t wear nice shoes to a festival.  Keep your festival shoes on deck, festival season has just started!

Besides being able to buy mixed drinks in the VIP area, this is another reason for you to upgrade from general to VIP, the bathrooms.  They have real bathrooms!  Porta potties are ok, but usually the lines are long af, and fucked up by the end of the night.  In VIP, no lines and bathrooms are clean af! Super super win!

Festival food ain’t so bad, they had Cheesies!

Spidy was out here!

Darth Vader, Miss Darth Vader, and Dead Mouse.

Saturday night, after Floss’s set I had to head up north, to the homie Joes crib, over in the gold coast, like a 3 mile bike ride, we had planned to check out my bro Mattboywhite’s set at sub 51.  So I hopped on the Divvy and took my ass up north, not bad, gave me a chance to sober up.  Low key I was kinda sore the day after, just a little from all the Divvying.  Don’t forget if you hop on Divvy, make sure to grab the app, it will save you lots of time!  I took hella pics from all night, but yeah, I feel like it’s way to many pics to post.  I wish I could post videos with out having to upload to youtube, but I did this gif.

We showed up to Sub 51 and the home Nikhil already had a couple of bottles waiting for us.

Me and the homie Nikhil, at sub51 for Mattboywhites set.

Spotted the homie AyKidShots

Squad for the night!

Mattboywhite killed it!

We shut sub 51 down, made it home hella late.  After this we hit up our favorite after hours food spot, Jubilee.  I rode the Divvy back to the shop hella drunk at like 4 am, sober up tho.  I made it home safely, thank GOD!

Till Next Year Soldier Field!  Super thanks to React and Spring Awaking Music Festival for hooking it up with the VIP 3 Day passes.  This is the 3rd year I have gotten a chance to check it out and its always dope!  I appreciate all the opportunities we get and I feel blessed to be able to do some of the things we get to do! Blessed!