Levitate Festival
On a very hot July day we attended the Levitate music festival in Marshfield at the fair grounds. It started as a very small festival in 2013 and has evolved into a huge event. It’s now three days, though you can buy tickets for one day or all three. We got tickets for Saturday since Sublime with Rome was playing and we enjoy their music. Tickets were about $100 a piece so not cheap by any means. They were expecting about 20,000 people. I was in awe looking around at everyone. At least the people watching was good. Gates opened at 11:30 but we decided to go about 3:30 as Sublime with Rome was playing at 4pm and it was hot as you know what outside. There were a few different options for parking. You could prepay for a spot for about $25 or park in a lot for $20 a little farther away or you could park at the high school/middle school for free and take the shuttle. Originally we tried to drive to the school but couldn’t find a close spot in their parking lot. So we decided to splurge for the $20 parking. There was still a bit of a walk getting into the festival as they only had the gates open in the back. I thought this was a little strange. We were herded through like cattle. There were a lot of people coming in the same time as we did. Eventually we made it though security and into the chaos. For some reason my stomach kept beeping when the lady waved the wand over me. And did I say it was hot?
First things first, we decided to grab a beer. The line was very long but it moved fairly quickly. Dh wanted the special souvenir metal cups ($10 each) and then the beers were $8. For those who didn’t want to drink, or were underage or just wanted to stay hydrated, there was a station set up for free water. I learned this ahead of time so we each brought a thermos with us. We started to wander to get a lay of the land. There were a lot of different tents set up with various art and products to sell. There were food stands on the perimeter of the fair grounds. They had quite a variety from pizza to tacos to standard fair food (ie fried dough) to a vegan stand to Asian dumplings. We walked around to where Sublime was starting up but couldn’t get close enough to see. The acoustics were awful. We stood there and listened for a while. Some people brought chairs with them but I didn’t want to carry one. After a while I wish I had a chair though. People also brought blankets to sit on but most people were standing. There were three different stages so the music was continuous.
After that we decided to stand in line for a taco. A very long line and it was hot. And after about 10 minutes dh said that there was no way he was going to be happy with this taco after we eventually made it to the front of the line. So we got out of line and started to wander again. We found some free samples of these chick pea jax things and tried to get into the VIP section. Remember Jax from when you were a kid? Those orange cheese curl things that left an orange residue on your fingers? Well, now you can be an adult and eat adult “healthy” vegan cheese curl things. They were okay. But, I digress. We didn’t know the VIP section was a super secret special place. More wandering brought us to another food area with much better choices. We saw the Rivershed, one of our favorite restaurants. We got 2 pulled pork sliders for $9. They were delicious. And there was a bench in a shady spot so we got to rest for a minute. After that, the bathrooms were close by so we took the opportunity. They had regular bathrooms and port a potties. We both chose the regular bathroom (another thing you do when you’re an adult and feel very out of place because everyone is at least 10 years younger). It was pretty clean. Then we decided we had enough. It was super hot out and none of the other bands interested us. All in all we were there for about 2.5 hours. Certainly not worth over $200 (between tickets, parking, beer and food). It was cool to experience it once but I wouldn’t go back. Way too many people and I’m way too old for this. lol.