I was very excited when I first heard about Outside Lands Music Festival.  After all, it's in beautiful Golden Gate park.  You get to spend a weekend in San Francisco(instead of, oh, Indio).  And you know you won't melt in the usual summer heat most festivals are plagued with.

I believe the organizers are the same group that do Bonnaroo each year.  You would think they have enough experience to put on a good show...not so.  While the artists who participated were first rate, the event was so poorly planned it really put a damper on the experience.

Let's start with the layout.  Because GG park is so narrow, the event and its six stages were spread in a very strange configuration.  The main stage and Twin peaks stage were so far apart, it almost felt like two separate festivals.  To get to the Sutro Stage, you had to walk through one of two narrow passages--can you say 'bottleneck'??  Not surprisingly, several fences were knocked down as the night wore on--people get cranky.  

Next--bathrooms and concessions.  Not enough of either.  Bathroom lines were continuously 20+ minutes as were beer lines.  Once the sun went down, everyone was watering the trees.

And probably my biggest gripe: transportation.  Being San Francisco, the organizers made it a big point to "use public transportation".  I am a firm believer in PT myself...until you bring 60 thousand people into the equation.  There simply were not enough busses to service everyone.  Going to the event, my cousin and I were fortunate enough to catch a bus.  We were packed like sardines!  What was sad was driving past all the other bus stops on the way to the park because the bus was full.  You'd see 10-20 kids at each stop with this dejected look on their faces as the bus rode on by...  

Now, going there was bad, but at least the people were staggered--some people left early...some left on time...some left late.  But when the show was over, EVERYONE filed out of the park looking for a way back to their hotels, most staying downtown(about 8 miles away).  

I won't go into the details, but I will say we left GG Park at around 10pm when the show ended.  After failed attempts with seven cab companies and most buses going "Out of Service" at 11pm, life was not looking good.  We did make it back...at about 1am.  

On a side note, Radiohead(despite two complete sound outages) was great...as usual.