Like every year, this year’s excitement at Lollapalooza, a music festival held inGrant Park of Chicago, wowed its visitors beyond their expectations, especially aspects other than the music.
But before they passed through the gates into the annual fist pumping nirvana, they had to battle the new security. Some succeeded, others failed. As a returning rocker of Lolla, I noticed that the festival raised the bar on security this summer. In order to see Iggy Azalea I had to pass four stages of security.
Stage one: pat down. Unfortunately, my security officer was not the Channing Tatum police stud I had in mind. Wearing gloves, the officer executed a run-down of my arms and sides looking for flasks or any shady objects. I came out clean, so I advanced to the next stage: the metal detector. What the run-down might have missed, the detector would be sure to pick up. The detector was a hand held wand which a second security officer waved down the front and back of you, once again Channing Tatum failed to make an appearance. The detector beeped at me and the officer asked me to remove what’s in my pocket. I thought there was nothing in there but I fished out a wrapped piece of gum which proved to be the cause of the beeping. Apparently these detectors didn’t just detect metal, they could find anything, even my Trident Layers. He let me keep the gum and I moved on to stage three: bag check.
The security guard, a woman a.k.a not Channing, used a small wooden baton, like a drum stick, to shift the contents of my bag around to look for unsafe objects. Depending on your officer, they may or may not ask you to open all of the cute zippered pockets fashion bags tend to have on the front and possibly even the ones on the inside. Take caution, nowhere is safe. The bag checking station is also the water bottle checking station. If you have an open, empty water bottle, you’re in the clear. My water bottle was sealed and full so the officer cracked it open and took a whiff of it. Yes, they can do this, and yes, it is irritating. The officer’s hands which had touched God knows what throughout the day had been all over my water bottle, cap included, and I was not amused.
The officer confirmed that my water bottle looked and smelled like, well, water and I was free to continue. Take note that if your full water bottle does not look and smell like water, it will be confiscated and you could land yourself in further trouble as well. This is where a lot of people get denied admittance by either being underage or causing a fuss over their bottle being confiscated. If your bottle is confiscated, calmly move on. One lost bottle is not worth missing Iggy Azalea. I finally approached the last stage of Lolla security: ticket check.
My ticket wristband was properly placed on my left wrist and I was told to wave it over a monitor before the final security gate. My last security guard lightly tugged on the wristband to make sure it was secure and that the computer chip was intact. I waved it over the monitor and it beeped and flashed green, success! My nearly hour long security excursion was over. All hope of a near Channing Tatum experience was gone but Iggy was on in ten and I wasn’t about to miss my jam, “Fancy,” after all that.
I will definitely leave myself more time to get into Lollapalooza next year. The security took only about twenty minutes for me last year, but that was because the guards simply just checked my bag and water bottle, scanned my ticket and I was done. Not anymore, friends. So leave yourself plenty of time and the smarter you are with the security, the faster it will go.
