Festival Overcrowding: It's a Trend

Christopher Victorio / OC Weekly
There was barely room for sombreros at Coachella.
​About 225,000 people attended the Coachella Arts & Music Festival over the course of its three days last month, Billboard reports. That represented a huge jump from the festival's previous record of 186,636 atendees in 2007.

It made a difference. And now it looks like ever-inflating crowd capacities at festivals is becoming a trend.

Come sundown at Coachella, it was nearly impossible to walk anywhere without worrying about tripping over some sleeping hippie and stepping on another's face. The traffic and lines around the venue on the first day earned the festival a new Twitter hashtag: #clusterfuckchella.

But hey, you imagine organizer Goldenvoice was making money, so why not.

According to the Chicago Tribune's Greg Kot, Chicago's Lollapalooza festival (Aug. 6 through 8) is bumping up its ticket sales by 20,000 for each of its three days. Previous years saw the shindig on the Lake Michigan shore sell out all 225,000 of its tickets--equivalent to Coachella's total attendance this year. Now, though, they'll be able to boost that number by 60,000.

That means more crowds at another big festival. But on the bright side, it also means more spots for Californians taking roadtrips to the Midwest for some rock n' roll. Anyone going?

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