The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival is a three-day annual music and arts festival held on the grounds of the Empire Polo Field in Indio, California that started in 1999. This event features many genres of music including hip hop, alternative rock, pop, and electronic music. There are also large sculptures of art around the venue grounds, like the 45-foot-tall solar powered origami crane that was pretty much dead center of the venue.
The venue is set up with two outdoor stages, Coachella Stage and Outdoor Theater, and three tent stages, Gobi, Mojave, and Sahara, that played music continuously all day until the late hours of the night. By the year 2003, Coachella had started to include camping as an option for the festival attendees.
The campground is on an adjacent polo field right next to the venue grounds. The campgrounds included a general store, karaoke lounge, and shower trucks. These shower trucks had six showers in each trailer for the campers. Lines to these showers can be a wait of up to three hours long. The temperature for the campers is pretty insane. It is, of course, a desert setting with temperatures reaching well over 100 degrees during the day and dropping drastically to the high 60’s once the sun sets. People walk around barefoot, in bathing suits, or very little clothing. Everyone is just so relaxed. This year was the first year that every attendant was given a wristband that had to be worn at all times. This wristband allowed anyone go in and out of the venue all day long, allowing them to see the only performances they wanted to be. The entire attitude of all campers around you was such a positive vibe. Everyone had the same objective: relax, be happy, and go with the flow. The average day of a camper consisted of meeting new people around their campground, dance and enjoy ice cold beverages until it was time to see the artists of choice.
Each of the performances were only a short 10 minutes apart. The quick set changes for very effective and efficient. Music played all day long, non-stop. This year the main headliners were :Jay-Z, Tiesto, and Gorillaz. Among those 3 artists there were about 130 other performances that occurred all weekend long. This year set a record high of 75,000 attendees each day of the festival.
