Wither, Riot Fest? The annual, independently run, born-in-Chicago music festival is back in Douglass Park this weekend, and opened with the long-deferred headliner My Chemical Romance Friday night.
Some of the biggest bands on the bill for the rest of the weekend include The Misfits and Yellowcard (Saturday), and Nine Inch Nails, Yeah Yeahs and Sleater-Kinney (Sunday).
The topic outside the gates this summer has been location, location, location. Criticism has gained speed over the use of city parks for big fests put on by private companies, with Riot Fest a conversational flash point. Opponents say festivals take the parks away from their surrounding communities; the West Side Douglass Park was also used this summer by Lyrical Lemonade Summer Smash (hip-hop music, June 17-19) and Heatwave Festival (EDM, July 16-17) and in each case, portions were blocked off by fencing as organizers set up in advance.
As Riot Fest opened, crowds streamed in all afternoon, with no in-person protests spotted other than “NO RIOT FEST IN OUR PARKS” spray painted on a fence. Inside, lawns filled up quickly, even by midafternoon. The topic of the day was instead My Chemical Romance, finally here.
“I’ve been waiting literally years,” said Emily Kelly, a student at Illinois State University in town for the fest. She had tickets to see them in 2020 when they were first slated to headline and the fest was shut down by the pandemic. The band was then planned for 2021 but canceled all tours until 2022. Kelly deferred her tickets yet again, she said. “I knew the day would come eventually.”
By the time the alt rockers went on at 8:30 p.m., the crowd filled the Riot main stage and stretched all the way back to the Rise stage, across the sports fields. Claims on social media afterward were that the festival, with an official daily capacity of 40,000, had been oversold and was over capacity, with inadequate staffing to assist those in the mosh pit.
My Chemical Romance opened with new song “The Foundations of Decay,” lead singer Gerard Way resplendent in a headscarf, double-breasted overcoat and oversized sunglasses. After a fast couple songs, Way stopped the show and asked for lights to be turned on the crowd. The mosh pit at the front had become too much and everyone needed to take three steps backward.
“If you feel like you want to get out, if you feel like you’re gonna pass out, there are people here to help you,” he said.
The band launched back in with “Give ‘Em Hell, Kid,” raced through a couple more songs and then paused again. The crowds had shoved forward again. Crowd surge and audience safety have been topical at big music fests and concerts, particularly since a tragedy at the Astroworld music festival in Houston last year when 10 fans died from compression asphyxia in an overpacked crowd to see rapper Travis Scott.
“If anyone else needs to come out, can you pass them forward?” Way asked. “OK, I’m going to step away for now. Look around you. If someone is down, pick them up.”
Messages posted on video screens alongside the stage asked fans to look out for each other. The band resumed but continued to pause its set every few songs. Fans on Twitter later reported being unable to breath, to witnessing others on the ground with injuries. A spokesperson for the Chicago Fire Department said they had only two emergency calls from the festival from the night, though they acknowledged Riot Fest has its own on-site medical staff.
Representatives for the festival told the Tribune they would look into questions of crowd sizes but have not yet responded.
At the end of the night, My Chemical Romance closed its second encore with “Cancer” and the crowds shifted toward the exit. It was slow going, some waiting 45 minutes or more to exit.
Earlier in the afternoon, a trio of friends from Logan Square took a break after seeing post-punk band Algiers on the Rebel stage. Asked where they got their taste for the kind of mix of alt, punk, metal and hip-hop that Riot Fest dishes up, Shannon Dunne said from her sister when she was younger.
“I stole her MP3 player,” she said.
They had heard the concerns about music festivals taking over parks and said it was on their minds. Friends Brandon Nyland and Erin Dwyer wondered if simply allowing exit and reentry on general-admission tickets could encourage fest-goers to support surrounding businesses more.
Lines for food vendors inside the park wound their way from the food tents, back past the carnival rides in the midway and across the baseball diamonds by the Rise stage.
Dunne pointed to Summerfest in Wisconsin. “I think we need to take a page from Milwaukee’s playbook,” she said, and have grounds set aside just for music festivals.
A proposal by Park Board President Myetie Hamilton earlier this week would require a board vote to OK large festivals such as Riot Fest — such permits had previously been approved directly by the superintendent, reducing the chance for public comment. Riot Fest, for its part, fired its event organizer and apologized after a community meeting in early August went south. It has also tried various community outreach programs such as hiring staff from the neighborhood and offering advance free admission to anyone in a four-block radius.
So will Riot Fest be back in Douglass Park next year? To quote Magic 8 Ball, cannot predict now. The festival, launched in 2005, was previously in Humboldt Park until 2015.
For the weekend, though, Dwyer said Douglass Park was a little like the hipster Logan Square South.
“I think if you collected everyone’s’ piercings from this festival and melted them down,” she said, “you could build a new Bean.”
Riot Fest runs noon (gates open 11 a.m.) to 10 p.m. Sept. 16-18 in Douglass Park, 1401 S. Sacramento Drive. The main entrance is at the corner of W. Ogden Avenue and Sacramento. Tickets and more information at riotfest.org
dgeorge@chicagotribune.com
