Staff! Cover those shifts! Managers! Get ready for restaurant scheduling hell. It’s summer music festival season.
Summer brings a lot of things: tourists, patios, sunshine and a flurry of time-off requests. Now that we’ve collectively decided to never physically buy music again (except for Carl who has all the limited edition Radiohead albums on vinyl), we have to attend festivals to keep up with our favorite musicians.
This means a lot of people asking for time off all on the same weekend. Worse, it’s a zero-sum game – someone needs to stay to cook and serve while the rest of the staff is off partying to a Travis Scott set while wearing nothing but electrical tape. Our advice?
- Get your requests up now.
- Guilt those who went to Coachella without you.
- Figure out who the Burners on staff are. They’ll be willing to miss Bumbershoots so they can spend a week in the desert with nothing to drink but glitter.
- Lie to get your shifts covered. Just tell people your grandparents are polyamorous and that’s why your 5th grandma has died in 3 years.
With that out of the way, here are the festivals you need to check out this summer:
Coachella, April 12 – 14 & April 19 – 21
You already missed it. But you can watch Beyonce’s 2018 performance on Netflix so it’s all good.
Bonnaroo, June 13 – 16
Nothing says “music festival” like humidity and mosquitoes. You also get to listen to 3 sets of Phish. Neat.
Lollapalooza, August 1 – 4
It recently came to my attention that Lollapalooza still exists. I’d be more interested if it was a LARP style recreation of the 90s. I’d pay all the money to watch Perry Farrell and Billy Corgan have a buffer sword battle.
Outside Lands, August 9 – 11
Paul Simon AND Childish Gambino? Counting Crows? Lil Wayne? Blink 182? This is worth considering just because it makes no sense whatsoever.
AFROPUNK Fest Brooklyn, August 24 – 25
And for something a little different, AFROPUNK is serving up FKA Twigs, Kamasi Washington, Death Grips and Burnt Sugar Arkestra. I’m going to need a Saturday covered. I’m willing to pay AND trade. Hit me up.