I have done this walk once with a friend and once by myself and probably wouldn't do it again. Both times there was nobody else from the fest walking that far north. If you can catch a Western bus (or get really lucky and get a Kedzie bus) you'll get there faster anyway.
Well put. There's a ton of police presence during the festival, and almost always a decent enough crowd going to/from both Pink Line stations that I've never felt unsafe there. That walk to the Blue Line is certainly a little sketchier though.
I want to stress that I don’t have this information from any source other than a friend who lives nearby. Was simply relaying what he told me. Not trying to fear monger at all.
The walk to the blue line definitely falls under "exercise increased caution and consider having someone walking with you". I'm in no way saying that there is a 0% chance something will happen to you, just that a lot of the above points are what republicans who have never been to this city are saying lately about this city being extremely unsafe to live in or visit. That being said, I would advise against taking the subway (if not in a large group of festival attendees) post-midnight. The later you take certain lines (red, blue, etc.) the sketchier they get, coming from experience.
In 2018 Idles played Chicago the same weekend as Riot, I was really surprised Riot didnt booked them instead. I saw them at Lolla this year and while their crowd was small there was a nice pit. Unfortunately is a band that can fit Lolla, Pitchfork and Riot, but hopefully one day!
I’m definitely anxious, but it’s important to remember that 50K people attend Riot every year and keep attending despite it being in the same location. Just stay in well lit areas and walk in groups, and before you know it, you’ll be where you need to be.
I would also wager to guess crime is up in most other large cities as well. Chicago has its issues, but there has always been a media perception about Chicago being super dangerous.
Are ubers generally unattainable? Or is it just a situation where you may have to wait it out for quite some time?
Rideshares were difficult and expensive bc of the pandemic. There were still very few drivers at that point and the rates were insane for the most part. Aside from the Uber and Lyft adjusting their fees the amount of drivers has gone back up quite a bit. I would expect rideshares after the festival to be much better than last year, but it’s still going to be pretty pricy bc of surges and whatnot.
Appreciate the candor, hopefully they run more Pink line cars considering everything that happened last year.
I am here again to encourage y’all to walk a couple blocks up Ogden, eat the jerk chicken nachos from the church, and call an Uber from there or from up the road further. There’s plenty of people, you get to eat great food from some v sweet folks, and it should be cheaper and easier to get a ride.
Ubers aren't unattainable, but they're harder to get and prices surge, for sure. I remember in 2019 on Friday, we walked over a mile before we could get a signal, but that was the only issue I ever had.
Hey WeatherMan...what's it looking like? Starting to see some chances for precipitation for Saturday, but I trust the message board more than our local weather folk.
We generally Uber/Lyft our way around the city when we come. Kind of accept the price hike during festival nights but other than that it’s never too bad and the wait isn’t absurd even at the festival imo.
Last year there was a brief lightning storm during Coheed And Cambria's set. Seeing the band play the title track from IKSOSE:3 with lightnings in the background was the most epic thing I have ever seen.
I thought my final weather report was yesterday. I was wrong. Models have started to speed up the storm system that is impacting the area this weekend, so we're starting to see some more ensemble members show rain from late Saturday into Sunday. One important distinction to make here: While the individual members show rain and some of the numbers are higher than before, in this specific instance it only means that these members are showing isolated or scattered storms. That doesn't necessarily mean that Riot Fest itself will be hit. That's why weather apps can sometimes be very deceiving and/or useless in these situations - they're using an algorithm based on some weather models with very little context. On the graph above I highlighted the festival in bold and then Friday 8pm, Saturday 8pm and Sunday 8pm in the thinner lines. Based on the this data it would appear to me that we could see some isolated storms later Saturday. But the majority of members showing more notable rainfall amounts are showing it from post-festival time on Saturday into Sunday. 18/51 (35%) of members are showing some sort of notable rainfall then. We're going to get some higher resolution data later today and tomorrow that should help us really discern whether this is something we should be worried about or not. Tl;dr: Storm system has sped up so we might see some storms late Saturday and Sunday, nothing to be overly worried about right now, will get better and higher resolution data later today.
It’s not announced yet but all the metro aftershows are back on sale. Just got trio and my buddy got JEW.
Metro just released more ticket for their aftershows. Edit: wanted to buy a ticket for AK3 but it seems its sold out :(