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There is No Limit

Austin City Limits. 2 weekends in mid October. This is the most attended music festival in the US wrangling in around 450,000 people between both weekends. This festival wasn't always this way. In years prior, the festival was mostly supporting the folk rock and alt-country genre. But as the years progressed it started to change its lineup to involve alt rock singers leading to now, where there are numerous EDM shows. This change has brought a younger crowd to the festival which contributed to the burst in attendees in the past years. The dynamics and feel of the festival is really similar to Lollapalooza in Chicago because they are both organized by the same promoter. It is spread out throughout a park and has some festive decorations everywhere. The festival is hosted in Zilker Park right in the middle of Austin, Texas.

From ACL Festival
Austin City Limits, or ACL, hosts eight different stages. Like Lolla, every stage is likely to host one kind of genre for a day in order to make it easy on people to navigate. In addition to these stages, there are a plethora of food vendors, some of which are actually restaurants in Austin. Originally there was one food court offered, but now with the expand (image above) there was another location added in the south part of the park. But in the times when a festival go-er needs to relax from the music for a bit, there are plenty of spaces to take pictures in front of artwork as well as merchandise tents. 

The transportation for this festival is a big tricky. There is a metro that people take to come from out of town but the closest stop is about forty five minutes away. So the ACL website recommends that you take the shuttles offered or an app called RideAustin. It is like Uber but just for the city of Austin. There are also charter buses offered if you are coming long distance which is nice because it takes you right to the festival. What makes it tricky though is that you have to be at designated stops and seats fill up extremely fast so you really have to be on top of it!

From TicketTail
And now for the wonderful, diverse lineup. The line up for the most recent festival in October included: Jay-Z, Martin Garrix, The XX, Foster the People, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Chance the Rapper, Ice Cube, Tove Lo, A$AP Ferg, The Killers, Run the Jewels, ZHU, and Milky Chance. As you can see the line up is pretty expansive across all genres of music, something new to the festival. Most of the shows start around noon and end around ten. After the festival, there were eight different after parties offered in Austin, for those who could keep rallying. 

From ACL Festival
The fashion is just as interesting as the previous festivals that I talked about. People strategically plan their outfits ahead of time and especially plan for the weather, considering it is Texas and it does get steamy. The fashion is comparable to Lollapalooza, it isn't as out there as North Coast or as fancy as Coachella but a perfect in-between. Timeout put together their best finds in fashion for the 2017 festival. One interesting thing that ACL does is there is a lot of people who bring large signs (take a peak at the image above). This is honestly a good trick in order for your friends to find you or for you to find your friends while in crowds of thousands of people. But if you're thinking of bringing a sign, make sure it is less than twelve feet.

Festival Tip: Walk to the farthest porta potty in order to have the cleanest bathroom experience. 

Location: Zilker Metropolitan Park, 2100 Barton Springs Rd, Austin, TX 78704, USA

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