The Governor's Ball. 3 full days of music on a small New York Island. This festival plays every year in early June on Randall's Island Park, in the east village of Manhattan. There are around 150,000 attendees that show, making it a pretty well known festival. What makes this festival stand out is the diverse amounts of people that attend, mostly due to the diversified area that is New York City.
The way in which the festival first started is pretty unique as well. An interview was conducted by Consequence of Sound with one of the festival's primary founders, Jordan Wolowitz. The story is that Wolowitz and the other founder, Tom Russel, met in boarding school at fifteen years old where their love of music allowed their imaginations to grow together. Years later, they worked at a marketing company that promoted other festivals across the country until they left to create a festival of their own. Before Governor's ball there had never been an independently produced festival, in addition to a festival never being able to last in New York City. But they found that the key was diversity, which satisfies the wants of many different ranges of people that subside in NYC.
 |
| From Everfest |
There are a number of various activities and speciality areas around the island. The Gov Ball offers lounges, bars, viewing decks and balconies for the people that need to catch a breath. In addition to the typical bar that serves alcohol, Gov Ball has a candy bar and even a braid bar! Yes, a braid bar; where anyone can get their hair braided for free. There are photo booths, life sized board games, an autograph signing booth and even mini golf. Despite there being actual live music to listen to, anyone would be fully entertained with all these attractions otherwise. There are also handfuls of food trucks, cafes, sandwich shops, and some fat American burgers to satisfy any taste your brain possibly conjure up (it is NYC so you can expect the food to be just as diverse as the city).
Being from NYC, Wolowitz and Russel made a point to try to schedule many different groups of artists attempting to cover almost all genres of music. Some of those genres include indie and alternative rock, folk, hip-hop, EDM and pop. The 2018 lineup consists of: Jack White, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Post Malone, James Blake, Maggie Rogers, 6Lack, Travis Scott, Halsey, The Gaslight Anthem, Eminem, N.E.R.D, Khalid, Lil Uzi Vert, Sylvan Esso, Margo Price, and Billie Eilish. The shows start at noon every day and end around 11 pm every night. There are four stages spatially placed apart throughout the Island making it easy to move from one stage to the next.
 |
| From The New York Times |
It seems to be a common theme that music festivals like to incorporate visual art into the already stimulating auditory experience. The Gov Ball hires mostly local street artists, in addition to some international artists, of their interest to decorate the venue. A lot of the art is two-dimensional with the exception of a few interactive pieces. If you're interested with what the 2017 art entailed, check it out here.
 |
| From StreetArtNews |
And finally, the fashion. The trends at the Gov Ball are comparable to Coachella and Lollapalooza just with more of an edgier feel. For the girls, a lot of outfits incorporate different kinds of tights, sheer/lace tops, capri pants or shorts, and mostly sandals or sneakers. The majority of guys aren't as fashionably wild at this festival compared to others that I have previously discussed, so they tend to wear shorts, tanks tops/t-shirts with their own personal flare. Billboard provided their own take of the nine most admirable fashion finds at last years festival.
Festival Tip: Don't waste your time waiting for a shuttle bus, its only a 20 minute walk across the bridge!
Comments
Post a Comment