SAN FRANCISCO — There is a moment every year when I walk into Golden Gate Park and realize that Outside Lands has officially begun, and it has nothing to do with the first artist taking the stage or even scanning my wristband at the entrance.

It is seeing the people.

Everyone is looking up at signs trying to figure out where they are going, groups are taking photos while their outfits are still clean, and people are preparing themselves for what they hope will become one of those weekends they talk about for the rest of the year.

Meanwhile, the Outside Lands veterans are wearing comfortable shoes because we have made mistakes before and have absolutely no intention of making them again.

That is usually when it hits me: We are finally here.

Outside Lands Turns a Park Into Its Own World

I have been coming to Outside Lands for years, and at this point I know exactly what I am getting myself into.

I know I am going to walk an ungodly number of steps, I know my phone battery is going to become one of my most valuable possessions, and I know there will eventually come a moment when I look at the price of something and wonder whether I really need food to survive for another few hours.

I also know I am going to love almost every second of it.

There are plenty of festivals I enjoy, but Outside Lands has always been different because it manages to take Golden Gate Park and turn it into its own little world for three days.

This year, with Charli xcx, The Strokes, and RÜFÜS DU SOL leading the lineup, that world was sold out, which is a pretty good rebuttal to anyone who has decided music festivals are somehow dying.

They are alive. My legs after the first day were less convincing.

I woke up Saturday sore enough to become painfully aware of just how much walking I had done, but somehow that did not make me dread going back.

The walking is almost part of the experience because you head toward one set, run into someone you know, stop somewhere you never planned on stopping and somehow discover an artist or conversation that becomes one of your favorite parts of the weekend.

Outside Lands Lets You Be Alone or Find New Friends

That is also why, despite how strange it might sound, I prefer going to Outside Lands alone.

Going to a festival with tens of thousands of people by yourself sounds either incredibly confident or like the beginning of a story where my mother eventually receives a phone call, but I have learned that being alone at Outside Lands rarely means actually staying alone.

When you go with a group, there are negotiations about which artist everyone wants to see, where everyone wants to eat, and why someone waited until you were halfway across Golden Gate Park to announce they needed to use the restroom.

When I go alone, I just walk, and somewhere along the way I always find people.

Some of the people I have met at Outside Lands over the years have become close friends, while others are people I seemingly see once every August when we all return to the park and pick up exactly where we left off.

A Huge Festival With a Small Festival Feel

Those interactions are part of what makes Outside Lands work for me because the festival is enormous without always feeling enormous. When you are walking between stages and bobbing and weaving through what feels like the entire population of a small city, you remember exactly how many people are there.

Once you reach the stage you wanted, find your space and settle into the music, though, the crowd somehow shrinks around you.

That was especially true when I watched Day We Ran and saw people in the crowd who were so genuinely excited that they were crying.

Watching a band is one thing, but watching people experience artists they love can sometimes tell you more about a performance than anything happening onstage.

Chezile gave me another one of those moments. I had previously seen him at Shabang, and watching him at Outside Lands reminded me that there is a difference between playing a festival and actually knowing how to perform at one.

He worked the stage and the crowd in a way that made the performance feel bigger than simply moving through a setlist.

Of course, there were also the headliners, including Charli xcx, whose Friday performance was great but also almost exactly what I expected.

The surprise came Saturday when she joined The Strokes for “Take It Or Leave It,” and hearing that song with a massive festival crowd around me became one of those reminders of why festivals can still create something a normal concert cannot.

Still, one of the performances that meant the most to me all weekend came nowhere near the top of the poster.

Watching Performers Grow

I met Haute & Freddy at Portola, where we ended up talking for probably 30 minutes, so watching them at Outside Lands felt different from the beginning. I was supposed to be paying attention in the way I normally do when I know I am going to write about something, but somewhere during their set I stopped thinking like a writer and started feeling like I was watching friends succeed.

Hearing them perform “Shy Girl” was one of my favorite musical moments of the weekend, but what stayed with me happened afterward when Haute grabbed my arm and told me, “Look at us now.”

There was something incredibly satisfying about that moment because they were right. Their career is growing, they were playing Outside Lands, and I had the privilege of watching a small part of that journey happen.

What made the interaction even better was what I did not do afterward. I did not ask them to recreate it for a video, I did not ask for a photo, and I did not immediately think about how I could turn the interaction into content. We simply got to have the moment.

I had a similar interaction with Magnus Ferrell, who was a late addition to Outside Lands and was making his festival debut. I walked over, shook his hand and congratulated him, and that was enough.

Working around entertainment can sometimes make you believe every interaction has to become content, particularly when you are surrounded by phones, cameras, and people documenting practically every second of their weekend.

My friend, who works in San Francisco, taught me to live in the moment and trust that wherever you are, you are supposed to be there.

Outside Lands reminded me of that several times because some of the best interactions I had all weekend were the ones that never made it to Instagram.

You Can Avoid Activations or Join, Doesn’t Change the Experience

That does not mean the festival is untouched by the commercial side of festival culture.

There are activations everywhere, but I have never understood why their existence is supposed to ruin my weekend when nobody is forcing me to enter them.

I went to the ones I wanted to visit, including Athletic Brewing, which made sense because its presence offered another way for people to experience a festival that has traditionally been surrounded by alcohol.

There were nonalcoholic beer tastings, giveaways and even a map where festivalgoers could mark where they had traveled from.

“Live music is all about bringing people together, and fans today are looking for more variety and choice when they attend festivals and concerts,” Chris Furnari, senior communications manager at Athletic Brewing Company, told me.

“Through our partnership with Live Nation, we have an incredible opportunity to introduce Athletic to tens of millions of live music fans, connect with them directly at festivals and concerts, showcase our newest brews, and create positive brand experiences by meeting consumers where they already are.”

If you are a non-drinker or just want to try something new, expect to see them at a festival.

That idea of choice is important because there should not be one correct way to attend a music festival. Some people want to drink, some want to stay sober, some want to spend the entire day running between stages, and others want to explore every food vendor and activation they can find.

I am also not going to pretend festival prices are not ridiculous simply because I love Outside Lands.

I save for this festival because I know what I am getting myself into, and I would spend the money again because it remains my favorite festival. At the same time, cheaper food across festivals would make these experiences accessible to more people, and I do not think acknowledging that somehow makes someone anti-festival.

Besides, if I am going to complain about spending money, I should probably disclose the amount of BeatBox I bought toward the end of the night.

Thankfully, I had ZBiotics. It is a little drink you take before consuming alcohol that saves you from a morning-after headache. We call that preparation.

At the End, I Wished We Had More

By Sunday night, my photographer friend and I were walking toward RÜFÜS DU SOL after what had already been a very long weekend. I had met artists, reconnected with friends, made new ones, watched people I supported succeed, and probably walked enough miles to qualify for some kind of athletic achievement that nobody was going to give me.

When we finally reached the set, we just stood there.

After spending three days thinking about where I needed to go next, who I needed to talk to, and what I needed to cover, there was something nice about simply standing in the crowd and realizing that I was exactly where I wanted to be.

It also made me think about my own career and how strange it can be to wonder whether you belong in the rooms, festivals, or spaces you find yourself in. Somewhere between the people I had met, the artists who remembered me, and the friends who had become part of my annual Outside Lands tradition, I realized I was not asking myself that question anymore.

I belonged there.

Outside Lands Needs to Stay Outside Lands

That is why I hope Outside Lands never loses the thing that makes it Outside Lands.

The lineup will change, prices will probably continue to make me question whether hunger is really that serious, and there will inevitably be another activation promoting something I did not know could possibly need a festival activation, but none of that is what brings me back.

I come back because I can walk through those gates alone and know there is a good chance I will not feel alone for very long. I come back because people I met along the way have become some of my closest friends, while others have become familiar faces I get to rediscover every August. I come back because there are still moments when an artist can grab my arm and say, “Look at us now,” and I can understand exactly what they mean.

Outside Lands has a beautiful way of transporting you out of the real world for a weekend, and maybe that is why the hardest realization always arrives on Sunday night.

No matter how many times I have gone, I always manage to forget one thing when I arrive on Friday: Eventually, it ends.

Golden Gate Park goes back to being Golden Gate Park, everyone heads home, and I start waiting until we can all do it again.

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