Outside Lands 2023

Outside Lands is reaching a major milestone this year in hitting the 15th edition mark. The road to Coachella, Lollapalooza and Bonnaroo level name recognition and staying power is littered with bygone festivals left by the wayside. Yet Outside Lands has cemented itself as a beloved brand that’s here to stay. Looking back, this was no certainty. It wasn’t always “Sunshine, (weed) Lollipops and Rainbows.”

Sure, they’re bringing in 220,000+ blissful fans and selling out well in advance like clockwork now. But the inaugural event in 2008 saw struggles with crowd control and drew complaints from the quiet neighborhoods of the Richmond and the Sunset that border Golden Gate Park to the north and south respectively. In 2009, they scaled down to just two days after the Beastie Boys dropped out following Adam Yauch’s tragic, ultimately fatal cancer diagnosis.

There’s a beautiful legacy through this historical connection though. It’s the continuation of live music events in what is arguably the most beautiful festival setting in the country. Yauch hosted his first of a dozen Tibetan Freedom Concerts on the sacred Polo Field grounds in 1996, to huge success in attendance, critical reception and fundraising alike. Outside Lands continues this tradition of progressive ideas within the live music space in Golden Gate Park.

In 2019 they became the first major music festival to sell legal cannabis on site. It was a long overdue move towards the normalization of an overcriminalized substance, the policing of which has caused unconscionable levels of harm. This year they are introducing a new stage, OASIS @ Dolores’. OASIS is an internationally renowned drag and cabaret night club in San Francisco, owned by D’Arcy Drollinger. Drollinger was recently announced as the first ever San Francisco Drag Laureate by mayor London Breed. It’s a beautiful thing to see a player as big as Outside Lands celebrating the LGBTQIA+ community via an established stage within its programming, particularly as the United States faces major challenges to established human rights, from Roe v. Wade to same-sex marriage. Furthermore, it’s a reflection of San Francisco’s storied status as a bastion of LGBTQIA+ rights and culture, from Harvey Milk and Sylvester to Peaches Christ and Honey Mahogany.

This year’s fest went off without a hitch, mostly. The popular SOMA tent was shut down early in the day Friday after a partial stage collapse. Fortunately no one was injured. But an attempted reopening on Saturday only lasted a few hours before the tent was closed again. Finally on Sunday SOMA was fully reopened, but this time as an outdoor dance party, not as an enclosed space. This did away with the nightclub experience, but also eliminated the long lines to enter. Another highlight, or perhaps a hijinx, came in a very San Francisco-centric moment. Autonomous, self-driving cars, also known as robotaxis, were just approved this week for 24/7 driving in the city. On Saturday night, 10 of these Cruise cars all stopped on the same intersection creating a major traffic jam. The company’s official response was “A large festival posed wireless bandwidth constraints causing delayed connectivity to our vehicles.” For those who oppose this recent expansion of service, Outside Lands may have provided some valuable and valid fodder for an argument against it. Another great community service by Outside Lands, albeit unintentionally.

Here are two of the stand out sets:

Interpol - 8/11 - 8pm - Sutro Stage

Interpol has never put a song into the top 40 of the billboard charts. They’ve never gotten particularly close either. Yet their legion of adoring fans keep them as relevant as ever. The quality of their artistic output remains very high with each release, whereas some of their early 00s rock revival contemporaries may have hung it up or tailed off. However, for many, it’s the quality of their 2002 debut, Turn on the Bright Lights, that will keep them forever legends. It has been listed as an album of the decade by outlets such as Pitchfork and Rolling Stone. Other publications like NME and the Guardian have vaulted it to the ranks of among the greatest albums of all-time. The majority of us were not there at the Mercury Lounge off Houston Street in the Lower East Side to see it played in its era. It was central to that magic moment when bands like Interpol, the Strokes and Yeah Yeah Yeahs reignited the rock tradition, rescuing it from the clutches of the Limp Bizkits and Crazy Towns who then dominated the airwaves.

To see this album played in its entirety, underneath the glowing cypress trees that engulf the tucked away Sutro Stage, was a magic moment unto itself. The album opener “Untitled” was named as such as it was the song they used to warm up their live shows before the album came to fruition. The slow droning build of their signature guitar interplay is a fitting start and a fitting introduction to the band. They wrapped up the show with the album’s bonus track, “Specialist,” followed by their classic sophomore album single “Evil.” Their printed setlist had included “Slow Hands,” the first single off of Antics, but it was cut for time. Based on the fast hands on display producing a rapturous applause, I don’t think anyone minded a bit.

REPARATIONS - 8/12 - 3:30pm - OASIS @ Dolores’

Reparations is one of the marquee nights at San Francisco’s OASIS nightclub. It takes place on the 2nd Friday of each month. It boasts accolades of being voted the best Bay Area drag show 3 years running, and its host Nicki Jizz is the reigning Drag Queen of the year. It’s an all Black drag show that started out as an online show during the pandemic. Reparations made the jump to an in-person event on July 9th 2021, and has become a runaway success. Nicki Jizz has used the success to shine a light on systemic racism that exists within the queer nightlife scene.

Several times between performances she would drop the Reparations slogan “If you don’t come to Reparations… You’re Racist!” which the crowd would scream out with her. Despite being a smaller stage, only half of which is partially enclosed by a tent, and suffers from noise-bleed from the main Lands End stage, it was the THE event of the weekend. The highlights were too many to list in total, but here are a few:

Host Nicki Jizz speaking about the first Outside Lands she attended as a “a broke college student.” “I jumped the fence to get in, please don’t fire me Outside Lands.”

A Drag King (a mostly female performer who dresses in masculine drag and personifies male gender stereotypes) called Mudd the Two Spirit performed as the Disney character Powerline from the 1995 movie A Goofy Movie, performing the song “Stand Out,” originally recorded by gospel singer Tevin Campbell.

Militia Scunt, a recent contestant on Queen of the Universe and the Drag Queen of the Year winner in 2022, nailed the iconic “Monster” verse by Nicki Minaj. She barely got out the opening “Pull up in a monster...” before the entire crowd was rapping along.

Later on the same stage, Kochina Rude and Lisa Frankenstien, who host the weekly Saturday night event at OASIS called PRINCESS, co-hosted the Adore Delano set. Kochina is a huge advocate of the Narcan nasal spray which counteracts opioid overdose, referring to herself as the Narcan Queen. “Overdoses are very scary. They happen when your baggy, your cute little white baggy filled with powder, it’s actually something else in there maybe, and then you have an emergency. You don’t want to have an emergency at a party, right?! So what we do is give out free Narcan to our audience members, regardless. I’m not asking for your name, but I might be asking for your number!” This fun, non-judgmental delivery of advocating for an essential, life saving product was as moving as it was refreshing.

Photo credit: Alive Coverage