Pacific Festival OC

What a magical music festival! You know those perfect breezy summer nights by the water... when you see the sunset and you think about how lucky you are to live in SO CAL... yup...this is PAC FEST.

Yeah, there are a lot of "BRO-ISH" guys, crowd isn't the greatest, and I hated that I had to make a trek to the porter potties from the beer garden... but WOW the music (sneaky sound system, goldroom, mayer hawthorn, poolside, bag raiders, capital cities... )  and the location of the festival were PERFECT for summer...

So put on your bathing suit, bring a couple of fun open minded friends, and do some pregaming... PAC FEST will provide everything else.

ENJOY!

A friend found out about this festival going on at Newport Dunes over Labor Day Weekend and we thought it might be a fun way to spend the day. Plus, we were excited about some of the acts that would be there: Poolside, Yacht, and Mayer Hawthorne, to be specific. Since we got wind of it kind of late in the game we had to pay about $60 for our tickets ($55 plus fees, blech). But all told, for an all-day fest it didn't seem TOO bad. It was supposed to start at noon but when we got there around 1pm it was just barely getting started. Getting to the right parking lot was a little confusing because they didn't make it clear which side was the festival parking and which was the RV park area, so we and a bunch of other festivalgoers had to go through the gate and hang a U. After getting through security (there's a long list of what you CAN'T bring in, including absolutely no outside food or drink or even previously opened sunscreen!) we meandered about to check out the different areas, like the food village with various food trucks (bacon mania, sushi on the roll, lime truck, epic burritos, bear flag fish co, daphne's, and lemondade stand). As with most transactions throughout the day, cash was king--you had to buy food and drink tickets with cash ($5 for each food ticket--most food items were 1 or 2 tickets, but water and red bull you could buy without a ticket-$3). Drink tickets would run you--$7 for beer and wine tickets and $9 for cocktail tickets, so typical festival-gougey prices. Oh well, just goes with the territory.

The two performance stages were set up across a footbridge connecting the two sides of the bay. The secondary stage was closer to the entrance and food area, and the main stage was closer to the big beach area with bar and a bunch of cool inflatable rafts and human hamster balls that were complimentary, which we thought was pretty nice, considering they probably could've charged you for that, too! Roxy had a pretty big presence there with funky boho tents, head band making stations (it was hilarious to see drunk frat guys rocking the leather and feather headbands) and a psychic medium, of all things. They also provided a bunch of the floaties. It was a gorgeous day--warm enough to want to go into the water. They had a bunch of umbrellas set up and had encouraged people to bring towels to hang out on. After chilling on the beach for a while with some drinks we decided to go floating on the water. Definitely one of the highlights was being able to bring your drink with you in the water. One of the lowlights was how slimy the water's edge was--ew. More than a few people slipped and slid on that stuff. We floated around enjoying the water and the sun and then headed off to the Main Stage to see some bands.

Poolside was great, but were plagued by some technical problems in the beginning, and DJ Cassette rocked the house after that. Then it was time for some grub. I got the Adobo pork belly Epic Burrito, which was good, but the pork belly could've been a bit more tender. I tried some of their nuclear chili sauce with ghost chili and two other hot-ass peppers and it unleashed my mucous floodgates like crazy--bracing! My friend had the Cali Burrito, with steak, fries and avocado--looked pretty good. I don't know if they were worth $10 each, but again, you don't come to these things to save money on food. After din din it was more music action on the second stage, with a blistering set by Steed Lord (the lead singer was this bionic tattooed Barbie-looking woman, awesome!), Sneaky Sound System (more technical difficulties with the singer's mic cutting out in a few spots, but she sounded great otherwise), and an existential dilemma when we were trying to decide if we should see Mayer Hawthorne or Yacht, since they were in competing time slots. We got all King Solomon on this and caught a bit of the more mellow MH on main stage before finishing up the night rocking out to Yacht on second stage.

All told, we spent about 10 hours out there and we thought it was a pretty good deal. We got to see some bands we liked in a fairly intimate setting (seeing Yacht with just a few hundred people was really cool) and we liked being able to relax on the beach and all that. What was not cool were all the drunk douchebags barreling their way to the fronts of stages and being total DICKS to the rest of the crowd. I happened to run into fellow Yelper Drew M who was being accosted by such said DICK and all you can do is shake your head at how completely inconsiderate and clueless some people are. And, of course, the porta potties were a complete disaster by the end--bring lots of handi-wipes! I might consider going again next year, depending on the lineup. At least it's close and pretty manageable.

The Pacific Festival is Orange County's lone summer offering in the way of 1-day music festivals. This year Identity took the party from its previous Oak Canyon Ranch location, scaled back the lineup, and set up shop in Newport Dunes.

LOCATION
This was quite possibly the most perfect setting for a music festival. I made the treks to Outside Lands and Coachella this year, and while I'll refrain from the lineup comparisons, I did remark around 4:00 that afternoon that I was the most comfortable I'd ever been at a music festival. The sun was out, but not oppressive, people were playing in the ocean, laying out (I very much regret not bringing a beach towel), dressed mostly in swimwear, and even at night it didn't get below 72°.

EVENT LAYOUT
It was a very manageable 3-stage setup. The Main Stage hosted the larger names like Poolside, Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr., and the headliner Mayer Hawthorne. The Identity Village, which featured the VIP area directly in front of the stage, was reserved for all of the DJs playing electronic music. The CAMM Stage showcased the more indie-electro-pop acts like Sneaky Sound System and YACHT. The walks between the stages were short, yet there wasn't really any sound bleed between them. You gotta think these folks have it figured out.

FOOD & DRINK
There were a few decent food offerings -- some notable names like the Lime Truck, Daphne's Greek Cafe, and Bear Flag Fish Company had booths in the tickets-only Food Village. Red Bull was apparently the beverage sponsor of the day; Aqua Hydrate was the obligatory $3/bottle water vendor.

CROWD
A week or so prior, YACHT put out a call on their Facebook page announcing their upcoming appearances: "New York City! Chicago! Affluent Southern California!" You definitely got a healthy dose of the bro-ey Orange County coastal crowd, scantily clad, but not too badly behaved. I think we first saw people throwing up around 3:30, which was later than I thought they'd hold out. With relatively thin attendance, however, we weren't subject to the suffocating madness of being front-and-center of any of the stages. It was a pleasant surprise that seeing our favorite acts within a yard of the stage was a mostly pleasant experience (and if you were dumb enough, you got to crowd-surf on an inflatable swan at some point). You'll get the occasional pushy, drunk asshole who thinks they belong at the front even though they got there halfway into the set, but once he or she is handled (or passes out on their own, yay festival Darwinism!), you're golden.

MUSIC
So the lineup this year was a shadow of last year's festival, which was headlined in 2011 by Snoop Dogg, Ghostland Observatory, and Cut Copy, but this year still brought in some phenomenal acts if you knew which ones to see. I'm pretty sure that during the 5:00-8:00 sets I missed some good ones, because this was the only time that the festival lagged for me. A handful of DJs at the Identity Village were spinning a range of house and EDM, Sneaky Sound System and YACHT rocked the CAMM Stage, and the strains of Mayer Hawthorne I could hear as I left the festival almost made me wish I'd stayed til the end.

SCHEDULE MANAGEMENT
This is where Identity loses points. I don't know how they can't seem to control artists that play past their allotted time, but there was a point at which one stage was a set and a half behind. This resulted in artists' sets being cut short, unhappy fans, and a staff that couldn't do much besides blame the previous bands.

Overall, it was a good festival in its own right, and the perfect way to spend a gorgeous Newport day.