Saturday, 4:55 PM Call me Happy Meal®. As sudden late afternoon rains swirl and eddy overhead, we’ve been evacuated from Union Park, and the dozens of us gathered at the McDonald’s on Lake Street have the shivery, put-upon look common to dogs given an unwelcome bath. The plebes are all wet.
Like many journalists, I’ve gotten my filthy mitts on VIP passes for music festivals in the past. Sadly, the VIP experience at Pitchfork consists largely of endlessly scanning an enclosed swath of park perhaps 500 feet on a side and feeling a needling sense of disappointment that so many people you respect (and quite a few you don’t) perform similarly unimportant tasks but are obviously far better compensated for it than you. In past years, my typical response has been to sate this melancholy with Kind bars and tiny artisanal tacos. Now, my plan is to flee this nest of vipers for a wonderland whose existence I discovered only yesterday—the Chase Sapphire Lounge. Rumors abound: Blue macarons in clear boxes. A tower of antipasto that brushes the clouds. Folding fans, like the kind you see old ladies snapping and waving in Baptist churches, free for the taking. And jugs of iced tea! I must enter this realm of riches, but I have heard that the gatekeepers are merciless.
Saturday, 3:05 PM Tim humors me with an idea. Perhaps the Chase Sapphire Lounge will let him take some photos? He’s more charming than I am, I admit, but he gets nowhere. I tell the young lady with the iPad that I used to caddy for Chase CEO Jamie Dimon when I was in high school (I’m lying, but my actual high school experience was sufficiently strange that I don’t feel like I am). She stands firm, though, and points to a swinging bench outside the lounge, offering me a seat.
Saturday, 6:25 PM Union Park has finally reopened, and I see a young man drifting along on a Onewheel, which looks like a skateboard with one giant wheel sticking up through the middle. I wonder how he got into the festival with such a device, but he looks like Jesus—that is, both the Lamb of God and the character on The Walking Dead—so I assume he has special privileges. Maybe I shouldn’t have had that last CBD soda from Bangers & Lace on my way back from the portable toilets? Jesus seems to be glowing.
