A Coachella Survival Guide for Locals Not Going to Coachella

The Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival is back for another year and with it comes over 100,000 festies, celebrities, hipsters, and naked wizards to the Greater Palm Springs area.  Of course, that also means there will also be tons of traffic, some arrests, a bunch of brands throwing weird parties and, sadly, plenty of douchebags.

So how does a local not going to the festival survive?  Here is an easy survival guide:

1) Go to Costco now!!!

Beginning Thursday night, Costco, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, Total Wine, and other Coachella Valley stores will be packed with people buying up all the booze, water, booze, food, and even somehow even more booze. Get in there now, before the crowds arrive, so you do not have to overhear everyone in the store talk about how hip they are.

2) Those wristbands are a good warning system

When Coachella first started, paper tickets were used to get in and out of the festival – but now, everyone has to wear a wristband. This is easier for security at the festival’s gates and for you to see who is dehydrated and hungover on Sunday morning without them even saying a word.  The special VIP wristbands are a particularly good way to warn you that someone is most likely a spoiled rotten, Orange County douchebag.

3) Maybe, oh I don’t know, avoid the festival area throughout the weekend and the freeway on Monday morning

IMG_1799
(Kristen Dolan)

Traffic going into the Empire Polo Club has gotten better over the years, what with campers arriving on Thursday instead of everyone arriving at 5 pm on Friday.  But, everyone leaves at the same damn time every year.  Don’t even think about heading west on the 10 Monday morning and, if you can, just avoid the area near the Polo Club from Thursday through Monday.

4) Remember, people watching can be great this time of year

I would say my favorite people watching moment came a few years back in the Cathedral City Trader Joe’s on the Friday afternoon of the festival.

While waiting in line, I overheard a conversation between 4 women, where they discussed leaving their car in the Trader’s parking lot and just “walking into the festival to avoid traffic”.  None of them bothered to notice that the Coachella grounds were 21 miles away…who knows, maybe they have made it to the Polo Fields by now.

Whether you encounter these people in person or prefer to kick back and see the videos and pics like the one above from the comfort of your own couch, people watching is at its peak over the next couple of weeks.

5) Go out to dinner, not breakfast

(Stuft Pizza)

Festival goers who stay outside of the grounds will undoubtedly go out for breakfast making everywhere that serves eggs, bacon, and toast totally packed. But come dinner time, they will be at Coachella. That, combined with the lack of hotel rooms available for regular tourists and the elders having gone back to Washington and Canada means restaurants should have plenty of seating for you at night.

6) Couch-Chella it

It’s amazing to me that Coachella just gives away its performances for free online, but they do.  Before they figure out they could make even more money from the live stream, grab a tasty craft beer, some takeout, and pull up the fest on your Apple TV.

7) Just be happy these people are not the snow birds

No matter how bad some of the Coachella Festival attendees can act – it’s just nice to have a break of the entitlement and insane driving of the Snowbirds. Plus, the mass arrival of hipsters is usually a sign that The Coachella Valley’s Snowbird population has begun their migration back north.