This past weekend the Bass Network team headed to the Windy City to take over one of the nation’s largest festivals – Lollapalooza. Already beaming with excitement upon flying into Chicago, the hype level was brought to an 11 when our team flew over Lollapalooza Friday evening.
Just flew over Lollapalooza. You all look fucking MASSIVE & oh so beautiful! See you soon ;)
— Bassnectar Network (@bass_network) July 31, 2015
Community Service
Saturday morning, Grant Park stood quiet, and tens of thousands of Lollapalooza attendees rested their weary minds and bodies from their adventures the day before. Bass Network, Ambassadors, friends imbedded in the Bassnectar community, and local volunteers, all came together during the early hours of the day at the Greater Chicago Food Depository (GCFD). The GCFD is a non-profit food distribution center that provides food for hungry people and has strived to end hunger in the Chicago communities since 1979. As our group sat through orientation, we introduced ourselves and received an incredibly warm welcome.
“We are here in Chicago for Lollapalooza, and particularly the artist Bassnectar. We are a community of fans that met through the music scene, and Chicago has always shown respect and love to us. So this time around, we really wanted to give back.”
Shortly after orientation, we were brought into an ENORMOUS food storage warehouse, which could easily fit the crowds of every Bass Center multiple times over. We washed our hands, threw on our rubber gloves, aprons, stylish hair nets, epic beard nets, and we were ready to go! Our goal was to sort and repackage several tons of food – particularly pears! The GCFD staff challenged us, and the rest of the volunteers, to bag and box 10,000 lbs of pears.
Just like a Bassnectar show, two hours of sorting through thousands of pears seemed to pass in an instant. As we packaged up what was left of the pears, cleaned up the tables, and discarded our hairnets, we regrouped with the rest of the volunteers and staff to see if we met our quota. After a round of applause and a quick drum roll, the numbers were announced. Our original goal was to pack 10,000 lbs of food – we processed and packaged over 15,800 lbs!!!! All of this food will be distributed to dozens of food pantries in the neighboring communities, and given away for FREE to hungry people and families. BIG UPS to everyone who came to help out and to the GCFD for doing what they do. Nobody should ever have to go hungry :)
If you want to know more about the Greater Chicago Food Depository, you can check them out here: http://www.chicagosfoodbank.org
Scavenger Hunt
As the community service came to a close, our downtown scavenger hunt was ready for blast off. At 1:30pm our team tweeted out a clue as to where you could find 2 pairs of Sunday passes to the festival. As soon as the clue was unleashed in the Twittersphere the race began. We had multiple Bass Heads gunnin’ to our scavenger hunt location – the ferris wheel at Navy Pier. Having biked as fast as he could from Ukranian Village, our first winner claimed the first pair of tickets only 20 minutes after the initial clue was tweeted. About five minutes later our second winner came running up the stairs to claim the second pair of Sunday passes.
Ambassadors
Preparing for the massive crowd at the Bud Light stage, we brought on seven Ambassadors to hydrate the rail, plus two Bass Network team members. We had requested 15 cases of water, but easily went through more than that! As soon as Lorin began his set the Ambassadors took to the barricade, passing out water as quickly and efficiently as possible. We teamed up with Lollapalooza’s security crew to keep the crowd cool and hydrated, but it was still SO. DAMN. HOT in that crowd! Unfortunately, Mother Nature had other plans for the second half of Bassnectar’s set, and the festival had to evacuate due to severe weather headed our way (but hey, that lightning looked pretty badass during Flashback/Timestretch!!). As the crowd dispersed towards the exit, the Ambassadors all reconvened to debrief and catch some fresh air. Although the set did not go as long as we had all hoped, our entire team was dripping in sweat from crawling through the crowd to pass out as much free water as possible.
Due to the sheer chaos of the evening, we did not have time to snag a picture of our Ambassador crew – so very special thanks to:
Molli Kleeman
Bret Subsist
Pat O’Connell
Corinne Trujillo
Michael Knox
Anthony Rispoli
Angela Sanks
We will see you all at Moonrise on 8/08! ;))
–– The Bass Network Team
