My First Music Festival, Electric Zoo

Happy Tuesday everyone! I love starting my week on a Tuesday, one step closer to the weekend and this past Labor Day certainly was an epic one!  Way back in November my friend Ali convinced me to buy weekend passes to an electronic music festival in New York City as they were discounted on Cyber Monday.  For months I forgot about them until she reminded me when we were in Miami that we had plans for Labor Day – three days worth. Electric Zoo is an annual electronic music festival held every year Labor Day weekend in New York City only two miles from my apartment on Randall’s Island and my only positive going into the weekend was that I could walk there.  

On Friday and Sunday we walked to the festival via the Wards Island Bridge, also known as the 103rd Street Footbridge, passing through Harlem to get to the concert.  After thoroughly reading the rules I knew bringing my DSLR was out and did not even risk bringing a small hand held camera beacuse if unsealed chapstick or open gum were not allowed in I was not going to risk festival security confiscating my camera. In addition we also planned which acts we were going to see throughout the weekend as there is no possible way to see everyone at the festival as many artists perform and the same time across six different stages but we were able to hit most of the main performers including the ones I was most excited about – DJ Snake, Zedd, and Armin.  You can see the full lineup here and read who I was able to see below.   

On day one of Electric Zoo, Friday, I was lucky enough to not have work so we headed over an hour after the festival started in the early afternon to avoid the lines. From 2pm through 11pm we saw Party Favor, Marlo, Martin Solveig, Galantis, and DJ Snake perform.  We enjoyed the music while sipping on champagne in a can as well as vodka soda with a splash of cranberry – two delicious options – and the Big Mozz Sticks were incredible! Ps. The only song I knew all the words to was Get Low by DJ Snake and chances are you do too (check out the video here) or you can recognize it just by the lyrics –  Get, get, get, get low when the whistle blow – Get, get, get low when the whistle blow, ect. 

Saturday, day two, was supposed to be the biggest day of Electric Zoo with the most tickets sold and two of the biggest headliners, Zedd and Above & Beyond, scheduled to play but a torrential downpours put a damper on the day.   I made it through two hours of rain before leaving and am still super thankful I wore sneakers as the entire festival grounds turned into an utter mud pit only 20 minutes after it started raining.  I don’t have a ton of pictures from Saturday because when it started to rain I was INCREDIBLY thankful for my $3.99 poncho from CVS and tried not take my phone out for fear it could get wet.  Check out the last photo in this series though – you can just see the rain pouring down in the lights. And yes, I am fully aware this is a very un-EZoo outfit – #toughtooties.  (Ps. I bought  this shoulder bag for $12 the night before the festival from H&M and it held up remarkably well – you can find it here – and I picked up the scarf at the Nordstrom semi-annual.) 

Day three, the last day of Electric Zoo, we debated going to the festival for a few hours – after two days of drinking I was feeling a bit rough and I knew the grounds were going to be muddy from the night before but after the weather cleared up we decided to go.  It was definitely the most interesting day of the festival and a truly an experience to see all of the crazies completely sober.  The big draw of the night was DeadMau5 (which I learned is pronounced DeadMouse) but we we left half way through his set.  Instead our favorites were Armin and Ali was very excited to see Yellow Claw.  Oh, and more Big Mozz Sticks were had. 🙂 

My favorite act of the night was Armin van Buuren – especially when he brought out Sunnery James & Ryan Marciano who had performed earlier in the day!  Oh, and it doesn’t hurt when a world famous DJ decides to reply to your Instastory 🙂 

It definitely was aggressive to go from never having been to a music festival to buying a three-day Early Bird, all-weekend pass but I feel like I definitely got a good sense of it by the end of the weekend.  Next time three days may be a bit much but I would definitely go back for a full day! 

Have you heard of Electric Zoo?