Music Festivals Create 'Bubbles' for Live Shows

get live events going again. Michelle Luke, independent counterculture journalists at Bloomberg News, joins us for more. Thanks for joining us, Michelle, Thank you. You know, as we're trying to get things back to normal, there's a lot of different ways to go about it. One thing in particular that I know a lot of people are missing want to get back to normal with is music. Live music, music festivals. There's you know, it runs the gamut. There's a lot of

things that are going out there. But right now, music festivals are trying to create their own bubbles to get people to get out there and enjoy that once again. So they're looking at these kind two stage COVID testing. Maybe test before a few days, then you're going to get a quick test at the door, and if all's good, you can go inside and party. So there's already been one festival who tried this out. This is over the Labor Day holiday. Michelle tell us a little bit about

that and then the broader strategy overall. So that festival was called Utopia. It took place in the Poconist Mountains in Pennsylvania. It was an LGBT festival, and I think that the promoter told me that he was really looking for a wave for his community to come back together, so he was actually replicating a model that another festival did a couple of months ago, where they also did

two stage testing. And basically how it works is that before attending the festival, about four days before, you have to go to a medical facility or order it at home COVID test and those were sent to a lab and then once you got the all clear from that, you were able to sort of car pool to the festival and you and your car be placed into a quarantine area six ft apart where everyone took a rapid test.

And what was really interesting to me is that they actually managed to screen out some people who tested positive. I think in total around six attendees had to be turned away, and so a few of the attendees who managed to make it through the gates also told me that even though you know, it was extra money and a lot more effort to attend the festival, the sense of freedom that they got on the other side made

it worth it. Yeah, and I'm sure there's a lot of people that are willing to go through those steps to get out there and enjoy themselves once again. But let's talk about some of those hurdles. Obviously, there's a cost associated with this for the attendees and for the event promoters. You know, the costs are gonna I'm sure double in some parts of it. And then there's also

kind of the logistics of all of that too. I mean, it's it's more time intensive, right, You're getting tested days before the line to get inside is probably that much longer. So let's talk about some of those things. So one thing while writing this story that I wanted to figure out, you know, it's could this method work for other festivals or is it only applicable to like a certain type. And I think in general, yeah, it doesn't really work

for festivals where people aren't camping on site. Because of the nature of creating a bubble, you kind of have to stay within the ground for the entire time. Even leaving to go to like, you know, a grocery store to pick up some supplies or something could compromise everybody. So that's one of the hurdles. I think that it

doesn't really work for larger festivals like let's say Coachella. Also, the promoters told me that when it came down to the numbers, you know, he had to really beef up his staff in order to provide the kind of attention that you would need to do all of the testing and just give people sort of like reminders to wear masks and things like that. There's just more staffing needs. So his staffing costs went from ten percent to so pretty much doubled, and the testing altogether took up thirty

percent of his budget. So this wasn't really a money making operation for him. He said he saw it as more of an investment in his future because he's planning to keep doing this again. He already has another that can come for Halloween. In that specific example, I guess the prophet margin was about eight percent compared to an average oft before the pandemic, so definitely not a big money maker on that front, which you know would put a lot of promoters off. And you know we're talking

about also huge festivals like Coachella. Let's say, it would be so hard to get some of this done, and as you mentioned, if you're not camping there, it breaks the bubble. There's a lot of stuff that goes into this. But they're really looking at this model as something that could at least hold them over for now, because you know, a vaccine is still gonna take some time. Beyond that, to get people actually vaccinated in large numbers is going to take time, and in the meantime, you know, these

events promoters want to get back to action. People wanted to They want that escape. They don't want to be closed down anymore. So they're still kind of looking at this two testing stage thing as a possibility exactly. And I think it's such an interesting time for nightlife and music events. You know a lot of promoters have not been doing anything, or they've you know indefinitely post full or in some cases we've seen some festivals kind of

schedule some things for one. So you know, on one hand, I think a lot of events organizers just don't feel like it's safe to be doing anything right now, and they really pushed back on anyone throwing events. So that's another part of the conversation that I thought was very interesting.

But then you have promoters like the one who was behind this festival who really think that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and that's focusing on COVID testing is one way that they can do this now and create a community that you know, is engaged with them during this strange pandemic time. And to me, I think another side of the story was to kind of try to figure out if COVID testing is accurate

enough to make this a viable solution. To me, that's what the story really hinged on, right like can we trust the COVID testing. That's in a very important point because the classic test, the nasal swabs, the ones that are sent to labs, are a lot more reliable than these rapid response tests. So you might be getting something a few days ahead of time that says you're good, and then rapid response test the day of could give you maybe a false positive or false negative things like that.

So that's definitely another thing to be ware of. So I actually took this question all the way up to the New York City Department of Health as well as the Office of Nightlife to try and figure out as we should get some guidelines from you know, city officials, and unfortunately, you know, what was striking to me is that both of these departments kind of told me that they basically couldn't comment, that they couldn't really say without

any clear guidance from city officials. This answer is a little bit difficult to answer, but the fact is that organizers of events are doing it anyway. And I guess, you know, the promoter of this festival recently told me that he had zero confirmed cases after the festival, so I guess you know, there's that. Yeah, I mean, that's great, and that's what people look to. You know, you try this kind of experiment, did it work, and then you can build off of that. So it's an interesting thing

and everybody's trying to get back to normal. So this is just one aspect of exploring that. Michelle Luke, Independent counterculture journalists at Bloomberg News, thank you very much for joining us. Thank you for my Oscar Ramirez, and this has been reopening America, don't forget defforts days big news stories. You can check me out on the Daily Dive podcast every Monday the Friday. The follow us on I Heart Radio or wherever you get your podcast