Lollapalooza Day 2: Fans line up for Kendrick Lamar — and snap up free naloxone kits

The second day of Lollapalooza opened in Grant Park on the Chicago lakefront — a Friday headlined by Kendrick Lamar and The 1975 — with expectations of another busy and bustling afternoon, though it wasn’t officially sold out, according to festival organizer C3 Presents.

Daily capacity inside the fences is 115,000 this year, up from 100,000 in previous years.

By 11:15 a.m., Lamar fans had already staked out the barricade of the T-Mobile mainstage.

Davia Walker, 20, and Alexis White, 18, friends from Indianapolis, were among the first. The first-time Lolla attendees said they planned to stay in place all day to keep their spot — they’d done the same for Billie Eilish on Thursday. They were crushed against the barricade at the start of Eilish’s set, White said, but enjoyed the show enough to risk a second.

”Waiting between sets for an hour makes it brutal,” White said. “But once someone starts performing, it’s not that bad.”

Handing out naloxone

For the first time at Lollapalooza, the nonprofit This Must Be The Place is handing out kits of a naloxone nasal spray, an opioid reversal medicine.

Concertgoers who visit their booth at Buckingham Fountain can pick up free kits and learn about the dangers of fentanyl, what overdose symptoms to look for and how to administer the spray. By late afternoon of Day 1, almost 900 kits had been passed out, said Ingela Travers-Hayward, co-founder of This Must Be The Place. She estimates they’ll give out almost 5,000 by the festival’s close.

“Our main goal is not even for someone to necessarily have to use it on-site, but for people to be able to take it back into their own communities, and tell them it’s really safe to carry naloxone on you,” she said. “Carrying this is a symbol that you care about someone else.”

The nonprofit, which was founded last year in Columbus, Ohio, aims to travel to festivals such as Bonnaroo, Austin City Limits, Burning Man and Governors Ball.

“The nationwide fentanyl overdose crisis is affecting many different aspects of our communities, and while it’s not unique to festivals we see this proactive measure as an important opportunity to educate and arm a large group of like-minded people with information and tools that can save lives,” C3 Presents said in a statement.

Chicagoan Brianna Buenrostro, 26, stopped by the tent midday Friday to pick up kits with two friends. The group wanted to have them on hand in case someone in the crowd starts exhibiting signs of an overdose, Buenrostro said. This Must Be the Place’s staff briefly trained them on what to look out for.

”Hopefully, we don’t have to use these ever,” Buenrostro said. “This is just kind of a safety net.”

The crush at the stages

For Luca and Enrique Pasion, 20-year-old twins from Tampa, Florida, the key to surviving crowds is befriending other fans. They swapped snacks, water, electrolyte packets and makeshift fans with those around them at Thursday’s NewJeans set. Friday, they made friends with Lara Bektas and Elise McFarland while waiting at the Tito’s stage for beabadoobee’s set.

They were all surprised by how densely packed the audience was at NewJeans’ performance. ”When we got there, already there was a crowd forming and we were kind of scared,” Bektas said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like that before.”

By the time the show started, people next to Bektas had started taking their clothes off to fight the heat, and she watched someone throw up and cover the stain with mulch. Luca Pasion said she had to ask the girl behind her to hold on to her waist so she wouldn’t be trampled when the music started.

To be sure, crowd surge — when the pressure of crowding can cause asphyxia — is a serious concern at large music festivals. Ten fans died in a surge at Travis Scott’s Astroworld Festival concert in Houston in 2021. An overcrowding tragedy last October in Seoul, South Korea, killed 159 people, most of them young Halloween revelers.

Last summer, Lollapalooza music sets were occasionally stopped until fans stepped back and made room.

A statement from C3 Presents said in part: “Lollapalooza views safety of its fans, artists, and staff as the highest priority. Lollapalooza has trained personnel on each stage to watch for any issues in a crowd and are enabled to take action immediately should the need arise, with or without the artists permission or participation. Artists and/or their staff are briefed before every performance and show pause and stop procedures are rehearsed at every stage every single morning.”

Fashion patrol

Lollapalooza isn’t just Chicago’s biggest music festival — it’s the city’s biggest runway. Fans and artists alike plan for weeks in advance to bring out their fiercest looks, working creatively around (or blithely defying) strict bag rules, long walking days and unrelenting heat.

Following the endless fashion cycle that sends today’s teens into thrift stores, loose knitwear, fishnets, activewear sets and bralette-cargo pants pairings have been common sights at this week’s festival grounds.

The skintight neon mainstays of rave fashion have inevitably crept into Lolla looks for years, but 2023 is also very much the summer of DIY-themed ensembles, as many Chicagoans roll straight from “Barbenheimer” outfits to Lolla wardrobes. Recently, TikTok has exploded with videos of people sewing neckties into teeny tank tops, pairing activewear with vintage lingerie and raiding partners’ closets for oversized jerseys.

‘Makes them feel pretty’

Rapper TiaCorine performed at Northwestern University in May, but her show Friday evening on the BMI stage marked her first Lollapalooza performance. She told the Tribune she just wondered if people would stay to watch as festgoers made their way toward Lamar’s stage.

“I just hope people come,” she said with a laugh. “I’m important too.”

The artist from North Carolina seeks to make fans feel good and worthy with her bubbly sound, she said.

“I feel like it makes them feel pretty,” she said.

When she got onstage later, she told the crowd she dreamed of playing the festival last year. A few hundred fans had gathered in front of her stage tucked behind the Buckingham Fountain amid trees.

“I was so nervous, I was like ‘Nobody’s gonna be here, now look at y’all,’” she told them.

Then she danced and dished her sonic makeup.

Lamar on the mainstage

At the end of Friday on the T-Mobile, Lamar performed hits old and new with the help of background dancers as the crowd filling Grant Park’s southern fields sang along.

”He played all of the biggest songs,” said fan Nate Doseck, visiting from Arizona. The 22-year-old wished for more songs from Lamar’s album “Damn,” the first rap album to ever win a Pulitzer Prize. ”He’s definitely more of an artist than a musician,” he  said.

Lamar was last in Chicago on his “Big Steppers” tour at the United Center in August 2022. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, who introduced Eilish’s set Thursday, was spotted again backstage Friday at the south end of the grounds heading into the Artist’s Village area, but did not address concertgoers again.

Headliners the rest of the weekend include Tomorrow X Together and Odesza Saturday and Red Hot Chili Peppers and Lana Del Rey closing the festival Sunday.

Karol G fans

Making history as the first Latina artist to headline Lollapalooza, Karol G greeted thousands of fans at the Bud Light Stage on Thursday night and gave them a taste of what her upcoming tour will be like, performing singles like “Tusa,” “Bichota” and more titles from her latest studio album, “Mañana Será Bonito,” which this spring became the first fully Spanish-language album by a female artist, and a Colombian artist, to top the Billboard 200 chart.

The singer shouted out fans waving flags from Venezuela, Mexico, her native Colombia and more. Special guest Uniting Voices Chicago sang along to “Mientras Me Curo del Cora,” and she Karol G highlighted her female musicians during “Gucci Los Paños.”

“This is the first time with you all,” she told the crowd, speaking in Spanish. “And I’m trying with my English, so I have to say, that this is so amazing.”

Family in the crowd

Midway through her Friday set, Deanna Belos, the frontwoman for Chicago-based punk rock band Sincere Engineer, told the crowd her next song was about the big body of water just across DuSable Lake Shore Drive.

”I’m gonna jump in Lake Michigan, and swim out as far as I can, and you should come with me, you should come with me,” she sang.

Fans baking in the sun bobbed their heads. A few ran circles in a mosh pit. Later, guitarist Kyle Geib gave a shoutout to his family.

Geib’s father, Frank, cheered proudly. ”It’s amazing. It’s awesome. The skyline, the lake. We grew up in Chicago and coming to Lollapalooza to see our oldest son play, it’s amazing,” said the Crystal Lake resident.

Belos told the crowd she and her fellow performers grew up in Chicago and attended the festival as kids. ”I’m not gonna start crying, I’m gonna stop it there,” she said before returning to punk rock.

After the show, she told the Tribune she was nervous to play at the hometown festival. The city’s music influenced her own, and references to it are scattered across her songs, she said. She recalled taking the train in from Orland Park to see Coldplay and Phoenix as a kid. ”It’s weird to be on the other side of it now.”