On Saturday night, Girl and I went to go see a concert at Ravinia in Highland Park, Illinois. We do not live anywhere near Highland Park so all we knew about Ravinia was that it was an outdoor concert venue. I knew this for certain when I bought lawn tickets instead of pavillion tickets. So, we make the long trek to the venue and we arrive at the shuttle bus parking lot a full hour before the show starts. At this point, I am thinking that we are making awesome time. (An aside about our trek: the Edens was under construction—which I already knew about—so that added a little time to our commute. Then, came the awesome discovery that the Lake Cook Road exit does not exist when you are going northbound on the Edens, even though it is an exit when you are going southbound. So, I am going northbound on the Edens per my directions looking for Lake Cook Road and it’s not there so we have to turn around and, lo and behold, the Lake Cook Road exit sign is smiling and pointing at me while going southbound. This was the first time in a while that I felt like some country bumpkin trudging his way to the “big city.” “Golly gee! The directions done say that there’s to be a sign up ahead but it ain’t there. Da der der der…”)
Anyway, we get to the shuttle parking lot and we notice that everyone but us has coolers, those foldable chairs that fit into durable plastic/PVC bags, and some form of luggage on wheels in which blankets and a change of clothes can be properly stored in. Now would probably be the proper time to mention that all we brought was a single oversized blanket, a bottle of water, and an umbrella. This was because we thought that this concert venue had restrictions on what you could bring in like seemingly everywhere else. “Wow, we apparently need to buy those chairs. Everyone, including children have them here,” said Girl. To which I replied, “I know, right?”
We board the shuttle bus and fifteen minutes later we arrive at Ravinia and we get our tickets validated. Walking up to the lawn area we can see that the place is really crowded and that our odds of getting really any spot at all in which to sit on are probably as low as my capacity to care about anything dealing with The Hills. So, we start to walk closer to the lawn areas and notice…
Everyone on the lawn had tables, chairs, multiple coolers, wine bottles, picnic baskets, candles, candelabras, industrial sized citronella candles and canisters. Basically, everything short of manservants, chefs, and $4,000 propane fueled grills cooking up fresh salmon and brisket.
Now, granted, our feeling out of place had a lot to do with us not checking online first to see if there were any restrictions on what could and could not bring in to the venue, but even if we did know we would still be looked upon as “rustic” amongst the crowd of people sitting in $150 folding chairs drinking their ’86 Cabernets. This isn’t some indictment on our society or some diatribe about the wealthy or anything like that. It’s just that the entire atmosphere was not that of a concert at all (at least to me).
I haven’t been to many concerts but the lawn area always involved smelling marijuana and watching people smoke marijuana, stumble around because of too much to drink, and drunk and/or stoned people clumsily dancing and/or trying to make out. The people-watching aspect is almost as entertaining as the concert itself. At one point I told Girl, “Some of these people physically look rich. Like that guy right there—he looks like he makes $500,000 a year.” “We’re going to drown in money and wine,” Girl replied. So the people-watching that we normally do took on a whole different level Saturday night because, at one point, I was actually waiting for Renoir to prop up an easel and start painting a scene.
I felt like I knew most of what there was to know about white upper class society (I read the Stuff White People Like site and grew up in Frankfort) but this was a pretty surreal experience in that the stage itself, because it is built below ground level, cannot be seen at all from 99% of the lawn area and, yet, this didn’t seem to matter at all as white people have evolved so much that concerts aren’t simply concerts anymore—there just a reason to get together with people and drink wine, eat cheeses and other delicacies, and casually mingle four hours before the show starts. At one point, we overheard a guy say into his phone, “Yeah, I’m here at Ravinia. Yeah, the BoDeans show. I didn’t know of them either but we’re here with the family…”
Needless to say, Girl and I left early because the commute was so long and we kept receiving shitty looks from people (we finally found a 5×5 plot of grass in which to sit on but apparently we violated some Lake County ordinance that dictates if you are poor you can’t sit too close to the edge) but it was quite an experience nonetheless. Also, I was unsure if the westbound 290 ramp would mysteriously be missing from the Edens as well.
In two weeks we are going to see the Counting Crows/Maroon 5 show from the lawn and I damn well expect to smell marijuana, see people drinking beer instead of wine, and hearing guys on cell phones saying loudly, “Yeah, the concert’s awesome! I’m so fucked up!” and then laugh drunkenly. I don’t consider myself a disciple of the rock lifestyle or to be a person who feels uncomfortable in large settings but our Ravinia experience reminded me of the lengths white people will go to turn events into nothing more than docile outings. On more than one occasion, because we could not actually see the stage, Girl said to me, “We should’ve just played their live album on our iPod at home while sitting in the backyard.”
The night before the show we saw Pineapple Express and I couldn’t help but wish that more of the people that were in the theater for that movie were with us at Ravinia. Those motherfuckers could’ve provided the proper ambiance for an outdoor concert.