Does anyone really want to read recaps of music performances they didn't get to go to? We thought not. That's why this year, we decided to do our Pitchfork Festival coverage a little differently: a weekend-long scavenger hunt. Think of it as a loving homage to everything great and terrible abut music festivals -- uncomfortable streetstyle gallery, public roast, and Where's Waldo? -- all brought to you by Paper staffers Eric Thurm and Sandra Song. Each day we'll be on the lookout for Chicago's best, weirdest, and cringe-worthiest, from white people saying "fam" to gratuitous headwear (baby headphones included).
Eric and Sandra will be directly competing against each other, but you can use the #P4KScavHunt hashtag on Twitter and Instagram to join in, too -- the reader with the most points at the end of the weekend wins the office copy of Big Freedia's memoir. Here's the list of items we came up with:
- gratuitous headwear (2 points for flower crowns, 3 points for baby headphones, 7 points for appropriative headdresses)
- celebrity sightings (2 points)
- teens vaping (1 point per Blu-style vape, 3 points per massive cyberpunk vape)
- person throwing up before 5 p.m. (5 points)
- being given a mixtape (2 points)
- white people saying "fam" (1 point per white person)
- someone saying "Chiraq" in earnest (1 point for us, -1000 points for humanity)
- dad with kids at Wilco's set (1 point per dad, 2 points per audible dad joke)
- visible cans of QT (3 points)
- overheard conversation attempting to explain PC Music (2 points)
- overalls at Chance the Rapper (1 point)
We thought we might have forgotten a few things, so we got some suggestions from artists performing at Pitchfork Fest -- we'll try to do y'all proud. Here's their list:
- Clark: "[Find the] most inhibited English producer who secretly just wants to be making his own music in his hotel room." (1 point, we see you trying to get us to go to your set Clark)
- Mourn: "When we were at Best Kept Secret Festival we saw a guy carrying and showing a picture of Jesus... maybe it would be cool to find someone who had a weird picture as well." (5 points to the person with the weirdest photo at the end of the weekend)
- The Julie Ruin's Kathi Wilcox: "Best homemade band shirt or tote. Fan art is always cool. Or anyone carrying a book. It has to be an actual book though, magazines don't count." (1 point per book)
- Ex Hex: "I double dare you to wear this helmet that my boyfriend made out of Beanie babies (it covers your whole head and face) and crowd surf, or dance on stage." (10 points because you probably won't do it)
- Vince Staples: "Take a white hippie woman's flip-flops. They have to get and photograph themselves with a pair of hippie flip-flops." (20 points, with the caveat that we definitely are not encouraging stealing someone's property, wink-wink, etc.)
And there you have it! We'll be tweeting our findings using #P4KScavHunt -- if you're at the festival, join in and see if you can beat us in discovering
