Reading and Leeds 2018

Bit difficult when you’re 16 and there’s no trains.

Non-UK festivals certainly aren’t some utopian music fan paradise. You’re getting 40,000+ people into the same site who all want to watch music and have a good time, and unfortunately you’re just bound to get groups of dickheads in amongst that who can’t handle booze/drugs/personal space. I’ve been to festivals all over the world and had great and not so great experiences at both. It’s the nature of having so many people there all at once.

Reading/Leeds however is traditionally the ‘weekend party after GCSE/A Levels/exams’ and so attracts a bunch of teenagers who want to get fucked up and lairy. It’s been like that for at least a decade.

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It was like that when I was going (late 90s / early 00s) tbf though not as rowdy by the sounds of it.

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leeds was definitely fighty/arson-y on a sunday night in the early 00s

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or driving and want a drink

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Or wanting to do an arson

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Part of the reason Leeds moved sites from memory. Recall quite a large fire with gas canisters from the food trucks being thrown in 2004 and reinforced toilets blocks being built in about 2002 at both sites because of issues with them being destroyed several years running because of that. The behaviour isn’t a new thing, nor is it something that Mean Fiddler/Festival Republic haven’t tried to reduce over the years - it’s just a consequence of getting tens of thousands of 16-21 year olds camping and drunk in close proximity to each other, with relatively few older campers around them.

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yeah, didnt make a difference in my experience. i went maybe five times i think? the last year most of my mates went one of them brought his uncles caravan which meant we could camp next to them in the family area which was nicer but took the best part of an hour to get to the main stage, the last time i went i only went for a day when radiohead played around in rainbows. that was great, me and then-gf stayed in a hotel in leeds and went to see the cribs do an instore at hmv on the sunday. so many people had come from the festival for the cribs, so much mud in that shop

Laughed my socks off at this post.

Have M83 headlined yet?