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‘We Wanted to Swim With the Pigs’
An attendee’s reflections on Fyre Festival
Christina* is a 26-year-old fitness instructor from Los Angeles. In April 2017 she attempted to attend Fyre Festival, the luxury music festival that never was. Here, she shares her experience with Human Parts.
“I first heard about Fyre Fest when my best friend got a ticket for Christmas from her sister. Her sister work[ed] for Casamigos, which supplied all of the tequila for the festival. They weren’t necessarily in partnership, but [my friend’s] sister had been in communication with Fyre people and a bunch of her coworkers were going. So she booked one of the houses and got a really good deal. I asked for a ticket as a birthday gift because [my friend] was like, ‘You should come with us.’
“I had never been to a music festival. This would be my first one. I didn’t buy my flights until around March, just one month before the festival. I was completely unaware of all the issues, and that people were already talking about how it wouldn’t happen. My friend knew but kept it from me. Not in mean way, but she figured, ‘This is her first festival, I don’t want to freak her out.’ Because who realistically thinks a festival won’t happen?
“As the weekend got closer, I thought a few things were weird, but nothing made me reconsider. We had emailed [Fyre] a couple of times but it was really hard to get in touch with them. And their Instagram was posting the same staged photos over and over. There was nothing real about them, but you didn’t think twice about it — it’s marketing.
“My first real ‘Oh shit’ moment happened when my group met up in Miami to fly to the Bahamas together. The eight of us were waiting for our flight to the Great Exumas, and all of them were getting canceled or delayed. There were four flights departing an hour apart from each other; they all got delayed an hour, another hour, another hour. I think we were delayed three or four times. We asked the agents what was going on and they were like, ‘Oh, the airport is super small, they can’t handle all these people.’ Then one guy who knew someone in my group told us, ‘Blink-182 just bailed.’ We thought it was super weird, but we were also trying to be open minded. We thought, ‘We’re going to the Bahamas, how bad could it be?’
