I was at one just this weekend! Although it was technically a weekender rather than a full-on festival, and there was no camping. While a lot of people from around the city go to it, it's mostly populated by students who've just finished their exams. Parklife, its name is, and I think I got my ticket for like... £45 for both days? Which, given its lineup, was pretty incredible. Highlights for me were Rudimental, Madeon (can't stress this enough - absolutely phenomenal), Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs, Four Tet, Julio Bashmore, Jurassic 5, Benga... I could go on, haha. The full lineup'll still be online somewhere and I'll go dig it up a bit later.
Naturally the whole thing was a bit of a... slightly drunk mostly drugged mess, haha. I can't count the number of times I bumped into people / lost people / changed groups / etc, but most of the time was spent just with one of my flatmates since we have really similar tastes in music. Not that you care too much about who's actually on when you're off your tits. d:
Naturally, prices were extortionate once we got in there; it was something like £6 for a programme, although we got really lucky and happened to find one just... lying there when we walked in, which was a blessing! Drinks too were very expensive - something like £4.50 for 500ml Kopparberg Apple? By usual festival standards that's not too terrible but when used to general Manchester prices (cheap, for reference) and on a really tight budget you can't be necking them really. The queues for drinks were deceptively long too; what looked like three people usually ended up being a good 10-15 which always took a while to get through and was nightmarish when you wanted a drink but artists you wanted to see were on. Eventually, since so many people just needed water, people were wandering around everywhere picking up bottles off the floor and filling them up at water points. Pretty fine idea honestly if you're not too bothered about how you just found it on the ground and, given that I was at some points basically sharing chewing gum with people (don't ask if you don't know why I'd have needed chewing gum haha) I can't say I cared about that too much.
The only thing that was putting people off this year (and anyone who's familiar with Manchester's general layout will probably be able to see why this is such a problem) is that the location was moved from Platt Fields Park to Heaton Park in the north of the city, which meant that people living in Fallowfield like me (where most of the students who go to Parklife live; often just dubbed 'student village') had a nightmare time getting there and back. While they tried to organise a good bus service and whatnot, it all kinda fell through and getting there and back again never really worked out as taking less than two or so hours each way. Which was... not fun, haha. The sheer number of people (65k, I think?) shifted through that place every day mostly by busses was pretty damn staggering. Nonetheless, though, it wasn't a bad enough drawback to really massively bother me or not have me wanting to go back next year.
Regarding festivals in general - I don't really see why someone wouldn't like them unless they don't like the whole... uh... going outside part of it, I guess
cue resounding "no" from pc. One thing I guess you could say is bad about them is how they're more or less drug use hotspots; this weekend I'd say that at least half the people I met had taken something over the course of the weekend, although in fairness Manchester is kinda notorious for that kinda thing, especially its student population. But the general environment, the ease of sales for dealers, the price of the alternatives (such as drinks), etc. have a lot of people doing drugs at festivals from what I've experienced. It personally doesn't bother me, but it could bother some people I guess. Others I've been to though, such as Reading, have a wider audience and probably less drug use since they've been camping so it's much easier to just sit around in your tent and get pissed rather than having to resort to other stuff for a buzz.
tl;dr parklife is awesome and don't do drugs, kids.
Nuke said:
I'd love to go to Leeds this year and some of my friends are, but unfortunately it's way out of my budget. I guess there's always next year, but it's unlikely the lineup will be as good again.
Ugh, I wanna go too. That and Creamfields. But alas - money, among other things. Shame since I have a lot of mates going to those too.