Coachella by Anthony Randall

Coachella

by Anthony Randall

Not so long ago, on a road trip in the states, I had the pleasure of staying in a house on a luxurious five-star golf resort at La Quinta, near Palm Springs, California. The house belonged to my buddy’s brother-in-law, a well-known actor who shall remain anonymous for two reasons, to respect his privacy of course, but also because he still doesn’t know about the incident that befell us whilst staying at his gaff. The resort is fabulous, it has its own golf course and a multitude of superb facilities, lots of swimming pools, restaurants, and shops. It’s so equipped; you really don’t have to leave the resort at all if you just want to chill and relax. The complex is immaculate, the palm-lined streets are quiet and kept pristine by an army of grounds people, who are polite a very discreet, and by far, the best way to get about the sprawling resort is with a golf buggy, of which our house had its own nestled snugly in the garage, a fairly new Harley Davidson number, in black and metallic silver, with a likewise Union Jack emblazoned on the roof. It was a very good-looking machine that drew a lot of attention, and whilst we were there, we utilized it to its full potential. Empire Polo Club grounds, Indio, about five miles up the road from where we were staying.

Shane had been to the festival the previous year and was psyched about going again, and although it was geared mostly for teenagers and young adults, it was an opportunity not to be missed, and being a musician, I was keen to experience it. The brother-in-law had even coughed up a hefty sum for two tickets to attend the festival over the entire weekend, so we also felt obliged to go.

As you can imagine, it is an expensive place to vacation, but because we were ‘family’, my buddy and I got to crash there for free, just the two of us in the lap of luxury, for this was a holiday home, and Shane’s sister and brother-in-law were up in LA at their regular place.

Our trip happened to coincide with the Coachella valley music and arts festival, held every year in On Friday, we spent the day lazing around the pool, drinking beer and free tequila shots from the cowgirls peddling an uncommon brand of Mexican mouthwash. Then we had a delicious meal at one of the top-notch restaurants on the complex,

before showering, getting spruced up, and ordering an Uber to take us to the polo grounds for 8:00 p.m. Our intention was to take some photographs of the sunset waning behind the rows of epic towering palm trees and the outlandish sculptures and attractions dotted around the fields. We were dropped by the Uber driver as close as he could get to the grounds, for the place was rammed with pedestrians all heading in one direction, a mega herd of scantily clad youth.

The temperature at this time of night was still in the upper 20’s C, a strong tailwind blew up dust from the bone dry field, choking the air, causing many to cover their faces with scarves and bandanas, it was horrific. This was like no other showground I’d ever been to, it was massive. Including the camping grounds and parking lots, it covered an area of 642 acres, and we had to tramp with the throng for half a mile just to get to the entrances.

Now, to put you in the picture, this event is enormous and spawns millions of dollars, 2017 was attended by 250,000 people and generated $114m in revenue, so the entire city police force, plus endless stewards, security guys and hi-viz volunteers, coordinate to effectively shut down the streets surrounding the venue, creating one-way systems, with busses and cars having separate routes in and out of the parking areas. There are high steel barriers and roadblocks everywhere, and everything takes a very long time to get done. Once through security checks, and having lined up for an ID check to get a wristband proving we were over 21, to get alcohol, we were in and free to roam the vast array of tented stages, rides, exhibitions, and sideshows. Shane was effervescent, leading me here, there, and everywhere, with a “Come on, let’s look at this,” vibe. I followed, well he’d done it before, so he knew all the good things to see, and there were some definite eye-openers, mostly the costumes, or lack of, that the youngsters wore, but now I am sounding my age.

We watched a couple of bands, but mostly the stages this year were occupied with solitary DJs pumping out club mixes of their own making and whipping their following up to an unfathomable frenzy. This wasn’t our cup of tea, and according to Shane, not a patch on the previous year, when there were more live acts and famous names.

Plodding around until around 10:00 p.m. eating dust, washed down with expensive beer, we decided to call it a day and try again tomorrow. Maybe there’d be some better acts the next day. Walking back to the Uber drop-off area took ages; my feet, in ill-fitting trainers, were killing me. When

we arrived, there was an hour’s wait for a cab, so instead of doing that, we felt it a good idea to exit the grounds, walk a block or two and then call for an Uber away from the chaos. None were available for hours, so we carried on walking, me with my aching feet complaining all the way. We had five miles to walk home, and I definitely wasn’t fit enough to do that, but luck would have it, a car pulled up, driven by a Lift driver, and asked us if we needed a ride. Too right we did, climbing onto cool leather seats in an air-conditioned environment, never felt so good, and within minutes we were back to the sane, cricket chirruping serenity of the golf resort, shoeless and at last content. The next morning at 9:00a.m, our slumber was interrupted by the cleaner, wrapping on the bedroom doors wanting entry to carry out her chores. She wasn’t used to rousing a couple of British layabouts intent on squeezing the life out of charitable hospitality and was slightly miffed. Washed and dressed, we headed for the garage to unhook the Harley from its charging plug and aim it towards a restaurant for breakfast. Outside, waiting in the sunshine for his wife, was the cleaners husband, a man we had met before working at an exclusive golf club up in Indio, directly opposite the Polo club, a place where Shane's brother-in-law was a regular member, we’d been there for breakfast one time, extremely rich people played each other there for a pastime and large wagers of cash.

We stopped for a chat, explaining where we had been the night before, and what a drag it was to get in and out of the show grounds.

“Why don’t you just take the Harley up there?” suggested the husband.

We looked at each other with incredulous eyes.

“You can do that?” I doubtfully enquired. “Sure, you can drive these babies on the road; it’ll get ya up there and back on a full charge. Just park it at the club and walk across the street. If you go in through the worker’s entrance, which is right there, no one will stop you; it’ll save you having to line up around the other side of the block.”

It was like a revelation, a free ride, and a whole lot less bother. We thanked him for the heads-up and trundled off for a fry-up.

After another grueling day of sunbathing, swimming, and dipping in the Jacuzzi, we decided to have a longer spell at Coachella and eat there. After all, it was going to be a breeze, and we could relax and take things at our leisure. We changed into suitable clothing, shorts, a light shirt, hats, sunglasses and open-toed sandals, and set off on our slow, but fanciful source of transport. Still slightly dubious if this was legal or not, because we were passed dangerously close by speeding, honking cars and trucks as we crawled along by the curb, but we went by several parked police vehicles and not one of them paid the slightest bit of attention to us, so we thought it must be alright to drive a golf buggy up the main highway.

Arriving at the first set of steel barriers, manned by cops and security staff alike, we were amazed as they literally stopped the tide of human traffic crossing the street, and ushered us through as though we were entitled, dignitaries. This happened not once, but many times as we curtailed the restrictions and roadblocks, circumnavigating the perimeter of the venue, and ventured to the sanctuary of the golf club car park, laughing our heads off at our audacity and the way we had been given privilege. Perhaps they thought we were staff, other golf buggies were zooming around, but none anywhere near as bling as ours.

As the husband had said, it was easy to stroll through the worker’s entrance. We had our wristbands on, but nobody checked to see if we were staff or not. There were some decent bands on in the afternoon, we laid on the grass and chilled while the sun descended behind the mountains, ate pizza and drank expensive beer, took plenty of photographs, and enjoyed the multitude of attractions, including the multi-coloured light cylinder called Spectra, the giant spaceman and the Ferris wheel, but by 11:00 p.m, we were pooped, it was time to leave. Wanting to exit onto Monroe, the street where the golf club was situated, we tried to go through an emergency exit which was heavily manned by security staff. They were adamant not to let us through, advising that we instead should walk to the proper exits, a good half-mile in the opposite direction to where we wanted to be.

Bugger that, we thought and wandered up to the next emergency exit, which luck would have it, was only manned by one young guy brandishing a ‘walkie-talkie’.

“Watch this,” said Shane, as he put on a limp and a grimace, and held his back like he was in real pain. “I’ve done me back in, I’ve done me back in, let me out, let me out, quick,” he raged at the doorman, who without hesitation and a certain amount of concern opened a flap in the polythene wall and let us through.

Boom, we emerged out of the hubbub, onto the calm of Monroe, a wide deserted street, and rather like Keyser Söze at the end of The Usual Suspects, Shane straightened up in stride all pleased with himself that he’s fooled the guy, and we crossed the road like we’d just escape jail. Back on the buggy, we crossed back over the street and got onto the dirt path that wrapped around the festival, and headed north up to the corner of Avenue 50. A left turn here would take us all the way back to La Quinta on one road. But the corner was thick with security staff and unlike the salubrious path we had navigated before, our celebrity status had evaporated like dry ice and they would not let us through. One guy was absolutely flabbergasted as to how we had got up here in the first place on a golf buggy, they weren’t licensed for the road, and he demanded we take the thing back to the golf course and get a taxi home.

Of course, we weren’t going to do that, so we turned around and headed back the way we came. We’d have to go two blocks (two miles) in the wrong direction before we could turn right and go around the showgrounds in two-mile chunks before we could eventually turn left again on Avenue 50 away from the cluster of unreasonable job’s worths.

It was such a drag, but the only way to get home along with the buggy.

On the way, we picked up a hitchhiker, plus rucksack, who was quite elated to be given a ride on the rear bench seat for a couple of blocks. He was a nice guy, but extra baggage we could do without.

It was getting chilly now and the winds were whipping up again, all we had on were clothes fit for a blazing hot day, and the temperature had dropped significantly during the evening. We trundled on, down Avenue 52, passed cops, fingers crossed that

we would not be stopped, gritting our chattering teeth and saying “don’t look, don’t look.” No one looked; we kept going, right turned onto Jefferson St and down to Avenue 50, where we had to negotiate across three-lane busy traffic and then wait in line for traffic lights, to turn left on the major junction. It was going across this box section that we noticed a drastic lowering of power in the machine; she then began lurching, operating on just vapour. If we came to a halt in the middle of this crossroads, it would cause a monstrous holdup. Miraculously she found more life and we nursed her onwards, but she was way down into the red on the power indicator and moving at only a walking pace with Shane’s foot welded to the floor. Horror was leaching through our veins, if we had to abandon the buggy here, she would either get smashed to bits by passing traffic or stolen, each scenario ending us up in deep kaka. With the last gasps of electricity, Shane rolled the buggy into the horseshoe drive of a high-end gated community, and rolled to a stop beside a private security guy, in blue uniform, complete with a sidearm, sitting in a deck chair beside the gate.

Now, this was the oddest fella you are ever likely to meet. He was reminiscent of a hyperbolic character from a 1980s John Hughes film, an untraveled, narrow-minded hick that had probably never even left the county before. He was wide-eyed at everything we said to him, suspicious of our intent and resolute that we could not park the buggy here under any circumstances, even though we made it quite clear that the thing had run out of power. All he kept repeating in his Top Cat cartoon voice was “I dunno you guys, I dunno.”

He wouldn’t let us push it inside the gates and he wouldn’t let us use his phone to call for help. I was physically shaking now with the cold and getting little warmth from this dude. He radioed back to his headquarters, who unequivocally said no, we couldn’t leave the vehicle there.

We tried remonstrating with him. What were we supposed to do, push it down the Avenue three miles? But all he would say was “I don’t know guys, I don’t know, but you can’t leave it here.” It was a nightmare.

He then, oddly, out of sync with the situation, asked us to tell him some English jokes, saying that he loved Fawlty Towers and Monty Python, he then farted the loudest trump I’d ever heard, and went and took a piss up against a palm tree, it was a lunatic scenario. Wealthy people were coming and going from the community in their expensive cars and giving us filthy looks for blocking their drive, there seemed to be little compassion for a couple of destitute Brits here.

Eventually after listening and comprehending our story of woe, the guard warmed to us, commenting with incredulity, “That’s the most random thing I’ve ever heard,” twice.

Shane pleaded with him again to let us use his phone, and this time he relented, giving us “One call!” like it was the most precious thing on earth to give to anyone. Shane got the number of a local breakdown service and called them, it was about 1:00 a.m now, but thankfully they had a 24-hour service.

We waited, freezing our nuts off, telling very dated English jokes, amusing our new friend, until half an hour later, when the biggest breakdown recovery truck I’d ever seen, lit up like a Christmas tree, sped past our turning and disappeared down the road.

Shane ran out to Avenue 50 in an attempt to flag the driver down, but he was gone. Returning to the buggy, my mate blagged once more the use of the

reluctant security guard’s mobile phone, calling back the breakdown service, who rerouted the driver our way. This time he found us and reversed his huge emblazoned black and chromeplated truck up to our position. And after another abridged explanation as to how we ended up in this cul-de-sac, to the incredulous, overall-wearing vehicle recovery guy, he lowered the hydraulically controlled the rear ramp on his expensive bit of kit, unravelled a chain, and winched our forlorn little

Harley onto the polished aluminium runners, then clamped it down in the centre of the flatbed. It looked pathetically minute piggybacked to this leviathan, which could easily have hauled up a seven-ton truck onto its rear. Our cart looked ridiculous. We thanked the odd security guy for helping us out, and bid him goodnight, he’d have a fascinatingly ‘random’ tale to tell for the rest of his life.

The recovery guy found us amusing, yet kept it professional. We could tell he thought us a couple of dimwits, but was cordial and discretely dropped us back onto the drive of our house at 2:00 a.m, a five-minute journey costing us $260 if you please, hardly the free ride we’d anticipated. As if it had all been a hazy dream, we rolled the Harley into the garage and put her back in charge, then slopped off to bed, stupefied by the whole affair.

Anthony Randall has resided in Tucson, Arizona, and in Bourlens, France, but now lives in sunny Dorset on the south coast of England by the sea. He has been a singer and songwriter, recording and performing pop songs all over the world. He wrote and published his first novel with his co-author Doug Goddard back in 2005. He is also a regular content provider for MFR. https://moms-favorite-reads.com/moms-authors/anthony-randall/