I experienced of couple of moments this spring when I watched everything change. The first was at the Coachella music festivalin early April, the second at Churchill Downs on opening night, April 26.
At Churchill, I was sitting in a section of brand new grandstand at the top of the stretch as the sun began to set. The enormous new 4D ‘Big Board’ television on the backstretch had just been unveiled (watch here). From my vantage, I could see the whole infield, now lined with light poles and the newish Jockey Club suites towered above my right shoulder. Over the past decade the Churchill Downs property has undergone a steady metamorphosis (including a new Clubhouse section) and I had seen the changes at every stage. But once the virtual red curtain opened on that ridiculously big and crystal-clear new TV, that’s when it all clicked. Almost like watching a favorite video online that gets temporarily stuck and then fast forwards, my whole twenty-plus history at the storied track flashed before me. In that instant, I watched the Churchill Downs of the future be born.
Earlier in the month at Coachella, I stood in a somewhat sparse crowd of folks swaying to and fro as Arcade Fire closed out the festival on the main stage. I was wondering where the rest of the crowd was as just a few hours earlier a DJ named Calvin Harris had that same field packed with kids frantically dancing around. ‘Wow,’ I thought to myself “Arcade Fire (and bands like them) are over with the next generation.’
It’s not like these changes actually happened in the moments when they finally hit home to me. I never saw the ‘decadent and depraved’ Derby that Hunter S. Thompson wrote about in the 1970’s, but I used to see more than a few fights in the infield. In the ’90’s I used to see a bunch of girls throughout Derby Day get on guys shoulders and, after loud pleadings from the other men in the crowd, pull up or push down their shirts. I can’t remember the last time I saw a boob in the Kentucky Derby infield, much less two. That’s not to say that I condone brawling or boob-baring, but these actions were born of an attitude of reckless freedom and drunken abandon that isn’t acceptable in the real world. Derby became an escape from daily conformity for me and was exactly what I needed in my life in the early 1990’s. At the time Kentucky Derby was my only source.
Nowadays I have Derby and whatever music fests I attend. I haven’t seen many fights or much nudity at music festivals over the past decade but the freedom and happiness vibe and crowd energy is certainly there in spades. I guess I have to thank Derby for opening the door to this world. I’m not only accustomed to large crowds but crave and feed off the energy of tens of thousands of people who have left the outside world behind for a few hours or days of uninhibited fun.
Like I said, it’s been awhile since the Derby infield has been truly depraved but this year it seemed its gentrification became complete. I spent my 23rd Derby in the Churchill Downs infield last Saturday and can’t recall an infield scene so lacking in crazed energy. The giant frat party on the third turn was nowhere to be found. You could actually walk on the grass in that area, where in the past it was a major effort just to take a few steps. Only a year before, in the pouring rain, a throng danced at a nearby DJ stage and mud wrestled and acted like proper infielders. It was a shock to see the 2014 attendance figure announced as the second-hightest in Derby history. The infield certainly didn’t pull it’s weight. Only the middle of the infield, with the best view of the new TV seemed even remotely crowded this year.
Maybe, hopefully, 2014 is an anomaly. Maybe I just happened to be in the wrong parts of the infield at the wrong times. Or maybe this was the year that Derby really did change. Maybe that moment on opening night hit home because you can’t have the same Derby experience in a physical environment that has changed so radically.
Time will tell, just like time will tell if there will more than a handful of bands that play actual instruments at music festivals in 10 years time. I’ll let you know how it turns out.
Matt O'Neil Consulting 