Every summer, hundreds of thousands of people travel to Chicago, Illinois to attend the annual music festival, Lollapalooza. And every year you can find “L” cars crammed with OPRF students traveling downtown to join in the fun.

Lollapalooza is an annual music festival that takes place in Chicago’s Grant Park. The festival features dozens of rock, hip-hop, techno, alternative, and pop performers over a four-day period.

During this four-day period, you can find people of all ages dressed in their most vibrant and glittery outfits dancing around Grant Park at one of the eight stages. This year’s headliners included rappers like Post Malone and Megan Thee Stallion, as well as pop star Miley Cyrus and rock band The Foo Fighters.

Lollapalooza 2020 was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but the festival continued this year thanks to the many safety precautions Lollapalooza put in place. Attendees either needed to show proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test taken within the last 36 hours prior to attending the festival.

Block Club Chicago, a nonprofit news organization founded and operated by veteran journalists, noted at least 385,000 people attended the festival this year. This is not a huge decline in attendance, as it was reported by the Chicago Tribune that 400,000 people attended the festival in 2019.

“I wasn’t too worried about COVID-19 because I am vaccinated,” said senior Gretchen Papier. “But if I was unvaccinated I wouldn’t have gone because there were so many people there.”

Senior Owen Campbell and sophomore Ava Nicholson said Tyler the Creator was their favorite performer at Lollapalooza. “His whole set had a storyline behind it, he was such a performer. Not only was he performing his songs, he was performing himself,” said Campbell, a five-time Lollapalooza veteran.

Nicholson, Papier, and Campbell all agreed the temperature was their least favorite part of Lollapalooza. The festival is held at the end of July or early August, so it is usually hot outside; this year there was an average high of 83 degrees Fahrenheit throughout the festival’s four days.

“It can get especially hot when you are deep in the mosh pits,” said sophomore Ava Nicholson.

Lollapalooza is so popular that people often see celebrities there.

Nicholson described a celebrity encounter she and her friends had at Lollapalooza with “13 Reasons Why” star Dylan Minnette. “We were waiting for Roddy Ricch and we were standing by the fence away from everyone and I turned around, and I was the first person to see him, and he was standing there with his girlfriend. I yelled to my friends, ‘Oh my God, oh my God.’ I couldn’t even say words. He started glancing over at us and, my friends and I all turned around and we all started screaming ‘Oh my God, it’s Dylan Minnette.’ We tried to take a picture with him, subtly, and we got a few pictures,” she said.

“My favorite part about Lolla was getting to go with my friends and having a lit time,” Campbell said.