Looptopia: The All Night Party That Wasn't

The Bad: I too found the crowds to be WAY too rowdy and pissed in Chicago to pull this off. And in the L stop on the way home, every lightweight college age kid in the world was hurling on the platform. Not unlike that one scene from "Stand By Me".

What could have been a really cool arts and cultural event just got turned into a freaking Mardi Gras.

The Good: For all this talk (especially from commentors in this blog) of "hipsters", "trixies", et. al. I was totally expecting a different crowd. But instead it was high school kids, seniors, blacks, asians, people with kids (at 2am!), hippies, ravers, artsy-fartsy kids, blue collar folk, white collar folk, every size and stripe of people Chicago had to offer attending just about every event. I thought this was fantastic because it showed there was a broad appeal for something just like this... just better executed in the future I hope.

I was in the South Loop checking out Columbia College's Manifest. Got a bunch of free stuff (including food and drinks!!!)and I got to see Lupe Fiasco perform...for free. I never made it to Looptopia.

I think that, yes, there could have been a lot of better planning for this. But mainly, no one had any clue how it was going to occur since it had never happened before. Perhaps you don't give enough credit towards the city at actually trying something new, something free. Yes, it needs to have better communication and planning, more events and such.

Having events such as these which encourage many different communities to come together seems pretty important to me at least. Chicagoans are naturally suspicious of big events (key word, tourists) that don't seem meant for them. So, maybe things weren't done as well as they could have been, but maybe our leaders actually want things to improve by seeing how something like this would go down (I know, a little optimistic for the likes of Chicagoist). If anything, this showed that people actually want to participate in big events, which would be important for the Olympics.

Great idea,marginal weather, nice crowd.
I did'nt hear about it til the night before. It may have been a complete cluster f$#@ but we had a lot of fun. Chicago can pull off any event if properly planned. Many thanks to the art institute and all the beautiful laides there I did'nt know where to look at times. This event has great potential closing the park when other events where overwhelmed was wrong. The organizers owe an apology to the exuberant youth of the area.

Yeah. I'm kind off of two minds about the evening.

You could kinda tell this was the first time the planners had done anything like this, and had no idea how it was going to go. I cut them some slack on that front. I was really surprised they couldn't convince more business to stay open until at least 4.

TJ and Dave was impossible to get into if you didn't show up for it 2 hours or more in advance (I showed up a mere hour and a half before it was supposed to start).

The I Am Robot And Proud guy got stuck in Canada, and their last-minute replacement was just all right. The problem there was that he started about half an hour late, which looked like it was pushing the start of the B-movies back a bit (I didn't stick around long enough to find out, though I'd originally intended to watch one or two of the movies).

The good stuff: The dance party at the Sullivan dock was pretty fun, if you didn't mind the tight-packing of people. The crowd was pleasingly diverse. The Redmoon installations were interesting. Nishat Kahn and whomever that was on tabla were amazing.

I'd be interested to hear from someone who was there the full night (through breakfast or whatever they were supposed to have at 6)...

I'd call the night slightly more good than bad (no harsh-looking skinned knees for me!), but there were definitely some hiccups...

I was shocked by the sheer number of people downtown for Looptopia. The Art Institute was a madhouse, but manageable for the most part. The Cultural Center was a joke. I got in through the back doors around midnight and quickly fled when I saw the throngs of people trying to go both up and down the steps. I'm not a paranoid person, but my immediate thought was "this is dangerous, get out of here." I was also at Daley Center for the 11pm "spectacle", and that was also really crowded (and not very spectacular).

Hopefully the organizers will learn from this and plan a better event next year. More event sites are essential, especially after midnight. I was also surprised by how small the police presence was. For such a large event, I only remember seeing one or two police officers the entire night. Also, the city probably should have just closed off State Street and maybe a couple of east/west streets as well, just to let the crowds move about.

And I agree that the Brown Line shutting down was just ridiculous.

Good idea, poorly executed.

I'm still a little mystified by this "first" nonsense. The MCA had an all night (well actually 23-hour) Solstice event for like seven years (the last was in 2003), but it was a pain (and expensive) to manage and when I was interning there at least one fight broke out in middle of the night, but we kept it going.

And don't think that anything happens in Chicago without the cultural department signing off on it. The coordination for large events like this happens at the top and from the city. Even at the MCA's gig -- the alderman and the cultural arts department were major coordinators and were definitely needed to provide funding and marketing and coordination with the tourism marketing.

Still, few American cities would have the guts to try something like Looptopia. SF being perhaps the only one and they've increasingly had problems at their large outdoor events: halloween being the biggest. Perhaps kids just don't know how to handle themselves anymore. Or people don't do well with crowd think.

I would hope that Chicago is able to look at the situation, figure out what went wrong, and make adjustments -- BUT still keep it going. A few bad apples shouldn't ruin the whole thing.

Next year:

* close a few streets to cars and allow pedestrians to get around - you can fit more entertainment in this way as well

* run the brown line all night

* push it back a month so there's less of a chance of it being freezing

It was disappointing, but I love watching people--even if it was limited to white college-aged kids, but I'm easily entertained. Its a shame that the take away from this event for most attendees was not the performances, but the disorganization.

Suggestions for next year:

1) The event should be held on the Summer Solstice--draw off MCA and mimic Fete de Musique in Paris.

2) Stagger major performances over 12 hours, not just before 11 p.m. I think when Redmoon ended, the bulk of the crowd flooded to the Cultural Center, overwhelming security who were not prepared to perform crowd control. I was leaving the building around 11:30 and it was verging on chaos on the Washington side. I think CPD arrived shortly after.

2) Increase the number of performances, both indoors and on the street. The scene at the Cultural Center could have been avoided if there were other options at that hour.

3) Better maps and better distribution. I was without a map for the first hour until I made my way over to Daley Plaza. The rest of the evening, I encountered at least 10 groups who wanted to know where I got the map. Team Looptopia should have been stationed all over the event area, not just in Daley Plaza. Once I had the map, it wasn't helpful. Events were not described adequately. Location wasn't clear. The Cultural Center was not easy to navigate.

4) Better pre-event press.

5) What about the food?

I read an article in Crains about the organizer, whose office seemed totally overwhelmed. Next year, more experienced planners should take over. It could be great.

Tankboy: The Trib article has hour-by-hour analysis, all the way 'til 5am! :o)

There was also a downtown deco tour that had a limit of 30 people. I don't know if there was more than one opportunity for the tour, but the fact that it had a limit of 30 people was enough for me to stay away. That would have been a huge attraction for well more than 30 people.

For all the complaining I've done though, I will say that I will try it again next year. I hope they do it again and learn from this year's mistakes. Eventually they'll get it!

"as for the people who want to be in the loop at 3am, well, tough cookies. go to a late night bar."

What's with the attitude? If you throw an all-night party, it should last all night, not until Midnight.

The Trib article has hour-by-hour analysis, all the way 'til 5am! :o)

Thanks for the clarification Bekki ... I stand corrected!

In a word: BORING.

In some other words: It was as though every geek and nerd I went to school with was in the Loop on Friday...acting like dweebs without a curfew.
THEY (along with the lack of planning) killed the vibe.

Macys was a joke. Dorks trying to be cool, dancing like they have epilepsy.
Thank God SpyBar was open until 5.

Thanks Jocelyn for coming by my party!

Argo Tea stayed open til 2am but was overwhelmed. They had only staffed their Dearborn location with 2 employees who were clearly frazzled.

I later spoke with a production staffer who was tending the prematurely closed Whole Foods exhibit at the Art Institute. He said the crowds clearly overwhelmed anything festival organizers anticipated. Plus there were people playing Red Rover across Michigan Ave. and drunks vandalizing the fruit sculpture, which is what necessitated closing that exhibit early.

The post midnight crowds had a unruly edginess to them; not being able to get in anywhere, confused about how to navigate around, high school kids cavorting aimlessly, people looking for something, anything to happen on the streets. All indicators that something ugly was about to happen. I actually felt sorry for the few cops around. Ended up hopping into the first available cab and took off around 2:30am.

If this does repeat next year, look for way more corporate sponsors. This definitely proved to potential sponsors that the marketing opportunities are there. I'd love to see this turn into something more like Austin's SXSW, with more bands and tech startups in the mix of things.

I had a good time, but it was way overcrowded. They have to plan it better in the future. The only big event that we could get into was the Pony's show. Miss Looptopia was sold out by the time we got there. We ran into the Cultural Center ugliness. The Chicago Theater was overcrowded. I guess we should have stayed away from the big events. So, we spent most of our time getting drunk in a bar. Got out of there by 1 am without any trouble.

Yes, the events were oversubscribed. Obviously more people turned up than were planned for. Some comments here though are inaccurate. Some streets were blocked off, but I suppose they couldn't block off the entire loop. There were banks of porta-potties, but probably not enough.

The problem was that this was organised by private business, manned by volunteers who really hadn't done anything like this before. I think they were overwhelmed by the response. I gave up on the long lines before 10pm and decided I had had enough of the amateurs and headed to the Cultural Center. There were crowds waiting to get into events, but I found the staff were managing them far better than the other locations. I managed to get a front row seat for the second half of Nishat Khan's preformance, which was a fantistic performance. After that I watched the B-movies and there were actually seats remaining through the second and third film, but they were at the front of the theatre.

Yes, I stayed to the end and had breakfast in Millenium Park, and yes it was free. WholeFoods and Intelligentsia provided coffee, tea, bagels, fruit, granola, kefir and yogurt. It wasn't bad

I was pretty disappointed myself. Wound up going from bar to bar instead, including the Palmer House Lobby. An outdoor beer garden would have been nice.

Biggest disappointment? I went to the 'party' at the Plymouth per the Text messages Jocelyn mentioned. The bar was very cool, I'd never been there before. But all of the advertising for free drinks & food? Didn't happen! What the hell was that all about? I probably would have done something else if I knew I had to pay full price for everything.

Shame on your Mark, that was a really lame way to attempt to meet girls. Then again, I saw him & his 'friends' at the bar and it didn't look like they wanted to talk to anybody. Lame.

will i know that the house music part had all the people!! it was where the good vibes were at!! go's to show that we need to have more things like this in the city!

One big element was left completely out of Looptopia:

FOOD. FOOD. FOOD. FOOD. FOOD. FOOD. FOOD.

And not a single person in all the posts above mentioned this. Too good to eat past 7:00 p.m.?

It baffles me that there were NO food vendors at this event. They should have at least had an entire block closed off and dedicated to food vendors like most street festivals in Chicago. I was eager to eat fried things of all sorts so I'd really hate myself the next day.

Why no food? Insane, if you ask me.

@The Curmedgeon:

I agree. Again, this whole thing felt like it was thrown together in like seven hours, but I know full well it wasn't. If this was the night for weird, experimental stuff, I would have been down for a couple of restaurants with the same trailblazing gusto to show up with some crazy food. But, alas, no.

@anna:

Word. I live in Wicker Park and have to deal with crowd and street noise at all hours on the weekend. And with all this condo building going on, I hear construction start up promptly at 6am. Do I complain? No... this is the cost of city living. I trade peace and quiet for having four thai restaurants in walking distance and not having to own a car. So yeah, fuck the loop dwellers...

Yeah, I can agree that this event has some major obstacles to overcome, but keep in mind that it was a first time event, put together by a non-profit organization. If you didn't make the correlation that means very fixed-budget. So I can understand how it is hard to fund all of the things necessary to provide enough programming for the unknown masses of people that flooded the Loop. But at least some people have the balls to take a chance on something progressive and are also willing to face the possibility of falling flat on their faces. I give it up to them for trying and hopefully next year there will be many more businesses and more performers willing to participate in the event. I was definitely annoyed by the cops who were dicks and were just pissed because they couldn't take control of the situation from the comfort of their squad cars. They actually had to do work on their feet. God forbid. Has anybody seen how fat our police force is these days?

I can guarantee the biggest problem with this event was the city's absolute refusal to allow outdoor entertainment past 11pm. Couple that with a better than expected first year turnout, and you have drunks playing red rover in the middle of Michigan and Adams, and people trying to tip over the bean in Millennium Park. If this event happens again, the city needs to cooperate, and let Looptopia be the event it should have been, with music and entertainment programming on multiple stages OUTDOORS, all night. You can't have an all night party if you aren't allowed to have an all night party.