Life is Beautiful learned from its inaugural year, so festivalgoers benefit

Where once there were Porta-Pottys now lie fields of green. Or something like that.

The Life Is Beautiful festival is trucking in tons of sod to green up 70,000 square feet of downtown dirt and asphalt for its second year. So it may not be metaphor abuse to say that having proved its “downtown” cred, the music, food and art festival is free to be a little more comfortable this year.

“One of the things that I missed (last year) is that a lot of the festivals I go to, you can lay in the grass and watch the show,” festival founder Rehan Choudhry says. Beyond his own tastes, “We got a lot of requests for places to sit.”

The “bold step” to grass over three different areas within the festival’s 15 city blocks (two of them relocating last year’s portable restrooms) just “feels a little more whimsical and laid back,” Choudhry says during a golf-cart tour of the festival area.

So maybe it is a good metaphor after all. Last year’s Life Is Beautiful was all about establishing itself and its oddly matched, yet somehow compatible blend of indie rock and big-name chefs.

Organizers said 60,000 people showed up last year, so this year’s edition grows to a third day and expands its musical umbrella for its top-billed headliners: the mainstream hip-hop of Outkast and Kanye West, the boomer-friendly Lionel Richie and everyone’s favorite rock band, Foo Fighters.

The third day — the festival now starts on Friday— is something which “normally we wouldn’t have done until Year Three or Four. You want to build some momentum,” Choudhry says.

But 80 percent of last year’s ticket-buyers opted for the two-day package over the single day. “And people were telling us it took to the middle of the second day to try to figure out where everything was,” he adds.

Plus, last year’s Sunday closer by The Killers battled both an increasingly threatening wind storm and the specter of work or school on Monday. Although the weather is beyond organizers’ control, social-media opinion made it clear that a Friday night option was missed.

“Everyone wished they had a third day. We felt obligated in a weird way to deliver,” Choudhry says.

If the first year’s biggest mistake was overprogramming, it means the festival otherwise went without injuries or major logistical problems. Not bad for an event that required 10 miles of fencing and didn’t come with adjacent parking.

“We were very fortunate,” Choudhry says. “It says a lot for our production but it says a lot for our audience. It wasn’t a reckless crowd.”

Still lessons were learned and hopefully applied. Among the changes for this year:

■ The two main stages remain where they were last year, several blocks apart (use the Ferris wheels as your beacon points). But there is more of an effort to separate them by genre, after blowback about booking The Killers and Empire of the Sun at the same time last year.

On Friday, West is on the Downtown Stage (North Seventh Street and Stewart Avenue ) and Las Vegas pop-rockers Panic! At the Disco on the Ambassador Stage, once home to the motel of the same name (at Fremont and Ninth streets). On Saturday, it’s Outkast and space-rockers The Flaming Lips. On Sunday, it’s Foo Fighters and EDM star Skrillex.

■ The perimeter shifts, with two entry points this year. Last year, El Cortez was within the festival’s fence line. This year it is not. The extra block in front of El Cortez aims to create a more inviting entry point from Fremont Street and allow the bars in that area to stay open past the festival’s midnight closing time.

The second entry is at Seventh Street and East Carson Avenue, along the side of Container Park. “It got a little backed up (with just one entry point), and people were coming from different directions,” Choudhry says.

■ Last year’s Culinary Village next to the shuttered Western Hotel was deemed too far from the main stages. This year it will be divided into four areas. What about those big-name chefs who gave talks and exhibition-kitchen demonstrations while you gnoshed? Are they going to have to shout over Neon Trees? Those talks have been moved to Container Park, which wasn’t yet open last year but this year is within the festival’s fence line.

■ The “learning” component — the festival’s TED talklike speakers — ended up too far under the radar last year in bars and restaurants outside the festival’s perimeter. This year the speakers, including members of the newsmaking Russian activists Pussy Riot, will be inside the Western (which wasn’t open at all last year).

Beyond the big-name headliners, organizers hope to further the sense of discovery created by turning over abandoned motels and that mysterious sphere in front of the Container Park to artists and interactive Web designers.

It’s the atmosphere and small statements which aim to give the festival an identity beyond the big-name musical acts. Like the motel swimming pool filled with rubber ducks that will greet festivalgoers.

“What better way to welcome people than 3,600 rubber ducks?” Choudhry says.

Contact reporter Mike Weatherford at mweatherford@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0288.