It’s Okay to Skip Coachella This Year! Gabby Windey Says So! 

Coachella looms on the horizon like an expensive, dusty mirage, and your social feeds are about to become a wasteland for #sponsored content designed to make you feel like you’re the only one not frolicking in the desert. Before you FOMO, let our lord and savior Gabby Windey talk you down from the ledge. We’re here to convince you why skipping Coachella might actually be your best decision this spring. 

Desert climate sucks

“I don’t want to go to the middle of the desert with fickle weather and dust everywhere,” says Windey, and we have to agree. Coachella is HOT during the day and COLD at night. It’s dusty and dry, but also somehow sweaty and damp? Miss us with that nonsense.

There’s TOO much pressure on the looks

Can we go back to an era where “festival wear” was not its own genre of clothing? Being an audience member should not require you to look perfect, but as Windey says, “I’ve got to sit for two hours in glam to stand outside through hazy blurry eyes?” 

Nooooo thank you to “cowboy boots and fringed booty shorts.” Hard pass on “a flexible denim belly chain and baby tee.” We’d rather stay home and watch Beyonce’s Coachella performance on YouTube in our pajamas again.

Standing. That’s it, that’s the heading

“I cannot stand for that long!” says Windey. “What do these quads look like to you? Durable? Resilient? These little ligaments can’t take it! These ACLs are not made for it!” 

If you, like Windey, do not have legs of steel, you may not enjoy standing for hours on end. “So I’m going to need a picnic chair, and my eyeline will be blocked from the inevitable mosh pit of what I can only assume are teeny boppers.”

The social media of it all

From Revolve Fest to Neon Carnival to Camp Poosh, everything we’ve seen that goes on at Coachella has been against our will. Why do we feel the need to document every second of a music festival? Or even the seconds BEFORE a music festival? “I can’t go and pretend to have fun on my iPhone 13 in a ‘get ready with me,’” says Windey. “You want to get ready with me? I can barely brush my teeth! Much less my hair. I’m not putting on deodorant these days because I’m scared for my health, I’m afraid of cancer.”

Life is too hard to have to pretend to be happy on social media. 

Coachella? In this economy?

Okay, this one isn’t a Gabby Windey problem, it’s a normal people problem. But if you think eggs are too expensive, then dropping hundreds  on tickets is questionable financial planning. Add in the food, $16 beers, lodging, the merch you buy when it gets cold at night, and you’re looking at a weekend that could fund several months of therapy. We’d rather eat an omelette than sizzle like one in the desert sun.

For more words of wisdom from Gabby Windey, check out Long Winded. And if you want to attend a cool event this spring that doesn’t require booty shorts or a belly chain, consider the Dear Media Edit, a curated, immersive live experience that brings the most talked-about conversations from our shows into the real world.