Laneway Festival

Been three years now and Laneway is quite seriously easily one of my favourite days of the entire year. The atmosphere is just amazing — sun, music, markets, delicious food and lots of interesting characters to get some serious fashion inspiration from. Such a well organised event. Will be going every year I’m able to! Such a fantastic day.

Laneways is where hipsters unite. Never ever have I seen so many man buns, facial hair and crochet tops. Let’s be honest, I was loving it — don’t mind a good man bun.
As for the music it was all good. It might have just been this years line up but it was pretty mellow. Lots of swaying as opposed to outright dancing, which I would have been totally down with if there were grassy knolls to sit and watch. But, alas, Laneway is an urban festy so instead you find yourself in a massive concrete jungle sandwiched between thousands of people with little to no shade. Ok, so it wasn’t that bad but it was pretty bad! MORE shade next year please!
Also what is with those bloody coupons. Seriously, such a scam. Why can’t we just pay cash, or eftpos — that’s that why we’ve got a national currency after all! Clearly they’re trying to make money of drunk festy goers who walk out with a whole lotta of coupons — shameless if you ask me!
Right, rant over…
What Laneway did nail was the food. They had everything from Cocoloco Coconuts to Burger Burger to battered hot dogs. They also had wonderful staff. Especially those people monitoring the queues for waaaasted people with the no more beersies t. shirts — responsible drinking, I like it!
Would I go back again? Maybe. But please Laneway — more shade, more toilets, NO MORE COUPONS!

If you can only afford one festival a year (and it’s not Splore year), go to Laneway. There have been four in Auckland and each gets better than the last. For the last two years it has taken place down at Silo Park in Wynyard Quarter and works really well.
The first artists start around 11am and it goes till about midnight. There are market stalls, really good street food vendors, a good selection of drinks and room to chill in the shade. The best part about Laneway however, are the artists. Whoever books the musicians, knows what they’re doing. yes there are the popular ones of the scene-​y world — think Florence and the Machine, The XX and Alt-​J, but the real magic comes from the artists right on the cusp of blowing up — think Flume.
Every year I try to convince my friends to come, and every year they say they don’t know many of the artists, and every year about 3 months later they get angry at me because a Laneway artist is their new favourite and I didn’t push them to come.
So look, just come. You’ll hear new music and eat good food.

To put it simply, St Jerome’s Laneway Festival is the coolest event in the Auckland music calendar. A must for any scenester looking to see some of the best new and up and coming international acts and generally hang out with all the other cool kids for a relaxed summers day in Silo Park.
Originally starting in Melbourne in 2004, the festival has been happening in Auckland annually since 2010. I’ve found that most of the UK artists I love never seem to come to New Zealand so it was amazing to see Alt-​J and my current girl-​crush Jessie Ware on stage. There are no other events that would bring artists like that here, especially since Big Day Out was cancelled this year.
At around $ 170 dollars, the tickets aren’t cheap and admittedly they did have some bar issues this year (they closed the main one at 8pm, which was a massive inconvenience!) but hopefully by the time January rolls around next year they’ll have more amazing acts and alcohol available after dark.
The festival takes place around the middle of January every year. Look out for posters and advertisements closer to the time to find out about buying tickets etc.