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Thanks for the first-person account. It's good to hear what really happened from someone who was there, the media often exaggerates.
I'm also not saying horrible things didn't happen. All I know is, I was in the thick of it and the only questionable thing I saw were the fires, which the fire marshal told us from the stage not to worry about. I saw lots of vendors giving stuff away at the end, which maybe looked kind of dubious on camera, but nobody was taking or extorting anything from them.
Just a few years back, I read "That Hideous Strength" and the whole part about the riot reporting in there resonated with a few experiences I've had, but this was the first one like that. It's a terrifying book if you're ever looking to experience a different side of C.S. Lewis's writing.
I was there. My memory of this event is TOTALLY different than the way the media portrayed it. I was in the thick of the crowd when the Chili Peppers went on and the fires started. They weren't violent and even the fire marshal came on stage and said don't worry about it. The band actually played their cover of Hendrix's "Fire" right after that.
The "looting" at the end was honestly just vendors chucking product they couldn't sell because, well yeah, everything was overpriced. We brought our own food for the weekend and just had a feast when they started giving away free stuff. The crowd didn't take anything and didn't even ask. It was a massive dumping.
As to the sexual assault allegations, I can't speak to that. That is obviously horrific and I hope any guilty parties were brought to justice.
Concerning anything in public though, I was in the midst of the crowd the whole time and saw no violence, theft, or people being mean to each-other in any greater than average way. It was actually one of the happier music festivals I've been to, and I've been a full time professional musician since 2006. My first memory of thinking anything weird happened was calling my mom (on a pay phone) long after the Chili Peppers set and the endlessly feasting on Sunday night and her telling me how scary the media had made it seem.
I don't have Netflix right now, but I may have to check out this documentary. I've got a lot of pictures, but that was before the days when we all carried video cameras in our pockets.