Despite delta variant, fans crowd Napa’s BottleRock
Three-day outdoor music event reopens with long lines, vaccine cards.
Outside the entrance gates to BottleRock Napa Valley, Janis and Paul Pollock were settling in comfortably. Perched in lawn chairs with cold beverages at the ready, the Napa residents said they normally attend the three-day music festival every year, but with the coronavirus still circulating, they didn’t want to risk it.
“We’re here people-watching,” Janis said, smiling behind sunglasses with a mask in hand. It was just before noon and Paul, who sat next to her in a wide-brimmed sun hat and tie-dyed shorts with his mask around his chin, nodded in agreement. The couple said the thought of packing in with a crowd of tens of thousands of strangers was a bit nerve-racking, but that their daughter, who lives in the neighborhood, would be heading in soon.
Then a festival staffer shouted that the gates were open — marking the start of the first major music festival in the region since the start of the pandemic.
Long lines of people began to flow into the gates, past signs that read “COVID-19 WARNING” reminding revelers that they assumed the risk of potentially exposing themselves to the virus. The smiling, chatting crowd seemed to pay them little mind.
Inside the festival, Jill Singleton and daughter Rachel were enjoying a midday beverage at the wine tent. Singleton said she works as a nurse and felt a little apprehensive about being there with the pandemic still not contained. She said neither she nor her daughter had their vaccine cards checked at the gates, though they had them at the ready if anyone asked throughout the day.
“It seems like there’s no way to check cards for thousands of people,” she said.
Still, they said they were happy
to be at the outdoor festival after the drive up from Santa Monica, and said the decision of whether to see Miley Cyrus or Guns N’ Roses on Saturday night would be a difficult one.
Rob Stankus of Walnut Creek had a different experience when it came to the vaccine check. Sitting on the grass, taking in one of the first acts of the day, he said festival staff had checked his vaccine card while he was in line to enter, and then checked it again as he passed the gates.
Festivalgoers could also present a negative test. Several rapid-testing sites were accessible near the festival grounds, although the time for going that route had run out when the gates opened Friday. (The festival only allowed unvaccinated people to show proof of a negative test in the past 72 hours.)
“The vaccine statistics in the Bay Area make me feel good” about going to a big event like the festival, Stankus said, adding that he already planned to start going to indoor events soon.
Early in the day, a crowd of a few dozen people sidled up to the JaM Cellars Stage where singer-songwriter Lily Meola was performing a cover of “Dreams” by Fleetwood Mac. She told the audience it was a sort of a consolation prize since band singer Stevie Nicks previously dropped out of the festival over COVID concerns.
The audience members kept their distance in the large, empty outdoor space, staying mostly unmasked, although they inched closer together as the encroaching sun shortened the shadows cast by the stage.
As the day and the sets wore on, space close to the stage was at more of a premium. Gaps between picnicking couples and groups started to fill in, the three-story observation decks and cabanas near the main JaM Cellars Stage also began to look busier, similar to years past. Even on what is typically the festival’s lightest day, people continued to flow through the gates — some arriving later in the afternoon, running to catch the end of Mavis Staples’ performance or to watch Oakland rapper G-Eazy and Bay Area entrepreneur Ayesha Curry team up on the culinary stage.
On Friday, just a couple hours after the festival began, country star Chris Stapleton, who replaced Nicks, canceled his headline set, too, citing “a non-COVIDrelated illness.” He was quickly replaced on the bill by the Highwomen, a country music supergroup made up of singersongwriters Brandi Carlile, Natalie Hemby and Maren Morris. (Brittney
Spencer filled in for Amanda Shires, who is also a member but is recovering from emergency surgery.) Both Morris and Carlile were already on the festival bill for Friday.
While the festival’s four stages are the main draw, BottleRock stands out among other megafests with its lux attractions intended to reflect the wine and hospitality industry Napa Valley is best known for. One of those, called The Spa, is an enclosed building brimming with wineand-wellness-themed booths. A stern sign on entry states that masks are required inside, and a basket of them sat near the door. Just past that, visitors are advised that
CBD oils are plentifully on offer.
Inside, masks felt optional as people sipped wine and seltzer and sidled over to a massage booth, or sat to have their hair touched up at the shampoo and Chardonnay station.
Kylie Schirebr had just finished getting a minor makeover at the booth. A nurse at Kaiser Permanente in Vacaville, she said she was glad to see people enjoying themselves after more than a year of evolving variants and virus lockdowns.
“The mental health issues of the pandemic have been huge,” she said, adding that the festival was something of an antidote to the secondary effects of the
pandemic, including depression, particularly among older people. “I’m just glad people are out having fun,” she said.
Assia Lauren stood nearby doing just that, posing for photos with a friend from who came in from North Carolina. Lauren said she’d come up from where she lives in Los Angeles for the festival to see acts like Megan Thee Stallion and G-Eazy. Still, she said through a cloth striped mask, that she was “A little nervous about the variant.”
Somewhat more pandemic-friendly options were also available for those looking to keep their distance while making merry.
Next door to The Spa, a crowd of a few dozen grooved noiselessly at the silent disco, with groups mostly staying in smallish circles with their masks on.
In a darkened, mostly empty space with fog machines and flashing lights called The Club further down the festival’s main drag, masking seemed to be taken more seriously. A guard posted at the entrance made sure people wore one, and handed them to the barefaced, waiting for them to don it before they stepped inside the gloomy interior.
Despite the indoor offerings, the crowds were the largest and most tightly packed at the outdoor stages. A wine bottle’s throw away at one of the smaller venues, Latrice Browning and Loren Freitis were enjoying lunch on the grass a healthy distance away from the crowd watching the musical act BabyJake.
Frietis said the pair had attended Lollapalooza in Chicago a little over a month ago, which felt like something of a tuneup for the Napa festivities.
“There was no outbreak afterwards,” he said, adding the much smaller size of BottleRock felt like less of a risk, along with the festival’s policy of checking vaccine proof against ID cards, which he said hadn’t happened at the Chicago festivities.
And he’s not not quite ready to give up on the summer festival season or let the pandemic put another dent in his revelries. Frietis said he plans to head to Las Vegas to attend the Life is Beautiful music festival in a few weeks.
“The mental health issues of the pandemic have been huge. I’m just glad people are out having fun.” Kylie Schirebr, nurse at Kaiser Permanente in Vacaville and BottleRock attendee