Day Trip’s odd journey from waterfront to San Bernardino
When concert producer Insomniac announced new house music festival Day Trip last August, the event was a glimmering disco ball of hope that the live music industry would return the next summer, recovering from the crippling shutdown of the coronavirus pandemic.
“People needed something to look forward to,” Pasquale Rotella, founder and CEO of Insomniac Events, said in an interview Thursday afternoon, noting that the new festival originally scheduled for the San Pedro waterfront was also a beacon for him and his staff.
But things didn’t work out as planned, even after adding and selling out a second day of Day Trip and booking three dozen artists, including Chromeo, Diplo, Nora En Pure and Justin Martin.
Within the past two weeks, the festival with summer palm tree and yacht vibes hit rough waters with two venue relocations, leading Insomniac to give out unprecedented refunds for tickets, travel and lodging reimbursements for fans and admission to future concerts.
This weekend, the show will go on, now happening at the NOS Event Center in San Bernardino today and Sunday; prior ticket holders will have free admission and others can still buy tickets for one of the first two-day fests in Southern California since COVID-19 restrictions lifted.
For Rotella, who started Insomniac in Los Angeles warehouses nearly 30 years ago and grew it into the nation’s biggest electronic dance music promoter with events such as Electric Daisy Carnival, Beyond Wonderland and Hard Summer, the choppy seas of Day Trip’s journey aren’t unfamiliar.
“Rather than canceling the show, in the spirit of Insomniac and where we come from, never give up, never stop. The party must go on,” Rotella said.
Navigating the post-COVID-19 seas
Day Trip grew out of a weekly patio party of the same name Insomniac produced at The Academy club in L.A. beginning in 2018 with a loyal following of
house music fans.
Unlike some of Insomniac’s elaborate production for festivals such as the Electric Daisy Carnival or Nocturnal Wonderland, “Day Trip is very much about the music,” Rotella said. Even so, the production includes palm trees, a giant flamingo, hundreds of disco balls and people sipping drinks out of fishbowls.
Having the event at the L.A. waterfront was a natural fit for the daytime vibe. But on June 22, Insomniac announced the move away from the waterfront to The Lot at Hollywood Park, the venue on the exterior of SoFi Stadium in Inglewood.
Phillip Sanfield, director of media relations for the Port of Los Angeles, said the holiday weekend presented challenges, including traffic due to the return of the fireworks show and limited parking.
“No one had any ill intentions and the city was great,” Rotella said. “Resources. You have to have them in order to do things right.”
Though 15,000 people had bought tickets for today’s show — the capacity Insomniac and the venue had been working with — the holiday issues prompted the port to tell the concert producer it needed to shed 5,000 attendees in order for Day Trip to happen at the site.
“So, how do you pick people to give refunds to? And we felt that would be a hard thing to do and to lower our capacity since we had been sold out,” Rotella said.
Sanfield noted that Day Trip’s planning coincided with changing pandemicrelated health and safety guidelines for crowds, creating additional logistical issues relating to venue capacity.
Insomniac changed the festival’s course, moving 20 miles north to the new stadium complex. But as the promoter was about to start setting up the venue last weekend, Day Trip ran into permitting troubles.
“It’s a new facility. We’re coming out of this pandemic. And there were some things that both the venue and we as a company were unaware of,” Rotella said.
The quick turnaround didn’t allow time for a required medical plan to be approved by Los Angeles County Fire and the city of Inglewood also cited concerns about the event taking place in the parking lot of the stadium in a residential area.
A new path was charted for the festival, but to a longtime port for Insomniac: San Bernardino’s NOS Event Center. More than 70 miles east of Inglewood, the complex has been the home of many of the producer’s events.
After consulting with the venue, city and law enforcement officials, among others, Day Trip officially had a place to dock. And even though it’s not on the waterfront, the production, from setting up multiple stages, to putting down astroturf, to having a Ferris wheel, is going to be the same.
But there was one aspect to the move that would prove more difficult: telling the fans.
On the move again
Rotella had realized the reach of the festival beyond Southern California after the first relocation. He heard from fans who had booked accommodations close to the waterfront venue.
Ticket holders are not shy about hopping on to social media to vent their frustration, and dozens did with the initial move.
The frustration was understandable, but what could be done? It’s not like Rotella could just refund everyone’s tickets for the inconvenience. Or could he?
So on Tuesday, Rotella posted a video for fans, explaining the move to San Bernardino and then announcing that all ticket holders would be refunded — and they still could attend this weekend. They would also receive admission into an Insomniac event of their choice through the end of 2021 that wasn’t sold out. Beyond that, they would be emailed a form and could be reimbursed for nonrefundable travel and lodging.
“The reason we did it was we were able to and we just came out of such a hard year … Our ability to be able to take care of people on this level, we just had to do it. It was the right thing to do,” Rotella said.
Based on ticket prices and initial capacity estimates alone, the cost of refunding the tickets would exceed $1 million.
Dave Brooks, the senior director of live music for Billboard, said that Insomniac’s decision to both refund tickets and reimburse travel costs are something he has never heard of before with a festival.
“Yeah, sure, they made this mistake, but they made the event free, they offered to pay travel expenses and they are creating events for people who have just been stuck indoors and want to get out and dance,” Brooks said.
Brooks said that the refunds could garner the positive feedback for Insomniac, but noted that if people have trouble getting in at San Bernardino or there are logistical problems following the sudden move, it could become a legacy problem for the brand.
Rotella doesn’t know how many people will come to San Bernardino this weekend, but they’re allowed to have 20,000 each day.
Insomniac will be back at the venue later this month for Hard Summer July 31 and Aug. 1. The show is already sold out. Beyond Wonderland follows later in August.
“The NOS Event Center has been home for dance music culture in the United States. There’s been other time periods where venues were not available and festivals we’re getting accepted as things that people should be allowed to have and to go to. And the Orange Show has always been a great, safe place for us, and we really call it home.”