Students look back on Forecastle 2019
August 29, 2019
Forecastle Musical Festival is an annual event in Louisville every year in July at Waterfront Park made up of crazy outfits, local food trucks, thousands of people and a star-filled music line up.
Several Manual students have attended the festival for years and have different experiences each time. The atmosphere at Forecastle was notably the highlight of some Manual students’ experience at the festival.
As a musical festival, bringing in new, popular and local artists is a goal of Forecastle’s coordinators. The headliners for this year’s festival were The Killers, The Avett Brothers, Portugal the Man, Judah and the Lion, Playboi Carti, Maggie Rogers and many other artists.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bz5mU_gFRW7/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
There were also many surprise appearances such as Jack Harlow.
“The best part of forecastle for me was the Judah and the Lion concert. Me and a bunch of other Manual kids were in the front row and when they started singing “take it all back” everyone started screaming it and dancing to it,” Raegan Reisert (12, J&C) said.
This year at Forecastle there was one thing that many participants and Manual students found particularly disappointing: the performance cancellations.
Lauv, Calpurnia, Denzel Curry, and First Aid Kit are three performers that canceled their Forecastle debuts just hours before showtime.
People were publicly upset at the cancellations but still had an amazing time thanks to the festival’s quick replacement performers.
“I was so mad when I found out that Denzel Curry had canceled his performance. He was one of the only reasons I bought tickets in the first place so for him to drop out was disappointing,” Spencer Abma (11, HSU) said.
Although Forecastle received praise and glory from thousands of people, Raegan Reisert, a senior at Manual High School, had another complaint about this year’s festival.
“The audio and speaker quality during a few of the performances was just bad, it was muffled and so quiet to a point that you could barely recognize the song being performed,” Reisert said.
Despite sound quality and cancellations, the food trucks that lined a strip of the great lawn next to Mass stage at the Festival was a huge hit. Particularly excited about the food available was Sammy Manning, a junior at Manual.
“My favorite food was definitely the deep-fried Oreos. I probably ate about three of them throughout the entire festival,” Manning (11, YPAS) said.
The food brought to the festival is something the event coordinator spend a lot of time working on. Forecastle works to promote local businesses throughout Louisville.
Today (7/12) from 10am-11pm
— Joella's Hot Chicken (@Joellaschicken) July 12, 2019
Forecastle / 231 E Witherspoon St, 40202@SFFLou https://t.co/C3NDAXc2E7
The outskirts of the Waterfront Park are lined with food trucks, business pop-up shops and other advocates for localizing the diverse community of Louisville.
Forecastle also promotes activism wherever they can. The mission of the festival is to provide a local music festival, while also advocating for sustainability and giving.
