This weekend, we went to the Saturday lineup of the Sasquatch Music Festival. Being seasoned veterans of the ACL Festival, it was interesting to compare the two festivals.
The Gorge is a much smaller venue than Zilker Park. The daily attendance at Sasquatch is about a third of ACL (22K vs 65K) and it is much faster to get from one stage to another at The Gorge.
Location
ACL Festival is in downtown Austin. There is no on site parking, but there are plenty of shuttles from downtown. The shuttles can be annoying if the lines are long, but for the most part they work pretty well. Sasquatch is two and a half hours east of Seattle. Once you get close in, you have to wait in some annoying traffic before you can park.
Winner: ACL Fest
View
As much as I love the view of downtown Austin from Zilker Park, it is hard to beat the view of the Columbia River Gorge at Sasquatch.
Winner: Sasquatch
Food
ACL Fest has lots of local vendors with interesting dishes. (I'm talking about you, Hot and Crunchy Avocado Cone!) The prices are surprising reasonable, with most main dishes being $6. The selection for vegetarians is excellent. Sasquatch is a different story. The vegetarian options are limited, the prices are too high, and the dishes are uninspired. I'm still steaming about paying $8 for a vegetarian gyro which was pita, lettuce, tomato, and Tzatziki sauce. This was the same price as the beef, lamb, and chicken gyros!
Winner: ACL Fest
Festival Performers
After getting back on Sunday, I looked at the ACL lineup for this year. There was a surprising amount of overlap with the artists that played at Sasquatch. ACL has more stages (8 vs. 4), but Chris and I rarely went to anything besides the biggest four stages at ACL anyway. Honestly, I think it just depends on the specific line up year-to-year as to which would be better.
Winner: Draw
Weather
You would think this would go to Sasquatch in a heartbeat. This year it was 85 with blazing sun, and to me it felt just as bad as the 100 degree weather at ACL. Maybe I've blocked out how bad ACL really was, but I seemed to be sweating just as much at Sasquatch as I did at ACL. The big difference is when the sun goes down. ACL stays pretty warm, but the temperature plummets at Sasquatch. Unfortunately, this means you have to lug around a jacket or hoodie all day just to use for the last couple of bands.
Winner: Sasquatch by a nose.
Couple more random observations:
Sasquatch has stations where you can refill your water bottles, but they are the same as the hand washing stations for the bathrooms. So yay for free water, but boo for annoying lines to actually get it.
I'm glad I'm not a beer drinker. Sasquatch has tiny beers for $9 each. I'm sure this is worse than ACL.
You can bring food into Sasquatch. If we ever go again, I will definitely carry in some food even if it will be annoying to lug around.
