I just got free tickets to go to OZY Fest 2019. If you don’t know what it is, OZY Fest is like… a media festival. There’s music, Miguel and Tove Lo are performing. But there’s also comedy, Trevor Noah is doing a performance, there’s politics, Beto is gonna be there. And there’s also cooking? Rachel Rae is doing a cooking performance.
Last year’s headliner was Hillary Clinton. It takes place in the Great Lawn in Central Park for two days. I got a two-day past through Parker Dewey, a micro-internship service that’s pretty cool. They gave me a link for friends and family, but I’m not sure I know anyone who would want to go.
A quick Google search of this blog post’s title quickly brings up a lot of bad press from OZY Fest 2018: the AV Club calls it “the music festival of your nightmares”, Rolling Stone called it a “neoliberal nightmare” and the outline called it “the ideas festival for people who hate ideas”. Perhaps the nicest of these first couple headlines is The Daily Beast’s who said it simply fell a little flat.
The OZY Fest official editors posted a minute-by-minute recap of the 2018 weekend here: https://www.ozy.com/good-sht/ozy-fest-2018-as-it-happened/88186 that might be a good indicator of what could be expected for this year. Their Insta bio describes them, and I think they’re right in this, as an “eclectic festival of music, comedy and ideas.” I don’t know if this wild bunch of liberal icons make for an impressive offering or just a confusing slough of idea makers. I’m either going to have a fantastic time or find myself in for a lot of transitional whiplash come July 20th.
