With day two of the Dave Matthews Band Caravan in Atlantic City underway, many expect it to be even more successful than day one, which attracted an estimated 25,000 people.
A couple watches Mariachi El Bronx at the Dave Matthews Band Caravan in Atlantic City.
Click here for live coverage of the DMBC.
ATLANTIC CITY — If Atlantic City is striving to bring in a younger demographic, thousands and thousands of more visitors (who will party all night and feed the local economy's engine) and really rebrand the resort to symbolize the world-class tourist destination that it once was, we've got four words: Dave Matthews Band Caravan.
With an estimated 25,000 people in Atlantic City for Day One of the three-day music festival on Friday, June 24, (organizers expect 32,000 for Day Two) it was a shot in the arm not only to local casinos, hotels, motels, taxis, restaurants, area clubs and other businesses, but the festival — the first of four DMBC festivals planned for the country this year, each in a different city — drew "kids" into town, festival kids, mainly college students or a bit older, many of whom had never been to Atlantic City before Friday.
It's this demo that A.C. needs to attract.
"This is awesome," one college-aged woman from Delaware said as she walked into the festival grounds, at Bader Field, on Friday.
With dozens of vendors doing brisk business, local radio stations and other businesses on the grounds in tents, as well as — free water kiosks! — non-profit agencies offering information and collecting petition signatures and/or donations, the first-ever DMBC, sprawled out over more than 140 acres, appeared to be going as planned.
Although the crowd was smaller than organizers, city officials and businesses had initially hoped for, the festival turned a on lot of new visitors — several of whom said they would return for other similar events in Atlantic City.
Thousands of people — from all over the region and country, and some from abroad — trickled into Bader Field throughout the day on Friday, from when doors opened at 1pm till close to 9pm.
By about 10:30pm, the grounds emptied out.
The Dave Matthews Band performed a closing set to end the first day's events and will do so again both Saturday and Sunday nights.
The four DMBC festivals are the only live concert appearances the band is playing this year.
"[Atlantic City's] location was really central. You’ve got good facilities, it’s not, you know, like 39 miles on some two-lane country road — that kind of vibe, you know, so it’s just the fact that it’s practical, there’s a lot of facilities and since we’re not doing like a camping thing we thought it would be good to be close to infrastructure so the fans do have like the backbone of a place like Atlantic City at their disposal."
Interview with Chris Funk of the Decemberists: "I don't really look where we're going until I'm on the road these days."
There were aerial views, all right, and they showed tens of thousands of people at Bader Field having the times of their lives. With the exception of some brief tie-ups at the Albany Avenue monument — which jams up on a Tuesday night in January — there was no traffic purgatory.
The food varies from Cajun po’ boys and ice cream to American-Thai and authentic Atlantic City grub. Many of the items for sale include recycled, organic and fair-trade products.
For more about DrewToonz, visit drewtoonzart.com....
'For the Dave Matthews Band Caravan, we’re doing Pink Floyd’s album The Dark Side of the Moon. It should be pretty absurd.'
We understand that a three-day hullabaloo like the Dave Matthews Band Caravan may bring folks to town who have never been here before, and may not have a clue as to what to do before and after the bands perform — or perhaps may want to take a break from the Bader Field confines to see or do something else.
Atlantic City Weekly will be bringing you live photos, blogs and more from the DMBC festival this weekend at Bader Field in Atlantic City.
Back in 1969, a decade after the launch of the Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island (and nearly 15 years after the Newport Jazz Festival was established in 1964) and just a couple weeks before Woodstock took place in upstate New York (Aug. 15-18), Atlantic City had its own big rock and pop festival. Held Aug. 1-3, 1969, at the Atlantic City Race Course, the Atlantic City Pop Festival featured ...
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