On June 6th, over 40,000 people descended on Randalls Island, NY for the first of three music packed days at the Governors Ball Music Festival. Some caught the ferry at 34th St. Others bused across the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge at 125th St. The desperate abandoned the subway at 103rd St. and continued on foot, crossing the Ward’s Island footbridge. Brightly colored music lovers carried around 25 oz cans of Foster’s beer. 21st century hippies with flowers in their hair and iPhones — perennially low on battery — at their ears waited in never ending food truck lines. On any other day of the year, Randalls Island, along with adjoining Wards Island, sits silent, a psychiatric hospital, state police station, water treatment plant and one of the largest men’s homeless shelters in the city stretched across its 520 acres. But for three days straight, from 12:15pm until 11pm, music performers from Vampire Weekend to Outkast to Skrillex to The Strokes took the stage under the hot summer sun and the starless night that hangs over Manhattan. GP was there, and this is what we saw.
