For the first time since the start of the pandemic, Electric Zoo, New York City's longest-running music festival, returned to its usual home on Randall's Island Park. Tens of thousands of vaccinated or COVID-negative partiers went wild over the three-day weekend fest when the beat dropped approximately four million times. More than 100 DJs, including headliners like Kaskade, Duke Dumont, Tiësto, Alleso, Zed's Dead, Fisher, and Illenium, kept the huge crowds shuffling, dub-stepping, and headbanging for as long as ten hours straight at four different open-air stages.
"Oh hell yeah!" said Jessie, who came up from Philadelphia for the whole weekend of partying. "This feels fucking amazing. Illenium got me through the hardest of times last year and I can't believe he's closing out the whole festival. It's amazing to be around so many people again. This is a big part of my life. Last summer I did the drive-in raves, the virtual raves, and it was pretty sick, but this is so, so much better."
The past pandemic year did little to change the EDM festival, or the fashion that's become a part of the scene—from trippy bathing suits to rude t-shirts to full-on Halloween costumes still the norm. Though the once-ubiquitous pineapples, a symbol of hospitality, were thin on the ground, the bead-laden PLUR people (Peace, Love, Unity, Respect) still remain a vital part of the scene.
Anthony, who at EZoo goes by his rave name Galaxy X, said, "It's like we were in a different time zone last year that we couldn't do anything and we couldn't rage, and we couldn't express ourselves, we couldn't ever see our friends, we were so isolated in our minds. But now that we're back I feel more open than ever. The vibe, the energy... I feel like we never left."
