Should Reading Festival Move site?

[cheeseisamazing]

heres just a thought. i recon a lot of readings problems come from its location.

take the sunday night riots. although yes the security was toughend up and we all had a more realxed nights sleep its dosen't attualy solve the origonal problem. why do people riot on the sunday night? its simple, theres f**k all to do.

i mean yes, reading bosted 2 silent disco's this year, but they couldn't fit anyone, me and my friends walked to it, saw the que, and w

walked straight back from the camp. yes theres the fare, but its exspensive and will only entertain for so long...

there is the cinimar tent but... yhr lets leave it at that

and the alternative stage has some stuff, but again can't fit too many people.

reading massivily suffers from the fact that it dosen't have any night time entertainment due to it being right by the town.

on the same note, as its so close that all the local holligans try and get in... if it wasn't as close less would try its a fact, people are lazy.

the traffic was terrible, reading festival just makes already over croweded roads much worse. however the fact i is so close to the town does encourage train use, so perhaps this outweighs each other.

i feel reading is very crapped, i mean i have only been to 2 otehr festivals (glastonbury and sonisphere) but it did seems sinificatly worse and a bigger site would mean more room... and i do wonder how they would be able to exspand it in the future

there the probbaly some more resulting from the sites position, perhaps the fact its on low land contributes to rather bad mud conditions (however this could happen at any site so its not a good arguemnt...)

i'm not trying to moan about reading, i f**king love it. its just i wonder what are peoples reactions to this idea as it is something i'm sure festival republic might concider in the future (particuallry at that last comment about not being able to exspand)

thoughts

[Electricityscape]

How about pack Reading in altogether and just have Leeds?

[Dave The Hedgehog]

How about pack Reading in altogether and just have Leeds?

[eFestivals]

It'll never move site. Otherwise someone might do what another company did, and set up on the original site and say "the festival is now ours".

[Megahurtz400]

It'll never move site. Otherwise someone might do what another company did, and set up on the original site and say "the festival is now ours".

Edited September 16, 2010 by Megahurtz400

[paulomas]

if i remember correctly, i read somewhere that festival republic actually own the land now, not just rent it from the farmer who's farm it used to be. and yeah, it gets pretty packed but it will never move or change for the foreseeable future. you listen to any interview with melvin benn and he always says reading is his favourite festival in the whole world. and this is coming from a guy who has a big part in glastonbury, and runs latitude leeds and the big chill among a few others

[Dave The Hedgehog]

Personally I think the two biggest problems the organisers face is boredom, as the OP pointed out, and value for money. It's not just Reading - Leeds, too, was boring as f**k on Wednesday and most of Thursday. Glastonbury has been in the news recently because people are complaining that there is very little to do on the days leading up to the main festival and it's kind of true in a way. I mean we pay sometimes upwards of £180 for a ticket and then on top of that you have the early entry tickets (and so on and so forth) and by the time you get to the festival before everybody else, it seems as if all you're paying for is camping in a field.

5 days at Leeds and tickets cost £200 (I think) - that's £40 a day for one person. Great value for the weekend considering you can see countless bands for that price but for Wednesday and Thursday you're basically paying £40 a night each to camp in a field that has less facilities than your average prison for the criminally insane. Very, very little actually happens on the days leading up to the festival - Thursday especially; we got about 2 or 3 hours sleep on wednesday night, woke up at 6am and then spent most of the day checking our watches because that's all we could do. We'd be having our breakfast, sit about talking for what felt like ages and then discover that only 20 minutes had passed. That went on all day - checking our watches to see that 10 minutes had passed, and so on and so forth. People normally try and find things to do but after 2 or 3 hours of sleep the only thing we wanted to do was try and relax by our tent.

"And they say the Rwandans have it tough..."

Boredom, nothing to do, shit facilities (literally), too much money being thrown about - you can talk about how many w*nkers there are but if you use the money to give them things to do, there will be a lot less trouble.

[eFestivals]

Surely copyright and registered trademarks will force them to be called something different, and surely a brand new festival would be able to attract nowhere near as good acts, making this point null and void.

And when has this happened before?

It happened for Mean Fiddler (now Festival Republic) to get their hands on the fest.

[jump]

It happened for Mean Fiddler (now Festival Republic) to get their hands on the fest.

[Megahurtz400]

It happened for Mean Fiddler (now Festival Republic) to get their hands on the fest.

[cheeseisamazing]

It'll never move site. Otherwise someone might do what another company did, and set up on the original site and say "the festival is now ours".

[Budweiser]

reading massivily suffers from the fact that it dosen't have any night time entertainment due to it being right by the town.

[rexclark]

I hate the fact the Reading site is situated bang in the middle of a city centre but It won't ever move.

[RichieParf]

As a Reading resident I think the location has a lot more positives than it does negatives. The proximity of Tesco and Sainsburys makes it easy to get stuff without paying the ridiculous prices on site. Its close to the station, so its not difficultto get to. I went to WOMAD (which used to be on the same sight as Reading) after it moved to Wiltshire and it was an absolute nightmare getting to, had to pay a fiver for the bus ride from the station each way. The fact that Reading's close to the town centre means you can go and get cash without having to use the machines on site, again saving you money.

I think putting the riots down to boredom alone would be short sighted and simplistic. If I recall, the riots at Leeds were always worse than Reading, at least in the past, and from what I'm told (I stand to be corrected though), Leeds is nowhere near as close to the city centre.

[Interpol1]

By increasing the capacity year on year, I have to agree, that the site has become uncomfortably over crowded. I thought it was interesting how ,this years NME`s aerial shot of Reading showed the site before most people had arrived. Could this have been due to the fact that they themselves believed it was too crowded. I also feel that the festival is attracting an unsavoury element,who appear to only want to be there, so they can say "yeah, I went to Reading".I undestand that nothing ever stays the same, and I`m all for progression, but this is not progress but the decline of a much loved and cherished festival.

[RichieParf]

And i would object to the site being moved because i live right next to it

[cheeseisamazing]

But that's just it, it's near a town which offers loads of things to do when festival is on.

I could name many clubs/pubs that have things going on during the festival.

I'm sorry but if people have nothing to do at night at Reading festival there's something wrong with them. There's to much to do, as i can't fit it all into one weekend.

And i would object to the site being moved because i live right next to it

[Vacant0]

Been thinking that a lot of Reading's problems would be solved if they just moved the site for a couple of years now - but its just never going to happen - and having a tescos and a swimming pool right outside the site is quite nice to be fair - so meh...

But that's just it, it's near a town which offers loads of things to do when festival is on.

I could name many clubs/pubs that have things going on during the festival.

I'm sorry but if people have nothing to do at night at Reading festival there's something wrong with them. There's to much to do, as i can't fit it all into one weekend.

[paulomas]

i think its fine where and how it is. yeah i dont agree on the capacity increase over the years but i still think it's a great festival. i also think people expect more from it because they know there's so much happening late night at other festivals such as glastonbury. dont forget glastonbury's full name is "glastonbury festival of contemporary performing arts". just because there's fire blowers and weird circus freaks at glastonbury until 4 in the morning doesn't mean reading festival has to do this aswell. it always has been just a music festival where as glastonbury is all about music, arts, theatre, film etc. etc.

[cheeseisamazing]

i think its fine where and how it is. yeah i dont agree on the capacity increase over the years but i still think it's a great festival. i also think people expect more from it because they know there's so much happening late night at other festivals such as glastonbury. dont forget glastonbury's full name is "glastonbury festival of contemporary performing arts". just because there's fire blowers and weird circus freaks at glastonbury until 4 in the morning doesn't mean reading festival has to do this aswell. it always has been just a music festival where as glastonbury is all about music, arts, theatre, film etc. etc.

[Dave The Hedgehog]

all i want is some djs lol

[Vieuphoria]

I'd love a comedy tent at night. until like 4, would be nice

[Dave The Hedgehog]

I'd love a comedy tent at night. until like 4, would be nice

[jump]

I'm sure there's probably some sort of vagrancy law against it but if they had like a tent that showed comedy and/or films, or even comedy shows from telly like QI or Shooting Stars I'd feel more inclined to sleep in there at night than I would in my tent.

[rachbon]

reading seems to do fine for ticket sales in the location it's in now. there would be no point in moving it.

if people go and moan about the lack of night time entertainment, there are other festivals they could go to instead.

i don't know how anyone can really complain about the night time entertainment at leeds though. there's plenty.

Edited September 17, 2010 by _rachelbon