A lot of Outside Lands goers underestimate just how chilly Golden Gate Park can be. Summer at the park, to out-of-towners, must certainly suggest the unceasing sun beating down on your skin. Perhaps they’re anticipating a dry Coachella desert heat. Maybe there’s some willful ignorance in there, too. Folks may be willing to pull a Cardi B and brave the fog and wind in order to serve a look, thinking that the chill cannot possibly be that bad.
They’re dead wrong. “They are very underestimating how cold it is,” Outside Lands merch vendor Shante Purvis said of the festival attendees. “They see the forecast, see it’s gonna be warm today, and they come out all beautifully dressed and sexy.”
“And then,” she says, with a pause and a laugh, “they come to us.”
Sure, you could get a pullover hoodie — which, according to Purvis, are all sold out. (The zip-ups look to be in stock.) But many others are opting for the Linus Van Pelt aesthetic: wearing an $80 Outside Lands-branded blanket around their shoulders to keep themselves warm.
Purvis, who was working a merch stand near the Twin Peaks stage, expects that they’ll sell out of all the blankets by the end of the weekend. “We’ve went through 15 boxes of blankets just this day,” she said. (Each box contains 18.)
In the past two days, I've spotted people adorned in the blanket in all sorts of ways. Most, of course, had the blanket draped around their shoulders like a shawl or a cloak. Some were wearing it wrapped around their chest like a spa towel, effectively turning it into a blanket-dress. Especially chic blanket-wearers went Lenny Kravitz mode and wore it like a scarf.
That was the case even on Saturday afternoon, when the sun’s rays finally peeked out for the first time all festival.
San Francisco resident Shiyu Ni bought the blanket to lay on earlier Saturday, and ended up draping herself around it all day to brave the chill. “It’s a good souvenir,” she offered as a suggestion to the blankets’ ubiquity at the fest.
Jenny Garza, who’s visiting the festival from Long Beach, was another blanket-wearer. She stole the blanket from her friend, San Antonio resident Leo Tambunga, who was standing next to her. (Tambunga got the blanket for “the aesthetics.” I don't blame him. It's a cute blanket!)
Garza, wearing a relatively warm denim two-piece, told me that she’s been in the blanket all day, even as she admitted that Saturday “was warm — sometimes.”
“I think people don’t realize how cold it’s gonna be here,” Tambunga, who’s visiting from San Antonio, said. He gave Garza a look.
