Queens is having a moment, what with being home to the NL EAST CHAMPION NEW YORK METS and being the latest borough real estate’s eye of Sauron has fallen on. Now adding to that, Queens might get a huge infusion of leather fringe shirts, inappropriate Native American headdresses and dudes asking you where they can get some Molly, because the producers of Coachella want to have a three day festival in Flushing Meadows Park. Why it’s not being called “Queenschella” is beyond us, but then, we’re not marketing gurus.
It’s important to note that the festival, tentatively named Panorama but permanently known around here as Queenschella, definitely isn’t a done deal yet, but the Daily News report about it says that the city has “quietly” been talking with promotion company AEG Live about the possibility of a music festival in Flushing Meadows next June. Things have moved far enough along that AEG is allegedly recruiting headliners for Panorama, although who can honestly say what the damn kids and their designer drug-addled brains will be listening to by June.
The festival plans come with a unique down side though, beyond the usual giant festival in an already crowded city clusterfuck, as AEG picked a date just two weeks after Governors Ball. That could lead to headliners leaving the Randalls Island festival to play Queenschella, which the News points out is thrown by a local independent booking company and not a national giant like AEG. Still if we were the people behind Governors Ball, we wouldn’t worry that much. When’s the last time New York City proved inhospitable to a smaller, locally-based concern fighting against a larger more well-financed opponent that saw New York as interchangeable from any other expensive city?