Fans walk across the Empire Polo Club during the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival on Friday, April 18, 2014. (Vanessa Franko/Staff)
Tucker Gumber, a.k.a The Festival Guy, noticed that the grounds, which are normally impressively clean, had more litter than usual during weekend one.
So he started a campaign, “Clean Up Coachella,” to get people to pick up their trash. (If you’re on social media, the hashtag is #CleanUpCoachella.)
“People throw things down because they think that they’re just one in the crowd,” he said.
He said that when you think about up to 100,000 people in the crowd, that adds up.
After Friday night of weekend one he took a ride from the campground to Target to get poster-making materials to encourage people to stop littering.
He and a group of friends carried a sign and canvassed the field, with another friend holding a trash bag to collect the refuse. People came up and high-fived and thanked him, he said.
“Everyone wants it to be clean,” he said.
He posted on his website www.thefestivalguy.com, a challenge to Coachella weekend 2 attendees: be cleaner than weekend one.
“When you pick up one piece of trash, you’ve made the place cleaner,” Gumber said.
I’ll check in with Tucker to see what he thinks about weekend 2. I’m not so sure it’s cleaner, I stepped on about 5 watermelon rinds around the field last night. Seriously, people, throw it away.