IT WAS GRAY AND raining at Forest Hills Stadium, the outdoor music venue in Queens, but nevertheless the lesbians had assembled. They had come from San Francisco, from Salt Lake City, from Tampa and Bed-Stuy to attend All Things Go, a D.C.-based music festival that launched in New York for the first time in September with a brilliant strategy to stand apart from other fests: Make it for the gay girls. The artists were mostly confessional singer-songwriter pop, mostly women, mostly queer, and mostly at that strange level of midsize fame that makes fans feel especially close with and protective of their idols. It was a less crunchy Lilith Fair for a flashier, draggier generation of femmes and themmes. It was, as the band Muna called it in giant letters onstage, LESBOPALOOZA.
The main character of the weekend was Chappell Roan, and she wasn't even there. The 26-year-old overnight star faced an internet pile-on in the week leading up to the festival after telling The Guardian that she didn't "feel pressured to endorse someone" in the U.S. presidential election, expressing discontent with "both sides." Some called it a display of white privilege and a sign that we shouldn't be looking to pop stars for eloquent political opinions, but many on the left supported her stance.
The day before the festival began, Roan announced that she was dropping out, citing the mounting stress of being in the public eye and a need to "prioritize my mental health." Aspiring concert photographer and queer teen Keeley Milner and her parents were traveling to the festival from Utah and on a layover delay in the Charlotte airport when they saw the news. "I just sobbed," she said. "My mom looked at me like somebody died."
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