If our life is like Jim Carrey’s in the Truman Show (as we suspect it is), we feel like this year’s roll out of the Chicago Riot Fest line-up have been TV show producers attempt to kill us off with an involuntary hyper-sentimental jubilation seizure (apologies to our readers with loved ones that have been claimed by this affliction). Even more so than last year’s.

Some crustified naysayers we know (entire Exit staff) have expressed some reservations about Riot Fest’s baby step away from the punk purity of former Riot Fests. They question the insertion of genre-flopping acts like the Cure, the National, the Tegan & Sara, the Wu-Tang. But our question for them is, “is this about purity or is this about pleasure?”

We at Urban Holiday Lofts

look at the 2014 Chicago Riot Fest like pizza from Dimo’s down the street. The Chicago outdoor music festival is the all-encompassing theory of pizza. Traditionalists will tell you that in order for a pizza to be good, it must stick to the ancestral pizza blueprints of dough, sauce, cheese, and some conventional selection of sanctioned toppingss, such as mushrooms, pepperoni, or anchovies. While, yes, this is pizza, in the most customary derivation of the noun, and yes, it is delicious, and yes, we will gladly eat it, we believe the execution is strained by self-imposed limitations. Why can’t pizza be covered with mac n’ cheese? Or marshmallows? Or wormwood-flavored liquor? Are we here to pay homage to some 300-year old culinary tradition some dead Italian guy dreamt up or are we here because it’s 3am, and we’re stoned, and want to put the most delicious edible substance we can get our hands on inside our bodies?

The 2014 Chicago Riot Fest has all the fundamentalist aggressive rock foundations that we’ve come to expect and yearn for (Social Distortion, NOFX, Dropkick Murphys, Descendents, 7 Seconds). Now that it’s got that covered, unlike previous incarnations, it then builds on it with some deviations from the formula (Die Antwoord, Mastadon, Flaming Lips, Patti Smith), and then much like that dusting of garlic powder on top, it flakes on some musical garnish that we secretly listen to at night when we’re alone in our bedrooms and can safely watch performed live while pretending to be standing in line for beer, quietly singing along to every word under our breath (Tegan & Sara, Weezer, Metric, Modern Baseball).

Also, the advantage of Riot Fest over other music festivals/pizzas is that it happens just down the street from us at Humboldt Park. For those that don’t know, Humboldt Park is so close to Urban Holiday Lofts, that we won’t need to get anyone to fill-in for us on the frontdesk. Just ring the bell and we’ll come hustling down North Ave. to check you into your room.