Electric Avenue lights up Christchurch
Sunday, 25 February 2024
As the light faded over Hagley Park, the noise of thousands of people singing Shapeshifter’s Electric Dream (“You shine so bright”) reverberated across Christchurch’s four avenues.
Every year, for one night only, a fifth avenue gets added to the Garden City’s map, and on Saturday, Electric Avenue had 35,000 people bopping along to everything from dance music to drum and bass.
Sequins, sneakers and the sweet smell of RTDs danced around the festival which, despite the huge crowd, had a relaxed atmosphere.
“It feels really good. It feels like there is a really good energy out there… people are having a bloody good time,” festival director Callam Mitchell said.
Held annually on the last Saturday of the summer, 2024 marks the ninth year of the Electric Avenue.
New Zealand’s largest festival was essentially a sell out, with just over 100 tickets still available when gates closed at 5pm.
It costs around $6 million to run, including 500 bar staff, 300 security guards and 700 portaloos according to organisers. Around 150,000 drinks were stocked behind the bars, enough for four drinks per person.
Organisers, police and punters all appeared to be happy, particularly as issues around wait times for entrance, toilets and drinks had been ironed out.
“Last year was awful, we took almost three hours to get in last year and today didn’t even take 10 minutes. It’s so much better” Festival-goer Grace Hickland said.
Mitchell acknowledged there were operational issues at the 2023 festival - which he put down to a growth spurt and not being entirely match fit after having to cancel the 2022 festival due to covid.
But, an improved layout and slightly reduced crowd size, had things running much smoother on Saturday.
“Not long at all,” was the common response when we asked people how long they had waited for drinks.
Most importantly for those who attended, there were 35 diverse acts, playing across four stages.
Hybrid Minds and Six60 were the acts the crowd said they were most excited to see, but not everyone was there to see their favourite band.
Tayla Shearsby and Keygan Huckleberry said they were simply “here for the vibes”.
For festival director Callum Mitchell, it was electronic icons The Chemical Brothers who were at the top of his list.
“It has [been a long term dream] probably even before we started Electric Ave. I’m a big of a Chemical Brothers fan,” he said.
It’s the first time the electronic icons have visited New Zealand in a decade.
The six time Grammy award winning duo of Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons have just released their 10th studio album For That Beautiful Feeling.
“The time was just right for them to tour down to this part of the world. Not just to Electric Avenue but they’re got three dates in Australia as part of their album tour,” he said.
Police, including specialist drug staff, Know Your Stuff and ESR were on site to keep people safe.
Just after gates closed at 5pm, Senior Sergeant Roy Appley said the event was going “remarkably well” and gave credit to the event organisers.
He said while there was a reasonable amount of drug use, including cannabis, MDMA and cocaine, he considered it to be at manageable levels.
“There's more than what I'd be comfortable with, in truth but the way of the world at the moment drug use is part of people's recreational time so we have to adapt to that,” he said.
Appley said there had been about 30-40 evictions for fence jumping and disorderly behaviour, and while there had been some arrests, they were given warnings and released.