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The Night Parklife Swallowed Manchester Whole
It starts with the bass.
By 3:17 PM on Saturday, June 8th, the vibration has traveled up my shins before my ears even register the sound. Somewhere beyond Heaton Park's tree line, Disclosure is soundchecking, sending shockwaves through the grass where I stand watching a group of girls from Leeds glue rhinestones to each other's cheeks. "Gotta sparkle for the 'gram," the tallest one tells me, pressing a silver star to her friend's forehead with the solemnity of a surgeon.
This is Parklife's secret alchemy - where else but Manchester could 80,000 people turn a municipal park into a temporary kingdom of neon and noise?
4:42 PM - The Hangar Stage
The warehouse-style tent smells of sweat, vape smoke, and the ghost of a thousand spilled Red Stripe cans. When Four Tet and Floating Points launch into their back-to-back set, the crowd becomes a single organism - a pulsing, grinning beast with 20,000 arms in the air. Next to me, a man in a bucket hat keeps shouting "THIS IS HISTORY" into his friend's ear. He's not wrong.
The temperature climbs with each beat drop. By the time the lasers cut through the haze, we're all baptised in strobe light and bass. Someone hands me a warm can of something fruity. I drink it without question.
7:15 PM - The Toilet Queue
"Parklife isn't a festival," says the girl behind me in line, adjusting her cowboy hat. "It's a state of mind." Her name is Ellie, she's from Stockport, and this is her sixth Parklife. She shows me her trick for clean toilets - "always go for the middle cubicle, nobody can be arsed walking that far."
As we talk, a group of lads walks past wearing nothing but inflatable dinosaur costumes. One stops to ask if we've seen "Dave from Wythenshawe." We haven't. He shrugs and keeps moving. The dinosaur tails bob in unison as they disappear toward the Valley Stage.
9:03 PM - Valley Stage Pit
Doja Cat emerges in a cloud of smoke and the crowd surges forward like a living thing. Phone screens glow like fireflies as 40,000 voices shout the words to "Say So." Near the front, a security guard dances while checking wristbands.
Then the rain starts.
Not the timid drizzle Manchester is famous for, but proper, fat drops that turn the grass to mud in minutes. Nobody leaves. If anything, the crowd grows wilder, their glitter makeup streaking in the downpour. When the beat drops during "Paint the Town Red," the scream that goes up could probably be heard in Salford.
11:47 PM - The Walk Back
The tram platform at Heaton Park looks like the aftermath of a glitter bomb attack. A girl in a sequin bodysuit leans against her friend, both barefoot, their heels dangling from their fingers. "Worth it," she slurs happily.
On the ride back to the city center, a group of lads in soaked T-shirts compare videos on their phones. "Mate, when Peggy Gou played 'Nanana' - unbelievable." Their voices are hoarse from singing. One of them offers me a soggy crisp. I take it.
As we pull into Victoria Station, the platform sign flickers. For a second, it reads not "Manchester Victoria" but "Parklife 2024." I blink, and it's gone. But the bass still thrums in my chest, and probably will until next June.
THE MORNING AFTER
My shoes are ruined. My voice is gone. My phone has 37% battery and 284 new photos.
Somewhere in Heaton Park, a cleaner is probably still finding glitter in the grass.
And I already can't wait for next year.
