Since 2015, I have been looking to experience the magnificent Firefly Music Festival. Finally on Friday, June 15, I did, and I also suffered the consequences. A few of my friends and I drove down from all over to get to the show the day earlier. We spent the morning of collecting supplies for our massive array of activities spending time in the sun. The one problem we had with our search was sunscreen, but thanks to a good hearted lady at the local Wawa, we were able to get some for the festival. We parked our car at the local mall, got some food, and hopped on the free busses to the ticket line. Once we arrived we were met with hundreds of people casually getting in. We began to hear the "take off your hats, cell phones, and other items" talk, but it wasn't until we stopped at the security check the employees wouldn't let me take in my sunscreen. Looking in the trash container, the only item tossed out was (you guessed it) sunscreen.

For those who don't know, Firefly is a 100% outdoor 4 day festival, with the option to stay the whole weekend via tent, or RV campgrounds. During the day on Friday, the high temp was 79 degrees which wasn't bad for most, but the sun came beating down on you like a June beach day. After our sunscreen was confiscated, we travelled around the entire festival looking for places to purchase some. We unfortunately had no luck. We asked everybody! The event staff, security, vendors, EMT's, police, and even the attendees had no idea where the supposed General Store was which was told by two vendors, nor where we could get sunscreen. After 2 hours of the killer sun, we called it quits, and started asking people for some. Finally, we found a group that had some left. They apparently didn't go through the main entrance, and ended up getting through fine. My only question to the Firefly coordinators would be this: "Why take something away and not give it out later?" The Sun causes skin cancer and some other problematic things like sunburn, so why didn't the first aid tent not have any? An even better question would be why none of the staff knew where the general store was, or is? And if there was no general store, why wasn't it sold elsewhere? Those are a lot of questions, but I strongly believe there is an issue here, please fix them.

The Friday lineup was absolutely killer this year. From the Arctic Monkeys to Jimmy Eat World, Foster The People and Logic, every stage had its own vibe. I also got to check out this new artist by the name of Jeremy Zucker, who is going for the "social introvert" of his genre (a combination of hip-hop, R&B, and soft rock). The New Jersey based musician and producer recently released his 2018 fall tour. Be sure to also check out his growing social @jeremyzuckermusic and get some tickets to the Anything Anywhere tour.

Above all, the experience was fantastic. With exceptional food, music and company, anything is beautiful. I will say however, even though most of us got a little bit of skin cancer, the nightlife of the festival was also one to see. My personal recommendation is to either not go through the main entrance and stock up on disguised sunblock, or just keep your sun-skin protection in the car. I hope to return next year and cover the whole weekend from start to finish but until then, thank you Firefly for the exceptional experience, but please do something about skin care policy next year.

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