"Changes"

Jonathan Abrams: Halo-Pac is kind of eerie to me. I am someone who wanted to believe Tupac still lived for so long, record after record, until I finally gave up hope somewhere around 2001. Tupac Shakur is my John F. Kennedy assassination and moon landing. I hit adolescence and grew up in California. It was Pac and I thought he would get back up and make a record about it. I’ll never forget where I was — at a friend’s house when I learned of his death.

I haven’t stepped a foot inside Coachella and already I’m being propositioned into minor illegality. While I loiter outside the gate before heading in, a young man named Edgar, who is smoking unfiltered Lucky Strikes, approaches, having taken me for a potential fence-hopping accomplice. I insist that I have a valid pass and official business to conduct, but he’s not so convinced. He tells me he’s broken in the last two years, and that while security has intensified this year — at some point he uses the phrase “tighter than a dolphin’s butthole,” or something similarly hilarious — there are always weaknesses, and he’s going to walk the perimeter to unearth some. And it almost sounds badass enough to try. Ultimately, though, I wish him well and head inside the normal way. Hope you made it in, Edgar.