HUMBOLDT PARK — Leonard Fairfax didn't get the free tickets to Riot Fest he hoped for, but that didn't stop him from enjoying the festival from the comfort of his front lawn.
"My brother is up there cooking," Fairfax said Sunday while enjoying some tunes just outside the gate of his home near Humboldt Park. "We were all out here yesterday, it was nice though, man. We could’ve gotten on the roof and seen it all."
Fairfax smiled and pointed to a giant screen displaying a performance that was visible from outside the gate. He even joked about charging two dollars to view the concert from his home.
"They got the [monitor] right here, so it's cool. Everybody who walked passed didn’t notice [the monitor] until they went in then came out. Then they said, 'We could’ve just stood here,'" he said.
The 52-year-old's daughter attended the show, but he was content to have the concert so close to home.
"It sounds good from here. It's nice to have stuff like this here," he said. "Everything was cool though, except the rain."
Adrian Jacome, 23, enjoyed the music from his front porch. He loved the music, but had one problem.
"I just don’t like that I cant find parking," Jacome said. "Sometimes I work on the weekends and now I can’t find parking."
He said he came across some late-night festival goers leaving the show, but they didn't bother him.
"I haven’t had a problem with them," Jacome said. "Some of them just say, 'What's up? or Whoa," you know, that kind of thing and they just walk on by."
Not all residents are overjoyed by the punk concert across the street from their home, though. A woman visiting her mother said, the concert was "inconvenient and too loud." She said the noise was so loud it woke her mother up early.
"My mom is 80 years old and it’s too loud for her," said the woman, who refused to give her name.
The woman said that not only was the noise too much, but the crowds made parking difficult.
"We can’t even park on the streets. It took us 45 minutes to get a [parking space] and we have to pay for it," she said.
