This week in Vegas Seven, I contribute to the cover coverage of EDC with a feature on how EDC has paved the way for the festivalization of Las Vegas:
It takes one thing to go from outsider to establishment in Las Vegas: success. When Pasquale Rotella’s Insomniac Events first brought the Electric Daisy Carnival to Las Vegas in 2011, he was a renegade fleeing Los Angeles, which had hosted the festival for more than a decade but rolled up the welcome mat amid controversy in 2010. There was a historic parallel to this eastward emigration: Eighty years earlier, Southern California authorities took a dim view of the gambling operations of such entrepreneurs as Guy MacAfee and Tony Corerno, who decided to pack up their chips, head up Highway 91 and set up shop in Las Vegas. That worked out pretty well. EDC seems to be following suit.
I’d like to thank Pasquale Rotella and Rehan Choudry for being so helpful in out interviews–they each have a vision of the future of the Las Vegas festival, and it will be exciting to see how it shapes up.