Pitchfork Festival: Early attendance sparse

Though the early crowd was pretty sparse Friday, it was expected to fill in by the time headliners Animal Collective hit the stage and be near 18,000 capacity. Three-day passes had sold out but individual tickets were available for all three days. Promoters weren’t immediately available for comment.

The festival has become a summer mainstay, curated by its namesake music e-zine and Chicago jazz drummer Mike Reed, a modest counterpoint to the considerably larger Lollapalooza in Grant Park next month.

Organizers had created the equivalent of a small city in Union Park, with more than 200 volunteers, 140 security guards and 18 food vendors. One of the upsides to the Friday’s slow-arriving crowd was that for perhaps the only time all weekend there were no waiting lines for perhaps the greatest necessity of all: the 220 portable restrooms.

@gregkot

Follow Greg Kot at Pitchfork all weekend at chicagotribune.com/turnitup and on Twitter @gregkot

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