“I snuck a shank bone into Coachella,” Nate Auerbach said Friday, standing outside the VIP Rose Garden at Coachella, amid sparkle-dress clad hordes of partiers. “Most people sneak… other things.”
Auerbach — a partner at Versus Creative, a marketing company that runs the social content for Coachella amid other Goldenvoice events – was getting ready to set up a Seder, the traditional Jewish meal for the first night of Passover, at Outstanding in the Field, the $275-per-person dinner series that happens every night in the VIP section of the festival. He secured a ticket-buying partnership with the dinner organizers, worked out a grant with a Jewish organization to offset some of the cost, made a flyer advertising a $75 Seder in the VIP area and sold dozens of tickets as a popup to the dinner, which was cooked by chefs Diego Hernandez and Donnie Masterson.
Danny Elfman’s manager Laura Engel and her family were among those who bought tickets: daughter Rachel sent the flyer to the family’s text message chain with the text, “Are we doing this?” Her other daughter, Hannah, responded in the way that only a seasoned Coachella vet would: “I say yes: but it’s so hard ‘cause the set times aren’t out.”
At the end of the day though, the dinner was about connection — that’s exactly what actress and musician Idalia Valles and her partner Jessie Sachs, who’s leading mindfulness exercises at Coachella for the meditation app Open, found.
“We made friends with people [at the dinner] that we’re going to hit up when we get home,” Valles said. “They may move into the house in front of us — they may be our neighbors!”
