Budweiser’s Made in America festival has annually been held in Philadelphia for the past four years, curated by the hip-hop legend, Jay-Z and his business associate, Steve Stoute. Aug. 30 and 31 marked the first year that it has been held simultaneously in Philadelphia and California at Grand Park … and it definitely showed.

The first miscommunication that threw up a red flag was security. Although dozens and dozens of city cops and security guards were scattered throughout the grounds, none of them were very well-versed on the rules. Some security guards made guests throw out the water in their water bottles while other guests walked through with filled water bottles in hand. While entering the festival, cops who were scattered on the corners of streets surrounding Grand Park didn’t know basic information about the public transportation: when buses were coming, what time the cabs shut down, etc.

Arriving at the festival around 3 p.m., the first act I saw was Weezer at the Marilyn Stage. They played old hits like “Island in the Sun,” but the performance was sort of monotone and nothing to really write home about. But acts playing the festival in the afternoon were all expected to be like that, as a warmup for all the really heavy artists. The lack of shade at that stage was probably more remarkable than the performance; it was as if the event’s planners weren’t aware that it’s normal for the temperature to graze ninety degrees in August. I eventually left their set to go up to the James Dean Stage for a DJ named Borgore.

Getting to the James Dean Stage from the Marilyn Stage was a struggle to say the least. Grand Park has a multitude of layers and stairs or hills accompanying them, and having people either rushing down the hills or struggling up the stairs was just awkward. Not to mention that Budweiser is the event’s main sponsor, and drunken participants all over the stairs was a common sight.

Over 30,000 people participated in this event and to have something as simple as getting from point A to point B be so complicated really showed that the event’s organizers had absolutely no idea of the landscape. Other music festivals like Coachella or the Electric Daisy Carnival have entirely flat layouts with stages at easy access, and though it’s understandable that this is the event’s first year in LA, it really made clear that they were at the peak of amateur hour.

Borgore’s set lasted about an hour, and his music was the perfect thing to hear in the middle of the festival. Right around the time that people who were there the whole day were feeling sluggish and impatient for the headliners, Borgore completely changed that. His mix of trap and house music was the exact antidote for any feeling below careless euphoria, and his hilarious interactions with the crowd only fueled that. Although I was only in thick of the crowd for part of his set, the ecstatic jumping at the drop of the beat and beer spraying, half an hour was enough.

After standing at the back of the crowd for another DJ, R3HAB, I made my way back to the Marilyn Stage to catch John Mayer’s set. He finally performed after half an hour of waiting, and his voice flowed the same way that it did on all of his albums. This was his first performance after finishing up a tour, and the highlight of his performance was a rare performance of “Who Says.”

After coincidentally being surrounded by frat boys in the crowd, I was in the thick of the mosh pit and I really felt just how many people were in the crowd. It felt like all 30,000 people who came to the festival were pressing up against me, and I could honestly say that that was a safety hazard. Regardless of this being their first festival in LA, the festival’s organizers should’ve known that Kanye was the biggest headliner of the night and that his crowd was beyond any other that day, and taken proper action and barred off the Marilyn stage. Hopefully, they didn’t condone that behavior and take their mistakes as lessons for next year.