New York in summer is presumably what the classic festivalgoer is trying to get away from.

The festivalgoer's great rush is a quickened attention to comparing different musicians and styles.

Standing isn't so bad, especially when the urge to dance strikes, but the prepared festivalgoer brings along something soft to sit on.

One festivalgoer transported her belongings via a wheelie bin.

A festivalgoer arises late, having eaten and drunk and conversed far into the wee hours.

At the same time, the festival's hippie aesthetic was supplanted by an atmosphere that no festivalgoer could have predicted a decade ago.

The list provides the basis for her initial scan through the reams of schedules and publicity that inundate any professional festivalgoer.

One festivalgoer, lacking Xan's enthusiasm, calls it "one of the great pretentious arthouse duds of all time".

No-Lose Choices For a festivalgoer, the weekend offers a maze of no-lose choices and serendipitous discoveries.

(Indeed, the story of our journey appeared to have spread so quickly that to tell another festivalgoer you were "part of the road trip" earned an instant kudos.)

The contemporary festivalgoer spends about a third more time at the festival (9.7 days), goes to more than twice as many performances and is about five years younger (in the mid-40's).

Urban complications greet the arriving festivalgoer at the city limits: at La Guardia and Kennedy Airports or at the entrance to the Holland Tunnel.

But so much activity, all of it gathered under the umbrella of "the art of the 20th century," gave the curious festivalgoer only the vaguest perspective from which to evaluate how all this work interrelates.

Many is the time, over the years, that a festivalgoer has lingered on the terrace of Avery Fisher Hall at intermission, envying those enjoying a beautiful night in the plaza and hesitating to go back inside.

"This festival business is becoming a psychedelic concentration camp where people are being exploited," one festivalgoer clambers onto the stage and announces before going on to complain about the lack of Woodstock-style "peace and love" at the Isle of Wight festival.

A festivalgoer can listen to an occasionally exploratory European big band led by George Gruntz, or to the virtuoso saxophonist Thomas Chapin, who spent five years working with Lionel Hampton but is best known as part of the Knitting Factory axis.

Coachella is one of the country's best and best-run music festivals, so fans spent Saturday and Sunday on a vast but orderly polo field two hours west of Los Angeles (the proprietor is the Empire Polo Club), enjoying amenities no festivalgoer should take for granted: good sound, friendly security, $2 water.