Bookstore Helps AEG Book The Rose Bowl

“I have a two-and-a-half-year old son and my dad is 83,” Nic Adler told the Pasadena City Council, describing his boy Cash and his famous father Lou.

“There’s not a lot of festivals the three of us can go to together.” That will change now that Adler and the team on Monday.

He was given the green light after promising the June 2017 event would be a family-friendly affair – and nothing like the massive party thrown in Indio.

“This is not Coachella, we are not coming here in any way to try to sell you on what we do in the desert,” he said. Instead the event will include acts that appeal to multiple generations, including an interactive area powered by the local Kidspace Children’s Museum.

And there’s something else you don’t see at most festivals: a bookstore.

“One thing I’ve heard in meeting after meeting is how reading is important to Pasadena,” Adler explained. The centerpiece of the 90,000-person music festival will be a bookstore, he said, “not only to read and purchase books, but we will use it as a way to bring in speakers. We could put a coffee shop in the (bookstore), we can put food around it and activate the entire space.”

Pasadena certainly loves its books. The city is home to Vroman’s, SoCal’s largest and oldest independent bookstore. Just down Colorado Boulevard is Book Alley, a huge used bookstore and unofficial hangout for LA’s resurgent literati.

While books bring the city together, the Rose Bowl is a lightning rod for community debate over how many events should be held on the grounds.

Adler does have a track record in the town, bringing the Vegan Beer Fest to the Rose Bowl in 2015 with plans to return this June. The craft beer and animal-free food event served as an unofficial test-run for the Rose Bowl, which is looking to pay off the debt of a $180 million renovation for the stadium, explained Rose Bowl Operating Company GM Darryl Dunn.

“We continue to have challenges; we feel like we’re in a much better position than we were years ago, but by no means are ‘there,’” he told the council.