{"id":264676,"date":"2026-04-12T23:47:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-12T23:47:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/264676\/"},"modified":"2026-04-12T23:47:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-12T23:47:08","slug":"i-rode-in-the-goodyear-blimp-over-coachella","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/264676\/","title":{"rendered":"I rode in the Goodyear blimp over Coachella"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>If you\u2019d like to take a ride on the Goodyear blimp, it turns out you can\u2019t do it wearing heels.<\/p>\n<p>This I learned on Day 2 of Coachella, when the people who promote the tire company\u2019s famous dirigible \u2014 they have a nice lady in charge of the blimp\u2019s socials and everything \u2014 invited me and my colleagues Rebecca Castillo and Kayla Bartkowski to climb on board for a little cruise over the desert festival.<\/p>\n<p>Before we could get on to the airship that had room for about six to eight people, we had to watch a safety video in which the narrator told us that you can\u2019t wear heels on the blimp \u2014 but that if you\u2019d worn them today, you could check with a Goodyear representative and they\u2019d see about other arrangements. (One rep told me she\u2019d already loaned out her sneakers several times Saturday.)<\/p>\n<p>Anyway!<\/p>\n<p>            <img class=\"image\" alt=\"Los Angeles Times reporter Mikael Wood rides the Goodyear blimp flying over Coachella\"   width=\"1200\" height=\"800\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1776037628_715_.jpeg\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\"\/>         <\/p>\n<p>Los Angeles Times reporter Mikael Wood rides the Goodyear blimp flying over Coachella <\/p>\n<p>(Kayla Bartkowski\/Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n<p>The ride was gentler than I\u2019d anticipated \u2014 kind of like a boat ride in a harbor. We took off from a giant dirt field at the Jacqueline Cochran Regional Airport in Thermal and tooled around for 30 minutes or so; when we got over Coachella, we could see a few hundred Beliebers camped out as close to the main stage as they could get \u2014 nine or 10 hours before Bieber\u2019s performance was scheduled to begin.<\/p>\n<p>They looked so little down there \u2014 so small in size, so big in Beliebf.<\/p>\n<p>Back on the ground, we had to get off the blimp two by two, each duo replaced by a new pair of folks who\u2019d responded to an email asking if they might want to a ride on a humongous floating billboard.<\/p>\n<p>The ladies who replaced Rebecca and Kayla looked super jazzed; my guy seemed less impressed.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe he\u2019d blimped before.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you\u2019d like to take a ride on the Goodyear blimp, it turns out you can\u2019t do it&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":264677,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[115962,10772,21495,115966,115964,61512,19360,115963,43433,48,52,51,47,50,49,115967,115961,592,4072,461,115965],"class_list":["post-264676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-bieber","tag-charge","tag-coachella","tag-colleague-rebecca-castillo","tag-famous-dirigible","tag-goodyear-blimp","tag-heel","tag-jacqueline-cochran-regional-airport","tag-kayla-bartkowski","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-new-pair","tag-nice-lady","tag-people","tag-ride","tag-social","tag-tire-company"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264676"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264676\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/264677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}