For a few hours on June 13 and 14, Mesa Street fell quiet. Businesses weren’t as packed as they would usually be on Fridays and Saturdays, and the usual nightlife buzz wasn’t downtown, but jampacked at the Sun Bowl stadium.

The excitement to see the British rock band Coldplay overwhelmed not only the city, but people from out of the state and country considering El Paso was their only stop in Texas for the World of the Spheres tour thanks to the influence of Jim Ward, guitarist of At the Drive-In. The band also brought Palestinian Chilean singer Elyanna and Willow Smith, daughter Will Smith, as their openers, both of whom are activists.

Over 90,000 people attended the concert and experienced them paint the sky with their rainbow of confetti, elaborate and psychedelic-like on-screen visuals, and giant balloons that were passed around the crowd. Fans also got to participate in the “light show” by wearing an LED wristband (xylobands) which helped illuminate the stadium into an array of colors that synchronized with the songs and even lead singer Chris Martin’s movements.

The event required plenty of coordination and involvement from both UTEP’s special events staff as well as fans’ participation.

Executive Director of Special Events at UTEP, Jorge Vazquez, said coordinating an event like this took much preparation.

“It was the biggest professional challenge for my team and me personally,” he said. “It was also the biggest privilege to be entrusted with the number one show in the world by the number one band in the world not for one, but two concerts. It was over three months of meetings to strategize and organize everything.”

Despite water stations which were free to fans as well as heat warnings, the triple digit heat was simply too much, and several fans reported experiencing heat exhaustion while waiting in the lines.

“It created challenges and made us deploy extra resources needed to keep fans safe,” Vazquez said in regard to the heat. “But as the sun decreased in intensity and more shade covered the stadium, it became the perfect setting for an amazing outdoor concert experience.”

With both shows having sold out, there was no question fans were going to try alternative methods for viewing this can’t-miss concert. Considering the Sun Bowl stadium is built into the Franklin Mountains, the rocky hills that surround the stadium have been historically used by fans to avoid having to pay ticket fees or miss a momentous event. Dedicated fan Valerie Gameros was one of several who experienced the concert from the mountain.

“I was thinking of climbing the mountain to see them since tickets sold out, but I was scared because I wasn’t sure if security was going to be tougher since Coldplay is such a well-known group,” Gameros said. “The night before, my boyfriend and I drove up to UTEP to figure out how everyone gets up there. Climbing the mountain wasn’t as bad as Ithought. It wasn’t too steep to where it was difficult, but I did have to catch my breath a little bit. Once we arrived to the top, there were so many people sitting down. We were amazed at how many people were there! We even saw kids, so that’s how you know the climb wasn’t too bad. It was just a matter of being careful, but everyone around was super friendly!”

Although the band knocked tens of thousands of fans’ socks off, that wasn’t their only goal. Coldplay’s sustainability initiative was hard to miss, especially when the first few minutes of their performance informed fans on where the money from their tour was going toward such as reforestation, ocean cleanup and environmental law. UTEP special events also created a list of recommendations for fans who wanted to participate in this initiative and help decrease their carbon footprint

“It made me very happy to see that people truly wanted to be informed,” Vazquez said. “People read our recommendations and rode the buses, the streetcar and carpooled. They also brought their reusable water bottles, and I was impressed by the size of bottles some people brought. Only very few rode the power bicycles, but it was a hot day so that’s to be expected.”

According to Coldplay’s tour’s website, the tour has an average 86% wristband return rate and has overall reduced wristband production by 80% through collecting these wristbands. The leaderboard displayed at Saturday’s concert showed El Paso had an 87% return rate for Friday’s show, in comparison to Las Vegas’s 89% and Seoul’s 99%.

In addition to encouraging fans to return their bracelets to reduce the tour’s amount of waste, the concert also featured a kinetic floor and power bicycles which allowed fans to generate power for the show. Despite the heat that discouraged many from attempting to ride the bicycles, Coldplay fan Oskar Callejas saw it as a once in a lifetime opportunity.

“Knowing that riding the bike had an impact on the rest of the tour was a really sweet thing to think about,” he said. “I wanted to participate because it felt like being able to connect with all sorts of people with the act of ‘paying it forward’. As someone who works in the music industry, I understand that putting together a sustainable tour can be logistically challenging, but Coldplay is a prime example that it’s possible especially with the right team behind it all.”

According to the tour’s website, the band aims to reduce consumption, reinvent new green technologies, and restore our planet by drawing down CO2 emissions on a global scale, however, the band also made an effort at impacting communities and helping local organizations to spread their initiatives as well.

The nonprofit Global Citizen partnered up with the band and reached out to local organizations including the UTEP organization SEEDS, which stands for “strategies for ecology, education, diversity and sustainability.” The organization was able to have a booth at the concert to help spread awareness of their cause and was also gifted tickets to view the concert as a way of thanking local sustainability organizations.

“We were so excited to have been invited,” Gabriela Montes, Historian for SEEDS said. “We didn’t know why our organization had gotten invited, but when we looked into it, it was cool to be involved and help spread their word on sustainability and how we can help within our own community. We even had an interactive activity where people could guess which animals were pollinators. It’s nice to see that a band so big has the same mission as us and cares about sustainability.”

According to Vazquez, more events of this magnitude are in UTEP’s future.

“I cannot wait to tell you about those when the time comes,” he told The City Magazine. “All I can say is ‘El Paso, we did it! Thank you for showing up with so much heart and so much love. What we created those two nights was pure magic. I am already working on bringing more big events to our beautiful stadium and keep us on the map of the top shows in the world.”

Coldplay’s presence in El Paso definitely left more than a few “sparks” on our sun city, boosting spirits, our economy, and spreading environmental awareness. El Paso won’t forget the day Coldplay came, and now that Mayor Johnson has given Chris Martin a key to the city, hopefully they won’t forget us either.