Mark Stefanos
The Vans Warped Tour celebrated its 30-year anniversary last weekend, July 26-27, with a bombastic takeover of Long Beach Shoreline Waterfront after a six-year hiatus.
The sold-out fest welcomed over 80,000 fans a day, including oldheads and the Gen Z and Alpha set alike, showing the staying power of the classic groups and the growing fandom of new entrants, all adding up to a stunning resurgence of rock, alternative, punk, emo, hardcore and metal. The meta rock ‘n’ roll genre has taken its hits in the last couple decades, but rock isn’t dead — it’s alive and well, with devil horns, mohawks, and on TikTok.
The lineup was packed with over 140 artists across nine stages, offering attendees a little taste of everything, including A Day to Remember, 311, Rise Against, The All-American Rejects and Long Beach darlings Sublime, along with newer acts like TX2 and Honey Revenge.
(OA for Warped Tour)
Beyond the stages was a variety of features, including a massive vert ramp with pro BMXers and skaters (including an appearance from Tony Hawk), high flying motos at the Nitro Circus, record and artist merch booths for signings, art displays, and a Borderlands 4 Rage Room to let some aggression out just in case you got unfairly tossed around in the mosh pit. Was it hot and a little discombobulating? Sure. Was it punk rock? Most definitely.
The event has been lauded as a success, so much so that Vans announced Warped Tour is coming back to Long Beach next year, July 25-26, with presale starting tomorrow, Aug. 1.
To get a sense of the Fest’s younger appeal, we checked in with our resident Gen Z rocker, Ray Borigsay, on some of his favorites from the weekend:
SATURDAY
AQUABATS
“So fun, their whole gimmick is that they have superhero personas onstage so I feel like the set had almost like a Power Rangers meets The Wiggles meets Reel Big Fish vibes? They threw inflatables into the crowd and told the crowd to crowd surf a person onto one of the inflatable pizzas and they did it LOL.”
3OH!3
“OMG SOOOO FUN, they came onstage dressed head to toe in Affliction as a joke and asked the crowd if they thought they should fire their stylists. A lot of the bands had signings at their merch tents at certain times and their sign said ‘Signing at 3:03’ LMAO.”
SUBLIME
“I felt like everyone at Warped Tour on that day was there for this set LOL, the crowd was INSANE. Jakob Nowell sounds exactly like his dad and is so charming in such a funny way. He comes off as such an average guy, he seems very cool.”
(Jake West for Warped Tour)
SUNDAY
MAGNOLIA PARK
“Really cool, I noticed a lot of the bands today had something to say about ICE (specifically ‘fuck ICE’) and Magnolia Park in the middle of their set was like ‘OK everyone put your middle fingers up. They up? OK now say FUCK ICE,’ LOL. TBH I’m not too familiar with Magnolia Park but they did their cover of the big song from A Goofy Movie and it was really good, people seemed really hype about that.”
HONEY REVENGE
“Honey revenge!!! They are a pop-rock outfit with a sound similar to Paramore that feels very women/queer centric. Really fun and good energy and dance-y music.”
MILLIONAIRES
“Ugh soooo fun, their music is a staple for people into slutty scene pop. They wrote and recorded their first songs in GarageBand and their set and outfits were SUCH a middle school/high school throwback with the raccoon tail hair, tutus, and Cookie Monster backpack haha. They brought giant inflatable penises on stage and their stage graphic was just giant white text on a black background ‘WARPED WHORE’ lmao.”
COBRA STARSHIP
“OMG, so good. Their music is so fun and apparently there’s a joke that their genre of music is a recession indicator, LOL ‘recession pop’ I think it’s called? Their merch tent had a sign that said “‘our favorite recession indicator’ haha. They brought in someone from the crowd to do the rap segment from one of their songs (I thought that person didn’t do well personally lol) and their frontman had a little speech about how he and his family came to America as illegal immigrants.
BOWLING FOR SOUP
“Really fun OMG — they do the opening song for the cartoon Phineas and Ferb and there was an animated short at the beginning where the characters from the cartoon introduced the band! Their set had so many hijinks lol — they had mid-set Rick Roll where they had a choreographed dance to ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’ by Rick Astley, and they brought in a little kid to play the drums for one of their songs.”
For presale updates and info, follow Vans Warped Tour on Instagram.