In the crowd for the return of Vans Warped Tour

A few days before heading south to Long Beach for Vans Warped Tour, I visited the incredibly zen, therapeutic facialist Andrea Ámez at her West Hollywood studio. “I’ve been to Warped Tour,” she told me to my surprise. “It was huge back in the day. I loved it. I’m so glad they’ve brought it back.” Later, over a glass of pet nat at a friend’s mid-century home in Bel Air, my friend told me it was where Katy Perry “blew up”. “No Doubt, too. It was so major,” her wife added.

It seems like everyone in LA has a Warped Tour experience. “I went when I was a teenager and then again in, like, 2018,” another friend told me when I brought up my weekend plans. “We went to see 3OH!3, Taking Back Sunday and Simple Plan. It was such a good lineup. It was fucking cool.” 

The two-day festival began in Long Beach in 1995 with a lineup including Sublime, No Doubt, and Deftones. Thirty years later – and after a six-year hiatus – it brings together new acts and Warped icons: Sublime is back on the bill, with late singer Bradley Nowell’s son Jakob on vocals, joined by Pennywise, the All-American Rejects, 311 and Ice-T, as well as first-timers like LØLØ, KennyHoopla, Nova Twins and Ava Maybee.

Early on the festival’s first morning, I see a group in black leaving the hotel. “The lines are already crazy,” they tell me, despite gates not opening until 11am. They’re regular Warped Tour attendees from before its hiatus and want to make the most of the day, telling me to see Mariachi El Bronx – something my friend’s husband had already texted earlier – as we say our goodbyes.

Warped Tour isn’t just a festival, it’s a multi-sensory overload of sound, sweat and shared subculture, where 2000s mall goth meets new-gen TikTok punk under the SoCal sun. Its unique merging of surf and skate culture with music is immediately apparent upon entry: a huge halfpipe hosts skate demos all day while stalls offer everything from hair dye to custom Vans painting and clothes. There’s even a Warped Tour museum showcasing old festival lineups, merch and a panel discussion with the authors of Tearing Down the Orange Curtain, a new book on the OC’s music scene that documents the festival’s undeniable influence. As we walk past the Unplugged Stage, we stop to watch a solo acoustic set, later realising it’s Vic Fuentes from Pierce the Veil, and how incredible our timing is: the set is unannounced, and many of Fuentes’ die-hard fans miss it.

From the beginning, Warped Tour has always been about the fusion of skate, punk and youth culture. “Growing up at the skate park, there was always somebody with a speaker blasting this type of music, classic skate music, which is a lot of rock, punk, alternative music,” LA-based professional skater Lizzie Armanto tells me at the ramp, where she’s waiting to watch the All-American Rejects from an unparalleled view of the main stage. Earlier, Tony Hawk popped by for a surprise demo. “There are so many bands and songs I don’t realise I know until I come to something like this. Hearing it at the skate park and it being my childhood soundtrack and then hearing the bands again live is so nostalgic and cool.” Armanto’s first Warped Tour was in London in 2014. “That was my intro to the UK Vert scene. I met people on that trip for the first time, and I’m still friends with them now.” 

The community element of the festival is huge, too. Not only for fans to come together, but for musicians to meet people they’ve looked up to – and reunite with old friends. This year, during Sublime’s set, Pennywise guitarist, Jakob’s ‘uncle’, Fletcher Dragge joined the band on stage for ‘Same in the End’. On Sunday, Travis Barker made a surprise appearance for The Paradox (and likely also watched his son, Landon’s, performance), and Blackbear came out for a Cobra Starship song. 

Alongside a record-breaking 168,000 attendees was musician Demi Lovato, who watched her husband Jutes’ set from the crowd. “We met 6arelyhuman by our trailer for the first time in real life, and it was super sick ‘cause we always listen to his music in the car together,” say MGNA Crrrta, the New York-based electro pop duo, made up of Farheen Khan and Ginger Scott. “We took pics together in really bad lighting in the trailer garage. Then, at the end of the day, after we unloaded our trailer, we sprinted across the whole festival to catch the Cobra Starship set. It was like the world would end if we didn’t see them.”

Before Nova Twins’ debut, they asked friends who’d played before what to expect. “Frank Carter [from the Gallows] said it was insane,” one half of the UK-based duo, Georgia South, says. “So we were really excited to come and live and breathe the legacy and the chaos.” Despite struggling to fit their songs into their allotted 30-minute set time, Nova Twins’ is such a hit, fans flood their Instagram comments calling it the best of the weekend. They make all their own outfits – including a hand-stitched ‘Protect the Dolls’ tank top, an ode to Conner Ives’ cult tee. “We call it Bad Stitches. It’s our brand that’s not out yet, but we make it all ourselves,” the other half of the duo, Amy Love, says. “It’s DIY meets punk, glam and a bit of ‘90s, as well.” 

When it comes to what to wear on stage, especially to a festival with such strong aesthetics as Warped Tour – the crowd was a sea of black, people in Vans checkerboard shoes, Dickies overalls, Von Dutch cowboy hats and ‘Make America Emo Again’ tops –  it can be easy to lose sight of your own style. Kenny Hoopla tells me he’s been trying to practise not caring a lot. “I’ll probably end up wearing all black – I brought a change of clothes – but I’m going to try not to be cliché,” he says backstage. “This feels more me. It’s sometimes hard to stand on yourself and stand on your aesthetics, but there’s power in that.”

“Warped Tour was the place to be for alternative music growing up,” Hoopla continues. The musician produces and sings his songs, which range from modern indie-dance-rock to pop-punk. “I could never afford to go, and was never able to go growing up, so it’s really cool for it to all come back around, and to be performing here for the first time.” The most influential band for Hoopla growing up was Warped Tour alumn Fall Out Boy. “‘Under the Cork Tree’ changed everything for me.” After playing around with different genres, Hoopla is going back to his roots and his love for indie rock and electronic. “I’m trying to get back to my fans who originally found me what they love, and what I love, too, which is being experimental and growing as an artist. I interwove this direction with fan favourites for my set. I think it’s very fair.”

After we speak, I head to the halfpipe to watch Armanto and a group of other skaters, including the legendary Christian Hosoi and new-gen 14-year-old Olympic gold medallist Arisa Trew. Pennywise plays in the background, and the sun is setting. 

We’re front left in the artist’s area for Sublime, watching beside Warped Tour first-timer Huddy. “This is why hometown shows rock. I see so many friends out there,” Jakob tells the crowd as someone in a wheelchair crowd surfs. He waves at friends in our section, then jumps in the air, singing, “Straight from Long Beach,” and the whole place erupts.