Vans Warped Tour is like some kids’ Christmas. I used to be one of those kids. I could barely sleep the night before, woke up stoked, and spent the entire day covered in sweat, running around to catch the fifteen plus bands I wanted to see, and meeting friends. This year, I realized that I’ve officially grown out of Warped.
First off, you can’t lie and say the lineup was awesome. It sucked at the three bands I was even moderately interested in seeing were within an hour of each other at the end of the day. It was one of the busiest Warpeds I’ve seen so I guess a lot of people liked the bands playing. Regardless, what annoyed me about it all was the fact that the target demographic seemed to be fourteen year olds who only shop at Hot Topic, men in their late twenties who looked like they belonged at a Van Halen concert, and just an array of humans that I couldn’t even lump into a group. There were plenty of tents selling shirts and other things with weed plants on them, which seemed to be more popular than the band merch, and t shirts with everything from offensive jokes to “kiss me, I’m ___”. It was classless and stupid and immature. That’s when I realized that this isn’t my scene anymore. I have simply moved on.
It was nice to see Four Year Strong, like an old friend at a shitty event, because they’re one of the sweetest and most talented bands. They were a definite highlight of the day because their crowd wasn’t too awful and they had a good turnout. Bayside was also nice to see. I found that it was all about the band with what kind of people were going to be in the crowd and who you’d have to deal with, which was nice because I wasn’t looking forward to seeing some fat thirteen year old scene chick crowd surfing during FYS. That didn’t happen.
After seven years of attending Warped Tour, I’ve reached a point where it is no longer fun. And I’m perfectly okay with that.
