Black T-Shirts & Burittos — A Vans Warped Tour ’01 Story

It was the summer of the year two thousand and twenty one. I was on the cusp of turning twenty years of age, and in the Fall I’d be ushering in a new era of my life: college. I was even all set to move into my very first apartment, a little one bedroom tucked away in the mean streets of downtown Denver. This particular mean street was the stretch of road between 10th and 11th avenue dubbed “Poet’s Row,” consisting of apartment buildings named after notable writers. Except mine, named after Franklin Roosevelt, who might have been a writer of sorts, who can say for sure, but that fact was greatly overshadowed by his stint as the 32nd President of the United States of America.

Ah, yes. Adulthood was creeping in. Things, as they say, “were a changin’,” but first I’d have to make it through the sweltering summer. In the early oughts, when the Summer heat reached its absolutely scalding peak, that’s when the Vans Warped Tour would appear in your town, like a punk rock Brigadoon.

This Warped Tour would be different. No longer was I a fifteen your old, unable to transport myself, or barely scrape together enough cash for a ticket. I was almost twenty years of age! I had a promising career as an in-store Pizza Chef at the Colorado pizza chain Black Jack Pizza. I had a maroon nineteen hundred and ninety six Geo Prizm. I was bordering on “adulting,” to put it in the parlance of my Millennial generation. I would easily be able to afford gas, admission, and all the band merchandise seven dollars and twenty five cents an hour could buy in two thousand and one, not yet being crippled by the financial responsibility of said adulthood, let alone apartment leasing.

As the summer heat grew to sultry levels, the time was upon us. This year the Vans Warped Tour would appear at the Adams County Fairgrounds, a barren field in the middle of nowhere, Colorado, bringing with it notable appearances by Rancid, AFI, Pennywise, The Vandals, and the collective of musicians that performed punked-up renditions of Top 40 hits, Me First and The Gimme Gimmes. They were the major draw for myself and the assorted group of my young adult acquaintances.

A small gaggle of us would be attending the festival, four of us, including my future wife, Desirae, piled into one car to be met by three more friends at the fairgrounds.

As we were still young and full of vigor, the plan was to arrive as soon as the doors opened to fully optimize our Warped Tour experience, despite the fact that all the bands we were interested in witnessing would be among the final performances of the day. None of them headliners, this year’s honor would be bestowed upon the marijuana friendly, funk-rap consortium of goofy-ass white dudes known as 311, a grave injustice according to our punker-than-thou opinions.

Upon arriving at the field, sorry, fair grounds, we were ushered in through the only entrance to the makeshift parking lot. “Funny,” I thought. “Only one way in, or out, for all these cars? Surely this won’t be an issue.”

Getting there early was key to our plans. You’d think we’d have plenty of time to wander the fairgrounds, take in the sites, and maybe see some heretofore undiscovered punk bands.

Nope.

It was straight to the band’s merchandise booths to load up on t-shirts “while the getting was good,” leaving us to carry around a surmountable, all black wardrobe for hours on end in the rapidly heating air, something we clearly didn’t consider.

The sun scorched through midday as we suffered under its tyranny, the fairgrounds being barren of any shade producing plant life. Heaven forbid the event coordinators erect any sort of shaded area and deny their festival goers a traditional, miserable, Vans Warped Tour experience.

Keen eyed, Desirae spotted a lone, leafy tree, free of any other sunbathed punks, among the various side stages and merchandise booths. It’s shade not plentiful enough for the lot of us, but just enough for one or two people. We’d not be able to enjoy any of its relief as it was just about time for the first band on my list to start their show, The Vandals. Desirae, secure in her newfound shaded spot would not budge, and begrudgingly became the keeper of our collected t-shirt purchases, a veritable mountain of them piling high around her in the Summer heat, to be kept safe while their owners went to frolic in mosh pits with other sweaty festival attendees.

We moshed through The Vandals’ set, slam-danced through AFI’s, and when Pennywise was taking to the stage, the sky began to darken, the sun obscured by thick, gray clouds. Sweet release, but an ominous presence. These looked like rain clouds.

After Pennywise played, we returned to the tree half expecting to find Desirae sprawled out on a pile of our shirts having succumbed to heatstroke. Gallantly, she’d managed to survive, but it was time for all of us to head over to the main stage for Rancid’s scheduled performance. T-shirts were doled out to their respective owners, finding a rogue shirt that was somehow absorbed into the horde.

The sky grew darker, the clouds riper. As we readied ourselves for Rancid, thunder began to crack.

Through the first few songs of their performance the clouds grew angrier, the thunder more flagrant. Rancid’s guitar player, Lars Fredrickson proudly proclaimed punk rock isn’t afraid of a little weather, and that the show would go on, before being hastily rushed off the stage only to return a moment later to inform us that punk was indeed afraid of the weather, and the show would not go on.

The surrender was met with an explosion of angry thunder that ripped the sky in twain, releasing a torrential downpour of rain. The punks scattered like cockroaches in the light. It was every punk for themselves.

Our carload of friends made haste to the reprieve of our shared vehicle, soaked to the bone as the rain battered the Warped Tour strewn field.

Sunbathed, exhausted, low on funds, and now sopping, we decided to call it a day as the remaining performances were surely to be canceled. There would be no Me First and the Gimme Gimmes that day. We weren’t the only ones with that same idea as an entire festival’s worth of cars all made for the one and only exit we’d entered through upon arriving early. We were trapped amongst a sea of unmoving vehicles.

It felt like hours as we sat, wet. Having not eaten since that morning we’d grown frustrated and hangry. The rains had subsided yet we weren’t budging. To pass the time a neighboring carload of punkers decided to start lighting off fireworks, most of which careened directly toward the open windows of our car before exploding. Desirae, having earlier removed her water-logged pants, hung out the window, cursing the firework partiers.

Soon after her tirade the cars began to move, slowly at first, then all at once we were free from the makeshift parking lot’s confines with but one thing on our minds: find food.

We found just that at Senior Ric’s, the best damn Tex Mex restaurant in the whole of Colorado. Don’t even come for, them’s just the straight facts, and you can’t argue with facts. As soon as we pulled up we made a mad dash from the car to get down on some free tortilla chips and salsa while we waited for our orders to be delivered.

In the space in between, I returned to the car to procure my pack of cigarettes clumsily left behind in my hunger-crazed sprint. I returned just in time for the arrival of my food, pleasantly surprised just like Mia Wallace in “Pulp Fiction.” I had a burrito the size of my head, devouring every trace of it in record time.

At last satiated we returned to the car, again, this time, the driver unable to locate their keys, the very keys I had borrowed on my earlier return trip to fetch smokes. The very keys I was now looking at resting on the passenger side seat left locked in the car.

All I could do was laugh. The driver didn’t share my mirth.

As we all sat on the curb, awaiting the locksmith, scorched from the sun, ears blasted by punk rock, clothes relatively dried out, the looming pressures of adulthood hung heavy in the air. The next day I would move into my first apartment, soon to start college, and embark on the slow descent into all the things that make spending a day dowsed in the Summer sun at a punk rock festival that much harder to do. Right then, on that curb, none of that mattered, only the feeling of a day well spent, a locked car full of new band t-shirts, and a stomach full of the best Tex Mex Colorado had to offer.