You just had to be there

Best Friends Forever, Vegas, nostalgia, and having lived through the best era of music

A week before I fly to Vegas for the Best Friends Forever music festival, I watch Jawbreaker perform at The Observatory in San Diego. Perhaps it’d been foolhardy to shell out exorbitant Observatory prices when the punk legends are set to headline one of the nights at BFF, but Jawbreaker’s one of my all-time favorite bands, and I’ve never been good with money.

At The Observatory, the crowd is older, graying punks. Everyone wears a black band T-shirt. We’re all kind of past our peak. These are my people. I could go up to anyone and start a conversation about how many times we’ve seen Jawbreaker, which would segue to similar bands we’ve seen, where we saw them, when, and with how many people. This would eventually lead to talking about the past, how hard it was to find new music, yet yet how rewarding it was to discover something organically. Those were the days, we’d say, before the world got so fast and algorithmic. We’d agree that things were better back then.

Of course, I don’t talk to anyone at the show. Just sip an expensive Truly and watch Jawbreaker run through a sloppy set. Endearingly sloppy, perhaps, but endearing enough for the $70 ticket price? Not sure.

But to be with my people—these aged millennials—and tacitly lament our current state is catnip to me. And that’s why I love BFF, that feels catered to elder millennials who are/were a little more discerning (i.e. pretentious) than the When We Were Young crowd. Yes, BFF is a punk/hardcore/emo nostalgia trip, but featuring bands that never made it onto shirts sold at Hot Topic.

It’s the festival’s second year. I had so much fun at the inaugural event that I bought heavily discounted tickets to the second year before they even announced the lineup. When they did, I was not disappointed.

Pretty sure everyone knows Jimmy Eat World, but if you don’t recognize any of the other bands, no shame (which I’d say to your face, and then quietly judge you for not having as exquisite music taste as me). But there are a handful of bands on this lineup that I had cemented in my CD visor attachment from 2000 to 2005, aka my pizza delivering days. For years, I navigated icy, treacherous roads of Park City, Utah, delivering lukewarm, mediocre pizzas to rich tourists while spinning these bands in the Discman/cassette adapter. Gen Z will have that experience, and I pity them.

This is all to say, BFF is not for everyone, but for us—the graying, kinda sad, out of shape punks—it’s everything.

Day 1

I wake up at 4 a.m. I have scheduled a Lyft to pick me up at six, but a combination of excitement, nerves, and my cat walking on my force me awake. By the time my driver arrives, the sun hasn’t even risen, but I’m already crashing.

I fly out of San Diego’s new Terminal One, a massive improvement from the donut shaped shithole it used to be. There’s a new restaurant, Luna Grill, which looks healthy-ish, but only because it’s next to the McDonalds kiosks. I order a Greek breakfast wrap, which feels healthy, even though it’s basically just a California burrito with gyro meat. Regardless, I eat it smugly while watching the McDonalds denizens creep forward toward the machines.

I land in Vegas early around 9 a.m. There’s a whole contingent of San Diego friends also coming to the festival, as well as friends Ryen and Steph from Salt Lake City. Ryan and Steph are very experienced at Vegas, and have kindly let me crash in one of their comped rooms at The Fremont Hotel.

However, they had arrived the night before and were up late, so I’ll have hours to kill before they wake up. Instead of fighting the Lyft/Uber mob at the Vegas airport, I decide to take a bus. Las Vegas public transportation system seems similar to San Diego‘s in that it’s made for a city that largely doesn’t give a shit about public transportation and, therefore, is not great. I get a little taste of that when I pay $6 for a two-hour pass. But it only takes 30 minutes to get to where I need to go, and I get to listen to my audiobook while not talking to anybody. I’ll call it a win.

I post up at The D, playing video poker and drinking morning beers, which somehow become morning Long Island iced teas, which is funny because the bar at The D is very long and free gambling drinks are very short. Long Island Iced Teas at the long bar, or Short Island Iced Teas? These are the jokes I’m deciding to make when I see my friends, and also how I know that the drinks are working.

By the time Steph meets me at the bar, I’m three Short Islands in and down $100. Vegas, baby.

Steph and I walk across the street to the Downtown Las Vegas Event Center Las Vegas to watch Superchunk. Thick, dark clouds have formed over the city and it starts to rain. I don’t think I’ve ever been in Vegas when it’s any other climate besides hell.

Superchunk rules and the increasing rain just seems to fuel their enthusiasm. They play “What a Time to Be Alive” which was the first Superchunk song I ever heard. It was 2018, right in the middle of Trump‘s first presidency, and it was such a beacon of positivity during that dark time that I became an instant fan. Even in this darker second term, the song still brings me joy. Art will always be there for us.

The next band is Bear vs. Shark. Again, BFF excels in picking bands that I listened to intensely for a short-but-formative period of my life. Bear vs. Shark is another one of those bands. I saw open up for Coheed and Cambria in 2004 at the Catalyst in Santa Cruz when I was an undergrad UCSC. The energy and the singer’s proclivity to climb on things was like catnip to a guy whose post-teenage music taste was defined by At the Drive-In and, therefore, a big fan of watching singers jump around and climb on things.

Ryen, who worked at the same pizza place as I did—and who also had Bear vs. Shark as a delivering album—stands next to me during the show. We share a few looks, and I know we’re both experiencing a nostalgia overload. It’s at that point that I eat a weed gummy. Everything’s better on weed, including nostalgia.

The time away has not aged the band’s energy. Just like that fateful night that I saw them in Santa Cruz, Bear vs. Shark’s singer still likes to climb on things.

By now the rain is coming down hard. Ryen, Steph and I go back to their hotel room to watch the end of the Mariners game. It’s like the ninth thinning and there’s no end in sight so we drink beers and take a little visit to the Coney Island Dog restaurant downstairs. By now my edible is kicking in, so even though all the items on Coney Island Dog’s menu sound just a little disgusting, they also sound good. There’s a delicate line that savory foods must toe, where the flavor profile nudges that of literal vomit. If a food can ride that edge, I’m down.

I order a mountain of chili fries and something called a Loose Burger, which is not a burger but a Sloppy Joe in a hot dog bun. “Loosie,” Steph calls it, and so do I. I’m so enamored with this insider lingo that I don’t notice Loosies are slathered with mustard and onions, two of the worst things that people put in their mouths. But I’m also in a state where my biggest hatred is just a mere inconvenience, so I run my finger along the top of the Loosie, scraping off the mustard and onions, and fling it back into my bag as if it’s a line of snot. I commence eating.

The rain is pouring down now and the BFF social media account alerts everybody of lightning delays for Cursive and Minus the Bear. They’ve closed the gates to keep people from entering, just in case this is a permanent thing.

I pivot between waiting for the gates to reopen and watching baseball back in Ryan’s hotel room. I figure now is about the best time to begin what I call Dumb Drinking. This is what usually happens when I’m overstimulated, or in big crowds, or just pretty much any time I’m in Vegas, really. Dumb Drinking is when I move away from respectable drinks, and take on whatever novelty drink is thrust in front of me. In this case, the gift shop at The D has a deal where you buy two tall cans and get the third one free. I buy Ryen a regular Pacifico and two hard Mountain Dews for me.

I’m halfway through my second Hard Dew when word gets out that the lightning has stopped and they’re letting people back into the festival. I chug outside the gate and listen to Cursive begin their set. Tonight, they’re playing the album Domestica in full, and I watch people sprint to the entry gates, singing along to the words. I wonder, apart from the monolithic acts like Taylor Swift or Charli XCX, what rock bands can still have this power over their fans? There are not a lot of people that go to BFF—at least comparatively to other big festivals—but the people that do go love these bands. These are the bands that get scratched into your soul.

Can rock bands still be scratched into your soul?

I don’t know Cursive’s Domestica album, but I love it all the same.

I skip the night’s headliner, Minus The Bear, because I don’t know their music and also because I’m a 41 year-old man with a solo hotel stay and I no longer feel an obligation to see every band just because I paid money to. So I tuck myself in, pleasantly stoned, and fall into a deep beautiful sleep.

Day 2

I wake up, feeling alert, refreshed. The city ain’t got nothing on me, except for the fact that I’m $100 poorer than I was yesterday and have nothing to show for it. I text the San Diego crew to see if anybody’s up, and meet up with friends (and AWKSD guest stars) Taylor and Renita at a fancy breakfast spot just a few blocks away from Fremont Street. Taylor tells me that Minus The Bear ruled, but he too did not stay up and party. He’s a newish dad, and like me, he’s a big fan of solo hotel stays.

We get back to the hotel, and Taylor leaves to shower or change into another band shirt or something. Renita and I walk around looking at the table games. We find a $10 minimum Blackjack table empty. “You wanna do this?” I ask. Renita doesn’t gamble, but I peer pressure her into sitting with me. Although it’s a $10 minimum, the dealer makes me put $40 down because I’m playing two hands by showing Renita the ropes. I understand why they’d want me to put down $20, but 40? I don’t get it, but I do anyway.

We have some good hands and within 15 minutes we’ve turned $40 into $140. It takes everything in my willpower to pull myself away, but I ride that adrenaline high for the rest of the day.

I get a text from Steph saying they’re awake and want to go to brunch at Ichabod’s. Two breakfasts in a day? Why not. Pulling out all the stops. Vegas, baby.

Ichabod’s is out in real Vegas, tucked into the corner of an otherwise deserted strip mall that also has a Planned Parenthood and Planet Fitness. The restaurant is dark and dank, with vinyl booths and a sophisticated-degenerate vibe. The chicken-fried steak here has saved me multiple times from hangovers so it feels profane to order anything else. I order a Miller High-Life with my steak and the waitress—who’s been the same waitress I’ve had at Ichabod’s for the past seven years—says “I didn’t know we still served these” when she brings it out.

After brunch, we hit up Lee’s Discount Liquor Store. I buy a 12-pack of citrus-tinged 805s and, of course, two tall cans of Hard Mountain Dew Baja Blast. The total is less than $15. Highly recommend real Vegas.

Back in downtown. There are only a few bands that I want to see today, and one of them is Pretty Girls Make Graves, who aren’t going on until later in the afternoon, so after second breakfast, I hang out in my hotel room, taste-test the Baja Blast (good, not great) and take a nap.

Later, I meet up with Steph for Pretty Girls Make Graves. As with any sort of punk/emo festival, there will always be a dearth of women artists, and BFF really isn’t any better. I think there are maybe four-women fronted bands on the lineup, and Pretty Girls Make Graves is one of them. But when you think about music from the early 2000s, like, how many women were allowed to make it into the spotlight? Regardless of all the sensitivity that these genres loved to espouse, it was (and is still) very much a bro club. Just like how any punk scene will tout inclusivity and anti-racism, but most remain predominantly white.

Steph and I stand in the shaded bar area in the back of the festival. All around me, sleepy concertgoers have staked their claim on the Astroturf, each person looking uncomfortable in too-tight jeans and shirts, including me. We’ve all let the ravages of time destroy our bodies, but we’ve insisted on wearing the same sizes.

I realize the bars at BFF sell Beatboxes, so Dumb Drinking begins. But honestly, at $13 for a 11% drink, it kind of seems like the best deal in the place. So who really is the dumb one here?

The thing about bands like Pretty Girls Make Graves reuniting—and this is true of much of the BFF lineup—is that few of these artists weren’t festival-big in their heyday. Even at their height, they were playing rooms for a couple hundred people. Plus, it’s been 20 years since they performed. Now, suddenly thrust into a bigger spotlight by the sheer power of nostalgia, the seams are big and visible.

During Pretty Girls Make Graves’ set there are long breaks between songs. At one point, a lone voice from the (exceptionally) quiet audience yells, “What are you talking about?” and the whole audience laughs.

After the set, Steph and I invite the San Diego crew—Tony, Taylor, Renita, Darrell, and Aaron—back to my hotel to drink 805s. All of us vibe on the same sort of euphoria that comes from nostalgia, edibles and fruit punch-flavored malt liquor (that last one only applying to me, obvi). We talk about the band T-shirts that we’ve seen—which in itself has become a spectacle that Renita has even made a bingo card activity for.

I’m feeling the two Beatboxes, yet social interaction and excitement pulls me forward. I don’t really know what happens for the next few hours, but suddenly it’s dark and I’m in Ryen’s hotel room, hanging out with him and our mutual friend Clayton. As a trio, we have been doing a Monday night YouTube podcast called Polyester Blend since the beginning of the pandemic, but I’ve only met Clayton in person a handful of times. The first thing I say to him is, “I’m sorry.” I explain the Beatboxes.

Then I’m walking around by myself, looking for something to eat. I find a chicken tender place and order a five-piecer with fries. I take it up to my hotel room and eat that greasy mountain, drunk and pathetic, David Hassellhoff-style. The clock says I have an hour before tonight’s headliner, Jawbreaker, starts. Just enough time for a quick little nap I think

I wake up at 3 a.m., confused for a moment of where I am, and briefly—just briefly—wonder if I can still make it to Jawbreaker.

Based on the text on our San Diego thread, it doesn’t sound like I missed much.

Day 3

I wake up nice and early. There’s a greasy, cardboard basket sitting perfectly square on the pillow next to me. Waking up next to chicken tender leftover trash like it’s a one-night stand: Vegas, baby.

I spend the morning working on homework for a post-graduate education class I’m forced to take for my job. I write about self-reflection (which is good when you work in education, but not when you’re in Vegas) until Evel Pie opens, where I have plans to meet up with Tony, Taylor and Renita for a pizza. On my way there, I see a street busker playing Temple of the Dog’s “Hunger Strike,” which is incredible because the day before, Steph had been wearing a shirt that read “I don’t mind stealing bread” stylized like the Wonder Bread logo.

I try to take video of the musician, but every time he sees me, he stops playing. I angle for more of a voyeuristic shot, but he sees me again again and waves me away. Ashamed, I drop five dollars into his bucket.

“Sorry, man,” he says. “But this is my first song and my voice isn’t warmed up yet. I didn’t want you sharing videos of me sounding like shit.” I tell him that it sounds beautiful.

Later that afternoon, I head over to the festival to watch These Arms are Snakes. I’ve been stoked to see this band ever since I saw their name on the lineup. Not that I am or ever was a huge fan—I only had their first EP—but they’re a band whose forbiddenness, mystery and maybe infamy (?) has grown in my mind over the past two decades. Was there really a band called These Arms Are Snakes? And they sounded like that?

When they emerge on stage, it feels like, for the first time at BFF, there’s an air of menace. Like they’re bringing something evil to this feel-good fest.

Singer Steve Snere—a rail-thin man with grotesque sideburns—struts around on stage, a sexual/predatory vibe wafting off him. He writhes and rubs himself perversely; he disrobes and rerobes. Compared to all the earnestness that has surrounded us thus far, it feels like a kick in the gut or something. Steph feels differently. “I wish I hadn’t seen that band live,” she says.

I rush back to my room to finish my homework, and I’m doing a sloppy job of it so I can make it back in time for Mates of State. But then I look up Mates of State songs I’d recognize and realize that all along I’ve been confusing them with Matt and Kim. I eat a prime rib dinner at El Cortez with Ryen and Steph instead.

That night, I watch Cursive play The Ugly Organ in its entirety. It’s another album I hold dear to my heart, a rare no-skipper for me. Jenny Lewis comes out and sings back-up on the “The Recluse” and it’s the most lovely moment of the festival.

Next up is Rilo Kiley, a band that I never got into besides a few songs that I learned from seeing friends sing them at karaoke. But you can just tell the moment that Rilo Kiley starts playing that this band is leagues above most bands on the bill in terms of performance and professionalism. Not that I have any issue with watching small club bands play on a big stage, but Rilo Kiley has their shit locked-in. They’re the first band of the whole festival to bring any sort of semblance of romance. I watch couples swoon and slow dance to Jenny Luis‘s love songs. A woman standing next to me is crying.

The final headliner is Jimmy Eat World. I’ve been saying that this is the band at BFF that I’m most excited to see. When I tell people that, I can practically hear what they’re saying: so basic. So pop. Whatever. Jimmy Eat World has written some of the best songs this century, and I will stand by that.

And, oh man, do they deliver. Just like Rilo Kiley, this is a band that has been polished to play on big stages. Their set is tight as hell. And the best part? They play the majority of Clarity—the album before their breakout album Bleed American. This set is for the real Jimmy heads.

Of course, what a delight to hear them end with “The Middle,” which might be the best pop song of our generation.

The show’s over, and we funnel out of the event center. All at once, it feels like life sort of returns to normal. When you’re at a multi-day event, it becomes its own little world, and the feeling of leaving it is strangely untethered.

I meet up with my writer friend Aaron Burch, who is also in Vegas with his partner, Amber, celebrating her birthday. I find them at Circa, at a craps table surrounded by gamblers. We move to Blackjack and quickly lose all our money. I take them to Coney Island Dogs, where they don’t order any food, but I order another mountain of chili cheese fries. At one point, Aaron questions why they’re spending their night just watching me eat slop.

That night, I lay in my hotel room and watch all the concert videos I’ve taken on my phone, reliving the past three days over and over. Even ignoring my terrible angles and zooms, there’s something missing from the videos—the feeling of being close to others, of nostalgia, of community, of an inarticulable “energy”. Or maybe all of the above. Maybe you just had to be there. And maybe that’s the keystone of nostalgia: the feeling of having been there.