On Saturday morning, I left my suburban Northern Virginia home and boarded the Metro for Washington, D.C., preparing to take in the weekend’s most raucous and meaningful mass gathering in our nation’s capital.
No, I’m not talking about the military parade to mark both the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army and — perhaps not coincidentally — President Donald Trump’s 79th birthday.
I’m talking about something louder, sweatier and, believe it or not, more hopeful: the 30th anniversary revival of the Vans Warped Tour, the iconic traveling rock festival that returned from a five-year hiatus for a two-day blowout in the shadow of the crumbling RFK Stadium.
A few miles apart, these two events told very different stories about the state of our country. One featured tanks, empty bleachers and a speech from a controversial president facing widespread national protests. The other offered a sweaty sea of music fans — ranging from heavily pierced and tattooed youngsters who live and breathe the scene to suburban thirtysomethings like me just looking to spend a few days enjoying the music we loved back when we had fewer responsibilities — all coming together in a gritty celebration of community, expression and belonging.
It’s worth unpacking the contrast.
Two very different crowds
On the Metro ride into the city, I witnessed a scene that felt like a metaphor for the moment. A senior citizen in a “USA” shirt and matching navy blue visor — clearly en route to Trump’s birthday bash — boarded my train and took a seat next to a Warped Tour-bound, middle-aged punk in a black T-shirt that proudly celebrated diversity in the punk scene with the slogan “We Rock Together.” Both greeted one another with a polite nod before riding shoulder-to-shoulder in quiet discomfort to their respective destinations.
At the parade, Trump supporters arrived clad in MAGA hats and patriotic regalia. Many looked like retirees on a field trip, primed to see the man who promised to take them — and the country — back to simpler times.
At RFK, the Warped Tour crowd skewed younger — but not that much younger. These were aging punks, elder emos and lifelong scene kids reliving their glory days. Black T-shirts outnumbered American flags 50 to 1. Visible tattoos, multiple facial piercings, ubiquitous Converse Chuck Taylor sneakers and a whole lot of sunblock were standard issue.
In a sense, both crowds were there to see their favorite nostalgia acts — but only one was insistent that the rest of the country also be required to relive their halcyon days.
Two very different energies
For all its tanks and flyovers, Trump’s parade felt oddly deflated. Organizers had hyped the event as a bold show of strength and national pride, but reality offered a bleaker picture: long rows of empty bleachers, tanks that squeaked rather than thundered and a sparsely populated National Mall even as the president took the microphone. (To be fair, the forecast called for heavy rain.)
No reputable outlet provided a formal crowd count, but the Associated Press noted that attendance fell “far short of early predictions that as many as 200,000 people would attend the festival and parade.”
Meanwhile, over at the Warped Tour, the energy was palpable. Organizers reported that more than 55,000 two-day passes were sold, and the forecast did not diminish the crowd.
With seven stages hosting dozens of acts each day (not to mention a huge skateboard halfpipe and even bigger freestyle motocross jump showcasing death-defying stunts), the parking lots around RFK became a hive of constant motion and joyfully ragged noise. Fans screamed along with every chorus, moshed through rain and shine (and the weekend’s weather featured some of both), and held each other up — literally and figuratively.
It was chaos. It was catharsis. It was community.
Two very different messages
To his credit (and to many observers’ surprise), Trump mostly stayed on script in his brief remarks at the parade’s conclusion, focusing largely on the U.S. Army’s contributions to safeguarding the nation’s freedom and security. But the context was impossible to ignore. For all the pomp and circumstance on display in D.C., the proceedings played out in split-screen with a cascade of dissonant images taking place across the country: National Guard troops clashing with protesters in Los Angeles, millions marching in cities nationwide against Trump’s policies, nervous reactions to early signs of escalating conflict between Israel and Iran filtering through social media.
To some, it felt more like a state of emergency than a celebration.
At the Warped Tour, the tone was very different — and perhaps surprisingly for a scene that was birthed out of the anti-establishment ethos of D.C.’s vibrant punk scene in the 1980s, less overtly political. Yes, there were some pointed critiques of ICE’s immigration raids and the ongoing violence in Gaza. Bands like Senses Fail and The Wonder Years didn’t mince words, and ‘90s punk legends Pennywise used their main stage slot to issue a rousing call to action against authoritarianism.
But for the most part, the message on offer from the event’s various stages was broader — and more human than partisan. Again and again, frontmen and frontwomen used their platform to speak about the importance of mental health, the value of community and the need to lift each other up, especially in these increasingly turbulent times.
“What I’ve learned going through all the (expletive) is that we have much more in common than we do not,” said Motion City Soundtrack singer Justin Pierre, in a between-songs soliloquy that felt representative of the festival’s general vibe. “And I think what I’ve discovered and what I’m learning is that I need to be more uncomfortable in order to get comfortable, and we need to build community with each other.”
This wasn’t just talk. It was baked into the fabric of the event.
Every circle pit told the story. In a mosh pit, people slam into one another with reckless abandon. But even in the midst of all that chaos, there is a golden rule — known and followed by every participant and repeatedly reinforced by the artists on stage: if someone falls, you pick them up. No exceptions.
That spirit was everywhere at Warped Tour. Attendees passed each other water bottles in an effort to stay hydrated. Someone hoisted a lost shoe overhead to help its owner find it. Complete strangers repeatedly banded together to lift wave after wave of crowdsurfers over their heads and safely into the waiting arms of stagefront security personnel. For two full days, people danced and sang and sweated and screamed — not just to escape the chaos of the world, but to respond to it and maybe even shape it, together.
Lessons from the mosh pit
In moments of uncertainty, we often look to the wrong places for strength. We confuse power with volume, control with charisma, and parades with patriotism. But over the weekend, I saw a different kind of resilience. It wasn’t in the tanks rolling through downtown. It was in the crowd of misfits singing along to the angst-ridden anthems of their youth in an abandoned parking lot. It was in the heat, the humidity, the shared experience.
The Warped Tour has always been a refuge for the weird kids, the ones who didn’t fit in anywhere else. And over the course of three decades, it built a culture where survival depends not on domination, but on solidarity. That lesson matters now more than ever.
America is a little like a mosh pit right now — loud, chaotic, full of people crashing into each other. We’d all do well to remember the first rule of the pit: When someone falls, pick them up.