Story and photos by Jim Testa


1. 1. Beer: Having been to every year of Insubordination Fest and nine years of Punk Rock Bowling, I know a thing or two about punks and alcohol. So take me at my word when I say that San Diego punks can pack it away. Mostly that means $2 PBR tall boys and shots (in that regard, San Diego is much like Bushwick, although I found a shot of whiskey comes much larger and cheaper in San Diego than Brooklyn.) But San Diego dive bars also have large arrays of craft beers on draft, so if you’re willing to pay $6 a glass for something that doesn’t taste like used bathwater, you’re in for a treat. At U31, the nicest of the four bars that host AwesomeFest, a lot of fans were also drinking tall, potent, lethal concoctions called Blue Wackadoos that are the color of Brad Pitt’s eyes and pack as much wallop as a pint of moonshine.

2. 2. Bands: Yes, AwesomeFest is nominally a “pop punk festival” and yes, as Maximus Maxie pointed out, “guys with beards singing in unison” do comprise much of the entertainment. You could take 80% of the bands at AwesomeFest and divide them into Team Screeching Weasel and Team Copyrights and have a pretty good idea of what they sound like. But much of the music that impressed me the most fell outside those genre boundaries, from the rejuvenated hardcore of Plow United to the throbbing 2-man assault of Big Dick, the female-fronted melodic hardcore of Gateway District, the power pop of the ageless Parasites, the minimalist lo-fi Shellshag, the bellowing bluesy Americana of the Slow Death, and the pure rock’n’roll abandonment of Riverboat Gamblers. The Steinways and the Turkletons proved you could be both very funny and very punk; and while I usually don’t like high-concept bands, the Maxies (possibly my favorite act of the weekend) won me over with their costumes and masks, hilarious stage banter, Angry Samoans-like songs about Greenland, and their stage-diving guest star, the Bi-Polar Bear (but please, somebody, wash that costume before it starts walking around by itself.)

3. 3. The people: We all know that punk and (especially) hardcore used to have huge problems with misogyny, sexism, and homophobia, but somewhere along the line, punk has become a welcoming, inclusive community, and that was nowhere more evident than San Diego. Paul Silver in his AwesomeFest piece has already remarked on how many female-fronted bands excelled at the festival, but the audiences were just as diverse: White, black, Mexican, gay, straight; bearded and tattooed or groomed and nerdy; arty kids with weird haircuts in their 20’s, heavily tattooed touring pro’s in their 30’s, grizzled old timers in their 40’s, 50’s, and beyond: Everybody mixed and mingled and drank and danced and sang along together, secure in the knowledge that we stood united by the weird music we all love.

4. 4. Pop-Punk: I left AwesomeFest secure in the knowledge that yes, I still love pop punk. And while I admit that, every once in a while, some of the music seemed a bit generic (I did see over 30 bands in three bands, after all,) the outstanding performances far outweighed the mediocre ones and I find myself unable to whittle a list of favorites down to a Top 5 or even 10. But I will mention the bands that impressed me the most (this is your cue to start googling bandcamp and Facebook pages and check them out for yourself: ) Dudes Night, Rumspringer, Turkish Techno, Jabber, the Turkletons, the Maxies, Lipstick Homicide, Big Dick, the Maxies, Low Culture, Gateway District, The Slow Death, Banner Pilot, the Dudikoffs, Tight Bros, Hands Like Bricks, Bad Cop/Bad Cop, Gentlemen Prefer Blood, and Riverboat Gamblers. And those were just the bands that I didn’t know very well. Old favorites like Plow United, Shellshag, the Steinways, the Parasites (Dave Parasite with a terrific new lineup including Jason Duarte and David Delarosa,) the Jetty Boys, and FYP all delivered high-energy, electrically charged sets that met and usually surpassed all expectations.

5.Food: I’d been to San Diego once before, but this time I came with an agenda: I wanted burritos, I wanted fish tacos, I wanted to taste San Diego pizza (which had ludicrously won first place in a very dubious travel-site poll of the best pizza in America,) and I wanted to try some new beers. Since my host Paul Silver is a vegetarian, I couldn’t very well insist we go to the beach for fresh seafood, but otherwise, I got my fill. Paul took me to a small Mexican place called Colima’s in North Park (not far from all the clubs we visited) where I had a terrific pollo asado burrito (second only to the Mission burrito I had once in San Francisco;) the food and prices were so good that we went back the next day when – on the recommendation of Dangerous Dave Swain – I had a shrimp quesadilla that was pure ooey gooey cheesey greasy deliciousness. We sampled some local Neapolitan pizza that I found cardboardy and mediocre, but we also went (twice) to a place that specialized in the thicker, square Sicilian style of pizza, which I admit matched anything I’ve ever had in New York or New Jersey. (And they had $5 drafts!) And I sampled at least a half a dozen craft beers, the best of which – Stone 17th Anniversary IPA - had a complex, hoppy flavor and refreshing bitterness.

MORE PHOTOS

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Dudikoffs



Gateway District



Hands Like Bricks

Jetty Boys

Maxies



The Parasites



Riverboat Gamblers



Shellshag



The Steinways



Chris Grivet



Tight Bros

The Turkletons