This year’s Riot Fest was everything we’ve come to love about it and more. For three days, roughly 50,000 people came together in Douglas Park for a politically-charged and wild (dare I say riotous?) weekend. While my system might have been flooded with Oktoberfests from Friday afternoon through Sunday night, I fortunately took enough photos and notes to piece this account together.

The lineup remained as true to the fest’s punk origins as ever, while pulling in a little metal and a whole lot of emo throwback, along with headlining pop punk legends Blink-182 and Green Day.

 The festival grounds held plenty of side-attractions, bringing back Riot Land and its many features, such as the Clerks store:

The Logan Arcade tent, featuring arcade games and the Biscuits animatronic band:

And the John Stamos butter statue:

Also, turns out you can find the Field Museum in the pit, alongside their punk rock raptor:

The food options were delectable, with multiple food trucks (shout out to Prime Tacos for the best chicken al pastor I’ve ever had) and mainstays like Island Noodles, Harold’s Chicken and just big freakin’ sticks of meat. Goose Island’s monopoly on the beer held strong once again, but this time they provided more variety with their Riotoberfest tent, featuring three beers brewed exclusively for Riot Fest:

The market once again offered creations from local artists, ranging from handmade clothing and accessories to art and radical books.

I decided to try out VIP this year, making it my first time as a Very Important Person. It was okay. For an extra $100, you have access to an area with an additional water filling station (but the line is longer than the one in GA), however there are bathrooms with indoor plumbing as well as shaded areas with actual chairs, plus some interesting extras like a masseuse, a tarot reader, and Billy Corgan’s tea:

There’s also an area off in the back, by a pond, that doesn’t get crowded; it’s a good spot to hide away for a little while if you need a break from all the people and chaos. So, I recommend VIP if you’re going for multiple days, otherwise it’s probably better to tough it out over a single day in GA.

Friday

Day one started off hot and sunny, but with great sets by acts like Japanese punks Shonen Knife:

Julia Wolf, whose music is like if there was a Twilight and Jennifer’s Body revival, but as an album:

The rage and grief of post-hardcore / fourth-wave emo legends, Touché Amoré:

And the glittery, Paramore-esque Honey Revenge (featuring Kermit Ramone!):

Later into the afternoon came Senses Fail, who I didn’t even know was still around, but I was happy to see:

Night came down with Knocked Loose—the heaviest band to play this year—bringing us into the dark with their signature metalcore brutality:

My attempts to get over to Weird Al left me stuck in what was quite likely the densest crowd I’ve seen at Riot Fest. This was the closest I could get:

A thousand feet away (or more) and a couple thousand people in the way, so I gave up and returned (kinda) to Alkaline Trio:

Blink-182 rounded out the night with a set that was as irreverent yet heartfelt as the guys themselves, ending “Feeling This” so that Tom could introduce “Wishing Well” with, “This song’s about fuckin.’” It’s been a pleasure and a blessing to get to see the original lineup again, something that I hope stays this way, this time. 

They covered every era of their career, especially the self-titled album (my favorite), their old immature stuff from thirty years ago, and their more recent reunion album. This even included “Bored to Death” off the underrated California, a performance that featured Matt Skiba coming back up onstage (and which wasn’t much of a surprise to anyone who saw that Alkaline Trio was playing that same stage right before Blink). They even pulled Stephen Egerton up for a Descendants cover.

All around, a solid start to the weekend.

Saturday

Saturday started off overcast (blissfully so) and drizzling, but that didn’t stop the crowds from packing in for the busiest day. This was when history was made, not just for Riot Fest but for rock music in general… and it all has to do with John Stamos.

This came about because Riot Fest has been cyberbullying him for over a decade to come and perform. He finally responded (or came down to their level?) with a list of terms that had to be met in order for him to appear. These included Riot Mike getting a John Stamos tattoo (check), a Chicago pizzeria creating a Greek-style John Stamos pizza (check) and Riot Fest holding a John Stamos look-alike contest:

(check)

But we’ll come back to that in a minute.

Gwar’s performance has already made national news for their extremely violent (and on brand) performance that included decapitating Elon Musk, eviscerating Donald Trump, lead singer Blothar the Berserker giving birth to a stillborn and then showering the audience with fake blood from his man-udders (yes, you read that correctly), and then finishing up with beating Vladimir Putin to death with his own ripped-off arm—but only after Putin admitted that Trump sucked his dick at the meeting in Alaska.

So, y’know: Gwar stuff.

Some conservatives have been whining about it on social media, and I love that this is how they learned about Gwar. I also love how, for the rest of the day, you could tell who had been in the front rows at this set because they were covered from the waist up in fake blood. From man-udders. And Elon’s decapitated head.

Citizen then gave us a return to normalcy as they proceeded to kick ass while making us cry all at once:

And then Marky Ramone, a living piece of punk history, played us into the evening with a set of classic Ramones songs:

It was incredible getting to see this legend perform, something that I never thought I’d get to see.

Speaking of performances I never thought I’d get to see: next came the Beach Boys. Yep, the Beach Boys, at Riot Fest. The Beach Boys, to a massive crown of punks, metalheads, emo kids and weirdos.

We fucking ate it up. One of the more surreal moments I’ve had at this fest was watching a group of Gen Z’ers standing in a circle, covered in fake Gwar blood, twisting it 1960s style to “Surfin’ in the USA.” But really, it was a breath of fresh air: good vibrations and simple fun, something we didn’t know we needed until we got it.

Also, since the conditions were met (or enough of them were), the Beach Boys were joined on stage by John fucking Stamos:

Which brought not just the Stamos-Riot Fest saga full circle, but ties in nicely to Uncle Jessie and Full House. It really was all of us, getting to experience a moment in rock history that is going to be talked about for years to come.

Then, it was time for the Dropkick Murphys.

So, I cut out of the Beach Boys a little early because the bands’ showtimes overlapped. This meant that I walked away from “Good Vibrations” and turned the corner to hear Ken Casey screaming onstage: “Fight every fucking fascist nazi fucking prick!”

It was like slow dancing with your girl on the beach at sunset, then stepping over across the street to curbstomp a couple of fascists or three. As in, let’s do both!

That’s the Riot Fest magic for you.

Jack White played a great set, then Weezer finished up the night. I don’t really care about Weezer, but good for their fans, I guess. Honestly, I used that time to find the shortest line to the Porta Potties. But the Buzzcocks were also going, and just like with Marky Ramone, they’re a piece of living punk history, so that was another never-thought-I’d-see-this moment. And then it’s nighttime and getting on and on, and you have this moment when you’re like five Oktoberfests and three Pilsners deep (after a questionable Malort shot from a stranger), physically exhausted, and you step out of a Porta Potty into the night while a punk band that broke up before you were even born is rocking the fuck out half a mile away, and you wonder where the hell you are, here, pleasantly unmoored in this kind of moment. That’s another bit of fest magic, I think.

Sunday

Sunny again, but with a nice, steady breeze, the last day was more chilled-out in terms of numbers and the amount of shows I went to. With some time to kill, I watched the NWA put on a wrasslin’ match:

Then bought a bunch of cool stuff and vibed out. The performance by Chicago-based Dehd was chill and groovy:

And despite some delays at the Rebel Stage, emo throwback Gym Class Heroes returned us to 2004:

(I forgot to get a photo of this one, but rest assured that it was fun.)

I think Cobra Starship played as well, but by that point it was so delayed on that side that I think I just glimpsed them, but it was a glimpse I never thought I’d get.

Finally, we got a spectacular send off from Green Day:

They opened with their more well-known songs, including “American Idiot,” “Holiday” and “Boulevard of Broken Dreams.” I imagine that this allowed the posers like me to dip out early (which I did) so that the remainder of the set featured deeper cuts for the big-time Green Day fans. (If it wasn’t for my exhaustion by that point, I’d have stayed for most of their set—but it’s cool enough to know that I got to see them play for a little bit.)

This was also around the time that Mayor Brandon Johnson declared September 21st as Riot Fest Day: so now this shit’s official!

Riot Fest was, as it’s been these past four years I’ve been going, a blast. It’s come to feel like the closing ceremony of my summer, sliding nicely into autumn and the best time of the year: Halloween.

And despite its increasing corporatization, Riot Fest has been able to keep itself organic without selling out. Its popularity has risen in tangent with this current post-lockdown emo revival, which itself is part of the growing alt-scene / counterculture movement that has ballooned under the hellscape of this wanna-be authoritarian regime. At the back of our minds this weekend was the threat of National Guard deployment to Chicago, and of ICE’s ongoing raids across the city—a threat that many performers addressed on stage, taking the time to declare: “Fuck ICE!” and “Free Palestine!” and “Trans lives matter!” and even more of the too-many slogans that we’ve had to develop over the years.

But this shows that the Riot Fest organizers, while admittedly not always discerning about who they bill or the monetary barrier to entry here, are still holding to the punk ethos of bringing together a ground-up community, of creating a space where people are free to be themselves and can find solidarity in standing up against injustice. Despite it all, there was a hopeful vibe this year, in that even if things are bad outside—in some cases just a few miles over—that at least for these three days, we’re free to have fun the way we want, while being the people we want to be.

And I can’t wait to do it again next year.