If you’ve never been to Warped Tour before, it may surprise you that each act from the “headliners” to the local acts only gets 25 - 30 minutes for their set, which is a practice that has two crucial purposes. First, even with six stages, it would be nearly impossible to give bands 45-minutes to an hour sets and finish the festival in one day, but it serves to create a feeling of equality and camaraderie between the bands. Rather than supporting a hierarchical lineup style, where the “biggest” and “best” bands are always late at night and always get longer sets, Warped Tour gives each band the same opportunity and spreads out big and small bands throughout the day.

Because of these short set times, fans are constantly on the move, quickly scrambling from one stage to the next to catch the next set, but no one ever seems to mind. Smiles are seen on everyone’s faces, and from 13-year-olds at their first Warped Tour to 50-year-olds at their 24th, the entire population seems genuinely happy to be there.

There’s something about Warped Tour that makes it feel like your festival, and that makes people proud to be apart of the tradition. Meeting your favorite artists and having them treat you like an old friend, making new friends in the circle pit at August Burns Red and taking shelter from the inevitable rain storm with a group of total strangers are things that are once-in-a-lifetime experiences anywhere else, but they’re an everyday occurrence at Warped Tour.