“Rain is temporary, punk is forever,” read a notification from the Fest 23 app.
Though the final day of the festival was ridden with stormy weather, nothing could deter the tattooed troops from Gainesville’s annual three-day punk festival.
Hundreds of fans lined up first thing Friday afternoon, wrapping half a mile around Depot Park to register their passes. With an additional 500 tickets available this year, over 350 bands performing and more than 15 venues, downtown Gainesville was a monumental stage for bands making their Fest inauguration.
Tony Weinbender, the 49-year-old founder of Fest, got his first taste of the Gainesville punk scene in the 1990s when he played at the Hardback Cafe in his own band, Swank. Having grown up in a rural small town in Virginia, Weinbender organized independent punk shows in his home state and continued doing so after he moved to Gainesville in 2000.
Fest initially aimed to bring together all the bands he curated shows for.
His former roommate, 46-year-old Jake Crown, didn’t believe Weinbender could make the festival happen. Sure enough, in 2002, he did, and Crown has performed at them every single year in various bands. He now plays drums for the new skatepark grit band The Valterra Dragons.
Fest 23 was The Valterra Dragons’ first performance as a band. Ironically, Crown’s other group, Coffee Project, played their very last show this past weekend.
The Valterra Dragons formed to change the conversation about the division in the country into something less negative. Their half-hour set at Loosey’s Downtown touched on themes like misinformation and financial injustice.
“We just started practicing and focusing on being positive,” Crown said, “and taking our aggression to the state of the United States and making it into some positive music.”
John Wright, a 39-year-old Fest-goer, who was first in line for The Valterra Dragons’ set, knows lead singer Danny Lore personally. Wright has attended Fest for about 20 years, and while he hardly recognizes the lineups anymore, the festival never disappoints.
“It's always been the same experience, except I'm getting older,” he said. “I can't hang as much, and my stamina is far lower than it was when I was 20 years old.”
Sam Goren was much younger than 20 when he saw his dad’s solo project, Atom and His Package, play at Fest.
Thirteen years old, his hair soaked in beer, Goren said seeing his father perform felt like a dream. This year, at 19 years old, Goren played his first Fest show Sunday night at University Club.
His band, Haunt Dog, a Philadelphia-based “crazy freaky style emo” quartet, as its Instagram account puts it, has been trying to score a Fest gig for years. Dee Horvath, the band’s 25-year-old lead singer and guitarist, has been applying since high school.
“Fest is such a significant staple of DIY and punk music and a lot of our idols have played here,” he said. “This is a milestone place to be. There's bands that have played Fest, and then there's bands that haven't played Fest.”
Horvath believes the punk fan base will exist forever, joking Fest will live on to 2087 and beyond.
He also added Fest is like Comic-Con, but smellier. Bassist Liam Caskey compared the festival to Disneyland.
Some groups traveled from much farther than Pennsylvania.
As one of 16 international bands, Modern Shakes, hailing from London, had never performed outside of the UK before Oct. 20, when they played Orlando’s Foreign Dissent festival. After his gig in Gainesville, lead singer and guitarist Ian Crook said he felt he entered the punk rock mecca.
As a kid, Crook sneaked into his older brother’s room to play guitar, carefully practicing “Wonderwall” by Oasis. He grew fond of Blink-182, Alkaline Trio and Descendants, and ever since, punk has been an integral part of his life.
Though he and his band have 9-to-5 jobs and seldom tour, Crook isn’t a part of Modern Shakes for the money, but rather for the passion.
“We all grew up in alternative scenes, so it's kind of nice to continue doing that and not settle into what people expect you to do,” he said.
Sydney Crosby, a Fest fan and volunteer, said she loved meeting international bands and concertgoers. The 22-year-old Sante Fe accounting senior had never attended Fest before but grew up listening to Gainesville punk bands, like Against Me!, Roach Motel and Less Than Jake.
Punk music helped Crosby form her own ideals about how she wants to treat others and be treated, and she’s glad that feeling spans the globe.
“It's really reassuring that it's not just Gainesville that's holding it down,” she said. “There's people all around the world who want the world to be a better place.”
Her friend, 20-year-old UF electrical engineering junior Tyler Ruble, stopped setting harsh expectations for himself after becoming immersed in punk rock culture.
While the scene has taught him to take some things more seriously, like politics and academics, he said punk music is also all about having a good time with like-minded people.
“Punk does not really exist as it is now without that emphasis on community,” he said.
Contact Isabel Kraby at ikraby@alligator.org. Follow her on X @isabelgkraby.
Isabel is a general assignment reporter for The Avenue and is starting her first semester with The Alligator. She is a junior journalism student and transferred to UF from Daytona State College after her freshman year. When she's not writing for Ave, she loves going to concerts, crocheting and designing spreads for Rowdy Magazine.
