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Live from San Pedro
October 10th, 2025 Review by Kevin Gomez
Punk in the Park took over Berth 46 in San Pedro the first weekend in October, where just a year earlier NOFX said goodbye to their fans.
With over 20 bands each day, three stages, and three hours of beer tastings, there was non-stop action all day long.
Jen Pop of the Bombpops got things going early with a solo acoustic performance that ended up being one of my favorite performances of the day. She did a heartfelt cover of Pat Benatar’s “Love is a Battlefield.”
She played “Bender” from her 2024 solo release, “East Side of Eden.” She then did a powerful rendition of the Bombpops song “Notre Dame.” For her last song Jen said, “This song was written 24-25 years ago and it’s never been more relevant than now,” and covered NOFX’s “The Idiots Are Taking Over.”
Much like Warped Tour before it, Punk in the Park couldn’t avoid some overlapping set times with that many bands and three stages.
As such, I was only able to catch the first couple songs of ska-punk’s Left Alone. They opened with “Sad Story” and went into fan favorite “Hate the Day.”
I’ve been a fan of the Hermosa Beach natives, Slaughterhouse since seeing them play with Strung Out last year. Taylor Ramirez provided the guitar riff intro for “Whips and Chains” while Eddie Cairns provided backing vocals, not so much strumming as stabbing his bass. The band covered Black Flag’s “My War” mixing punk with a heavy metal twist.
In this reviewer’s humble opinion Bay Area’s Dead to Me won the set of the whole weekend. They opened with “Don’t Wanna” and immediately jumped into the popular “Don’t Lie,” featuring dueling vocals from bassist Chicken, and guitarist Jack Dalyrmple.
So many people sang “no reaction, every action’s true” for the outro to “Visiting Day.” For the last song, “By the Throat,” Dalyrmple brought out his son to play third guitar as Chicken crowd surfed for the song’s final chorus.
Manic Hispanic opened with their take on Black Flag’s “Wasted” and then paid homage to the Bouncing Souls with “Mas Chingones.” Elvis Cortez began the guitar intro to “Holding Cell,” their take on “Waiting Room.” Gilbert Pichardo crowd surfed while he sang “Teardrop On My Eye,” while Efrem Schulz sang on the barricade for “Chancla Abuser” and “Mexican Girl.” Schulz instructed the crowd to put up two fingers, “For Steve Soto and Gabby Gaborno” as they closed with, “Paisa” which saw Pichardo singing from the barricade to the front row.
Voodoo Glow Skulls had one of the best sets on the third stage, playing classics like “Shoot the Moon” and “Charlie Brown.” Eddie Casillas strummed the metal guitar intro for “Insubordination” as brother Randy played a heavy bassline.
Lead singer Frank Casillas said, “We lost our mom last week. Take care of your loved ones” and dedicated her memory for “El Cucuy.” They closed with “Who Do Voodoo We Do?”
Face to Face had some early sound issues on the first song, but by “A-OK” the band was back in action as fans moshed furiously. Lead singer Trever Keith played the opening cover of “Keep Your Hands to Yourself” which transitioned right into “It’s Not Over.”
Bassist extraordinaire Scott Shiflett ripped through riffs on “Walk the Walk” and “Bent But Not Broken.” People sang and moshed along for the punk ballad “Blind.” The band finished with “You’ve Done Nothing” and the ‘90s punk anthem “Disconnected.”
Much like they were to Warped Tour, Pennywise have become synonymous and one of the faces representing Punk in the Park, having played several over the past few years. They opened with “Fight Till You Die” and then one I had not heard in several years, “Rules” off their debut album.
Guitarist Fletcher Dragge gave a shout out to “all the parents who brought their kids today.” “You’re raising them the right way,” he continued and dedicated “Same Old Story” to them.
They covered NOFX’s “Bob,” Black Flag’s “Gimmie Gimmie Gimmie,” and then Sublime’s “In the End,” the latter of which saw Jakob Nowell come out and sing with the boys.
Dragge tried to encourage people by saying, “I’ve been saying it for the last 20 years. Do something, get off the couch. Don’t just talk about it, hit the streets.” And drummer Byron McMackin began the thundering drum intro to “Fuck Authority.” Singer Jim Lindberg welcomed fans to join the band onstage as they closed out, as they always do, with “Bro Hymn.”
Bad Religion proved why they were Saturday’s headliners. They may have had the best sounding set of the whole day, starting off with classics “Recipe for Hate” and “Supersonic.” They’ve really worked at revising and improving their setlist including rare gems like “Candidate.”
“New Dark Ages” featured Jamie Miller’s impressive breakneck drumming, while “Modern Man” was kicked off with Brian Baker’s classic Bad Religion-style guitar playing. They slowed things down for the more melodic “My Sanity” before going back to the traditional punk rock sound of “I Want to Conquer the World.”
Lead singer Greg Graffin said, “This goes back to the first album that starts off with two bass notes” as Jay Bentley started the slow bass intro against Mike Dimkick’s slow, unsettling guitar for “Fuck Armageddon…This is Hell.” They went obscure with “Fields of Mars” before hitting some fan favorites like “Generator,” “21 Century (Digital Boy),” and “Infected.”
They played the popular anthem “Sorrow” beautifully under a full moon and closed their perfect set with “American Jesus,” bringing night one to a close.
Authority Zero got things going early on Sunday with “Get it Right.” Singer Jason DeVore got the crowd to clap their hands along for the intro to “12:34.” Mike Spero started the gnarly bass intro on “No Regrets.”
The crowd had a wild, dirt-blowing pit going for “Ollie Ollie Oxen Free’’ and “Revolution” as drummer Chris Dalley and guitarist Brandon Landelius ripped through the songs. DeVore said, “Words and actions paired together can move mountains. This song’s about unity and solidarity” and led the band for “Undivided.”
Teenage Bottlerocket had a lot of songs to play in a short amount of time and breezed through their set with little talk in between. Guitarist and co-lead singer Kody Templeman led with “Bigger Than Kiss” before Ray Carlisle sang on “Don’t Want to Go.”
Templeman’s vocals came through on “Stupid Games,” while drummer Darren Chewka hammered through on “Crashing.” Other highlights were Carlisle and Chewka doing a successful drumstick toss and the band playing a short cover of “Blitzkrieg Bop” during “On My Own.”
As usual Codefendants had one of the “can’t miss” performances of Sunday. The two-man project of Get Dead’s Sam King and guitarist, hip-hop folk singer Ceschi Ramos were backed by Zeta members Chino Sandoval on drums and Tony Pereira on guitar.
An impassioned group of fans immediately began moshing and singing along to “Def Cons” and “Abscessed.” They played a new, unreleased song, “Fix,” featuring a sick guitar solo from Pereria. “Fast Ones” ended with a great drum solo from Sandoval.
They played a heartbreaking rendition of “Counting Back from 13,” another new song, “Lonely Life,” with machine-gun rapid-fire rapping from Ramos, and they closed with “Sell Me Youth.”
I was able to catch the second half of Mike McColgan & the Bomb Squad as they played Dropkick Murphy’s debut album, “Do or Die.” I caught the fun “Firestarter Karaoke,” which McColgan explained was about when karaoke night goes wrong. I’ve waited 30 years to hear “Barroom Heroes” played live and took the opportunity to hop in the pit. I didn’t plan on staying but when they followed up with the classic folk ballad, “Finnegan’s Wake,” I had to keep it going. “Skinhead on the MBTA” had a breakdown that went into AC/DC’s “T.N.T.”
Dwarves put in a really solid set on the third stage. As singer Blag Dahlia put it, “We’re on the ‘nobody loves me’ stage.” The band dusted off some older tracks including “Roxette,” “Better Be Women,” “Way Out,” and “Satan.” Guitarist Gianluca Panero, and drummer “Snupac” Gabriel Perez absolutely shred on “Back Seat of My Car” and “Let’s Fuck” at ungodly speed. Madd Lucas of Sik Sik Sicks came out to duet with Dahlia on “We Will Dare.” Bassist Salt Peter transitioned from “You Gotta Burn” right into “Everybody’s Girl.”
Screeching Weasel has been absent for several years so a large crowd drew to the main stage to catch their set. They went into “I’m Gonna Strangle You” and “Veronica Hates Me.”
The popular, “Dingbat” saw an impressive guitar solo from Gianluca Panero doing back-to-back double duty.
The band hit their punk rendition of “I Can See Clearly Now” featuring another fiery solo from Panero. They finished with their two most popular songs, “Hey Suburbia” and “Cool Kids.”
The Interrupters got the skanking party started with “Gave You Everything” followed out by the fighting, “Title Holder.” Guitarist Kevin Bovina introduced the band, including his twin brothers, Justin on bass and Jess on drums.
The band jumped into a quick cover of the intro to NOFX’s “Linoleum” that caused the crowd to lose their minds and draw one of the biggest pits of the day before the band went into “On a Turntable.”
“Raised by Wolves” featured fantastic vocals from Amy and four-part harmony for the song’s outro. “In the Mirror” showcased Amy’s powerhouse vocals for the song’s ending. Bovina did a cover of the intro to “Summer of ‘69” before the band went into “She Got Arrested.” Bovina said “Take Back the Power” was “a protest song but also a unity song” and they closed with “She’s Kerosene.”
The Adicts helped close down the second stage for the weekend with a really entertaining set. The crowd was singing along loudly to “Let’s Go” and “Joker in the Pack.” Lead singer Monkey wore his traditional black bowler hat in a white suit with a heart/diamond/club/clover pattern and wings.
They played a similar set to what they played at Punk Rock Bowling in May, hitting songs like, “Fuck It Up,” “Johnny Was a Soldier,” and “My Baby Got Run Over by a Steamroller.”
“Viva la revolution,” was received by the crowd like a call to arms in the streets as they wildly cheered along. They finished with “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” and “Ode to Joy.”
Descendents took the main stage and kicked right into “Everything Sux,” which transitioned smoothly into “Hope,” via guitarist Stephen Egerton, and then just as effortlessly into “I Don’t Want to Grow Up” thanks to guitarist Karl Alvarez.
I was surprised to see them bust out “Nothing with You” so early in their set. “Myage” was highlighted by Alvarez’s heavy bass and drummer Bill Stevenson’s excellent timing. “Clean Sheets” saw Eggerton’s guitar riff facing off against Alvarez’s funky bass as singer Milo Aukerman sang about infidelity.
Descendents often play at breakneck speed leading to them playing nearly 30 songs in just 60 minutes. This was the first time I’ve seen them play “No Fat Burger,” a song about Aukerman’s inability to enjoy unhealthy foods as he gets older.
The song was released in 2016 but has never been truer as Aukerman suffered a mild heart attack in 2023.
The highlight for me was when they played my favorite Descendents song, “Good Good Things.” They did “I’m the One” followed by the punk rock anthem, “Suburban Home,” and finished off a weekend of amazing music and friends coming together with “Bikeage” and “Smile.”
Stick a fork in this one, not only was it done, but it was done very well. It’s safe to say we can look forward to another edition of Punk in the Park coming soon!
FESTIVAL PHOTO GALLERY
Photos by Todd Markel Rock Images
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