long beach

Kevin Lyman has always lived life on the move. For years it was a symptom of working to keep up with Warped Tour, a punk rock circus on wheels. Since bringing the festival back last year to celebrate its 30-year anniversary, he’s switched his mode of transport from buses to planes. What started as a two-month tour across the U.S. and parts of Canada is now a strategically placed, five-date extravaganza starting this weekend in Long Beach. With stops in Montreal, Mexico City, Orlando and Washington, the tour has gotten bigger with the partnership of EDM promoter Insomniac but Lyman insists that the soul of it remains the same.

Thriving on a mix of punk, emo, ska, hardcore, metal and action sports, Warped has become an entry point to festival culture for a new generation of fans, requiring Lyman to always move forward in his musical tastes while still trying to stay true to the essence of what made Warped more of a community than just an annual event.

Recently he chatted with The Times to discuss the process of continuing the fest’s revival and why it’s still a vital part of the summer festival ecosystem.

What were your initial thoughts after Warped Tour’s big comeback in Long Beach last year?

I was really nervous. To be honest, I knew I had one shot at getting it right. I knew there were going to be bigger stages, we were going to have video and lights, but I also knew that I had to make it feel like Warped Tour between the performances. So that little bit of controlled chaos we had between the stages — the merch tents, all the sponsorship booths, the skate ramps, the surprises we threw out each day — I think it was mission accomplished. The feedback overall has been fantastic from the fans. For some people closer to my age demo, maybe it was a little too much — their feet hurt. But Warped came back strong, we went back on sale [for 2026] fairly quickly, and to still have 50% of the people buy the tickets right away without knowing a band on the bill yet was great.

Jimmy Eat World is doing like their 25th anniversary of “Bleed American” at the fest this year. What does it mean to you to have some of those early Warped Tour bands like that on the bill again?

It felt good to have a lot of those bands. For me, one of the more emotional ones last year was Rise Against. They had such a big moment. They were such a part of Warped Tour, and you get them to come back and then watch that crowd, every phone went up in the crowd, and probably 50% of the people there had never seen them before.

“I’ve been a disruptor, and the disruption I’ve caused has attracted enough people. Now we’re a niche of people,” Lyman says. “Warped is a great niche.”

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You’ve always had your own way of doing things that created the culture of Warped Tour. Why do you feel it is still so vital in the festival ecosystem today?

I had to carve a niche out for myself in the industry. I was never going to really quite conform. I kind of came from that rebellious spirit that Goldenvoice instilled in me back in the ‘80s when I worked for them, and Gary Tovar was rebellious. So I’ve always kind of had that mentality of, “Hey, let’s go against the norm. Let’s make it something our own.” And even when I’m teaching at USC now, I say you have to learn the foundations of every business. And those foundations, to me, were working 12 years in the clubs of L.A., 320 nights a year, and then you have to make something your own. I always say when you decide to go for it — go for it. And I did, and it seemed to connect with enough people and resonated with enough people that I’d been around that said, “Wow, this is different. He needs to work on it. But instead of knocking him down, let’s support him.”… I’ve been a disruptor, and the disruption I’ve caused has attracted enough people. Now we’re a niche of people. Warped is a great niche.

How did you keep Warped on people’s minds year-round while you were planning it out this year?

That was a challenge because before we used to have the two-month tour, so we were able to build community to keep the conversation going. Community is a big driver for me. Everything we’re doing now is investing in the community, and I think it’s working. [In January] we had a downtown Long Beach event with the band Holy Wars, we had an event in Orlando. We had one event in a fraternity house backyard in Virginia, we had events in Mexico City and Montreal … canned food drives, blood drives or, you know, register to vote. We’ll drop those kind of events so we’re constantly in everyone’s mindset. And it’s not about monetizing. I think people are always asking “How do you monetize the superfan?” I’m like, “How do you reward them?” Giving people a free Sunday afternoon event in Long Beach, that’s a thank you. Those are the people that are going to spread the word when you post a video, they’re going to share it with all their friends, and then they’re going to be telling kids at their schools. A third of the people going to Warped had never been to a festival or even a concert before, so we need to engage them in a different way.

What are your ways of scouting out bands you want to take a chance on when booking the festival?

Well, I have a great booker named Amanda Phelan. She books with me, so she’s kind of that on the ground talking to the agents and things. I don’t necessarily do that much anymore. I talk to them, but my part is more like, “Oh, I want to see what bands other bands are talking about, or young people are talking about.” And then I’m also talking to lots of the independent promoters out there that you know I used to work with.

Why do you think younger generation of fest goers will keep discovering Warped Tour?

We used to be that festival where you know it was over by sunset, your mom could pick you up at the curb or you could get home by dark, and then you went off to other festivals. We were your entry point to festivals. We may be that entry point again, but a lot of it now will come down to price point. We know the economics of Warped Tour are conducive for people that want to go on two levels: ones that want to come and explore a festival, and other ones, maybe some of your peers, who don’t get to go out every night and see bands anymore because they all have real jobs and things. But they can go for one for two days and catch up on all music, which makes you feel like you’re staying young.

We took Atlantic all the way to the Pacific, traveling from the San Gabriel Valley to Long Beach on foot. On the last morning of May, a group of us set out at 7:45 a.m. from a barren In-N-Out parking lot in Alhambra, where Atlantic Boulevard begins. We kept walking until we reached the water, 12 hours and more than 55,000 steps later.

In all, our group passed eight freeways, two highways, and one river, twice. We walked through a dozen cities: Alhambra, Monterey Park, Commerce, Vernon, Maywood, Bell, Cudahy, South Gate, Lynwood, Compton, Long Beach and, of course, Los Angeles.

We spent only about 1.5 miles, a half-hour, in the city of Los Angeles itself, all in East L.A. We spent more time in Lynwood than Los Angeles. We spent far more time — more than a third of our day — in Long Beach.

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To walk Atlantic was to connect the dots about how our region functions economically, from the port to the factories to the suburbs. It was also to realize just how expansive and multifaceted Long Beach is.

This is the sixth such walk of one lengthy street that, ending at the ocean, we’ve completed across Los Angeles. Our pursuit began in 2022 with Wilshire’s 16 miles, continued in 2023 with Sunset’s 25, maxed out in 2024 with Western’s 28-plus miles, and stepped back in 2025 with Pico’s 15.5 miles. Earlier this year, roughly 30 of us strolled all of Santa Monica’s 14.5 miles.

This time, we started with a group of 16, ranging in age from 20-something to sexagenarian, and finished with 12. Some walkers left and joined us along the way. Ten, including one Long Beach local, completed the street.

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1. Pedro Moura, center, gives a pep talk before leading a group on a 25-mile walk the length of Atlantic Boulevard. (Scott Strazzante/For The Times) 2. In so-L.A. fashion, a Tesla Cybertruck rolls past a pile of possessions flooding the sidewalk in front of an apartment building. 3. Josiah Fields, 15, earns money by cleaning car windshields at the intersection of Atlantic and Alondra Boulevards. 4. During the final mile of the their 25 mile walk, Chloe Stepney and Trevor O’Brien lead the way past Louis Burgers III on Atlantic Avenue. (Scott Strazzante/For The Times)

We’ve been playfully calling our annual jaunts the Big Walk. This one, we called the Bigger Walk. I suppose that makes Western the Biggest. We’ve come to believe the ideal distance for an all-day effort is about 20 miles. That seems long enough for it to feel like a real feat and short enough to include more interested folks and ample break time.

After a tranquil time on Santa Monica, I wrote that we expected Atlantic to be the opposite experience — “unwieldy, at times unwelcoming, and excessively industrial.” That was an overstatement at best and factually wrong at worst.

We did visit Vernon, the city that proudly promotes itself as “exclusively industrial.” But by one measure, Atlantic was literally the most welcoming street we’ve done yet. Many more people greeted us. The actual street was at least as pedestrian-friendly as Western or Sunset. At no point did we have to walk on the road or in a minuscule median.

We did, though, have to cross five crosswalks just to continue on Atlantic at one point, at an absurd intersection with Ferguson Drive, Goodrich Boulevard, Telegraph Road and Triggs Street. Railroad tracks and the famed old East L.A. Union Pacific Station stood to our left, and the 5 freeway to our right. Clearly, pedestrian convenience had not been front of mind during the area’s planning.

Oil might be the simplest way to illustrate how Atlantic differs from more famous L.A. streets. On Pico Boulevard, there are oil derricks hidden behind elaborate, towering facades. Along Atlantic, the derricks are just everywhere in plain sight for a while. We did walk atop both the Long Beach Oil Field, a mega giant field, and the Wilmington Oil Field, the third-largest oil field in the contiguous United States.

That’s Atlantic, lacking in pretense, not hiding anything, but exceeding our expectations. We saw more plants native to our region, including Cleveland sage and Sacred datura, than along Santa Monica. And we kept encountering vibrant pockets where we did not know they would be. Monterey Park was the first to impress us, with gorgeous Cascades Park tucked into a lush little valley.

A rose peeks through a fence at St. Rose of Lima Church on Atlantic Boulevard.

Lykayla Melendez poses in her quinceañera dress at Cascades Park along Atlantic Boulevard.

In East L.A., chilaquiles, tamales, tejuino and ribs were all available street-side, and one of our members noticed the newer location of the famed La Azteca Tortilleria in a strip mall near the Metro station. Azteca has been the No. 1 seed in Times columnist Gustavo Arellano’s tortilla tasting tournaments with KCRW; we picked up a couple dozen to go.

Farther south, Bell is best known locally as the home of brazenly corrupt city officials earlier this century. When we passed through, the shade provided by a pocket park in the city center became a crucial respite for our lunch break. Across the street, a community market was just starting up for the afternoon. We caught a couple songs from a talented mariachi band.

Once we crossed the 105 overpass, we quickly encountered four sizable parks, each no more than two miles from the last. We saw one pump track, two tennis courts and skate parks, several sports fields, and an impressive number of food trucks, including Instagram-famous Kitchen’s Corner BBQ. At least another dozen food vendors seemed to be setting up for evening service as we marched by in the late afternoon.

By the third park we passed, we were in Long Beach, specifically North Long Beach. The fourth, Scherer Park, is a sprawling, 26-acre gem. Soon enough we were in Bixby Knolls, where, for more than a decade now, Long Beach officials have been investing in improving bicycle and pedestrian access. It shows. We had a delightful happy hour on Ambitious Ales’ front patio overlooking Atlantic.

August Fagerstrom and Pedro Moura fist bump a well-wisher on Atlantic Avenue.

Official lists of the longest L.A.-area streets are almost impossible to find. Often, such lists are kept by cities. The longer the street, the less likely that all of it is within one city’s limits.

We can say this: There are not many stretches of a single street with the same name longer than Atlantic in the L.A. Basin. Western Avenue, definitely. Imperial Highway, depending on your perspective on what constitutes a street. Sunset is about the same length. And that’s about it.

Unless you want to be particularly persnickety and disqualify Atlantic on the grounds that it technically has two names. For its northern 10 miles, Atlantic is a boulevard. For its southern 15, it’s an avenue. Where Maywood becomes Bell, it switches. But it’s Atlantic all the same, and that was good enough for us.

Surely you’ve been wondering about the origin of the name. Atlantic has been named for the distant ocean since the 19th century, when a Brit tried to christen a city after himself and named its three major streets Pacific, American and Atlantic avenues, from west to east. American is now Long Beach Boulevard, so it no longer makes much sense.

At the end of their 25-mile walk, Chris Kirkham celebrates with fellow walkers at Atlantic Avenue and Ocean Boulevard.

Speaking of names: Our Alhambra is named after a Washington Irving book inspired by his visit to the 13th-century Islamic fortress of the same name in what is now Spain. You can walk to the actual Atlantic from that Alhambra in about 150 miles.

This was easier than that, at least. If you’re eager to explore the backbone of Los Angeles, curious for a challenge, you could do worse than attacking Atlantic. I promise you’ll see something new. We saw a street juggler. We saw a live chicken and a dead turkey. We saw a discarded box of Pacifico beer that had been cooking in the sun so long it turned from yellow to white.

Pedro Moura points out Chloe Stepney’s sock tan line as they celebrate the end of their 25-mile walk down Atlantic with a dip in the Pacific Ocean at Alamitos Beach.

After we rinsed our weary feet in the Pacific, some of us waddled back up to Downtown Long Beach and scarfed down Sonoratown burritos and chivichangas before heading home. It was a Sunday well spent.

A waterfront amphitheater roughly twice the size of the Greek Theatre and two-thirds the size of the Hollywood Bowl is set to open this week in Long Beach — and there’s a lot riding on its success.

City leaders hope F&M Bank Amphitheater of Long Beach, located next to the famed Queen Mary, will supplant declining revenues from oil extraction and lead to an uptick in tourism. Concert promoters, meanwhile, see it as filling an important gap in Southern California’s music venue market.

The temporary amphitheater, which has a maximum capacity of 11,000, is meant to be a precursor to a permanent “Long Beach Bowl,” which is being pitched as the largest waterfront venue on the West Coast. The site opens June 6 with a performance by native son Snoop Dogg, and is expected to last for up to 10 years.

The new amphitheater represents a years-long dream of Mayor Rex Richardson, who began championing an outdoor performance venue on the waterfront in 2023. Soon after the closure of Irvine’s FivePoint Amphitheatre in October of that year, he accelerated those plans by proposing this facility. The general feeling was that Irvine’s loss could be Long Beach’s gain.

“This will be a place where memories are made, where music brings people together and where our city shows up on the big stage,” he said during a January groundbreaking. “The amphitheater represents direction to invest in our city’s future, to embrace our creative economy [and] to shape how people experience Long Beach for generations to come.”

Good vibes by the water is the driving energy behind the temporary venue.

(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)

While Los Angeles and Orange County have no shortage of cavernous indoor arenas, the region has recently lacked a proper “summer shed” capable of hosting many national amphitheater tours, said Nick Storch, head of global artist development for booking agency Independent Artist Group. Those tours typically play venues larger than the Greek, Irvine’s Great Park Live or Costa Mesa’s fairgrounds-adjacent Pacific Amphitheatre, but smaller than the Hollywood Bowl.

Such tours, Storch said, are of “massive” importance to the concert industry. “With amphitheaters, it’s not just the music — it’s the experience of being outside and watching a concert, getting a bite to eat with your friends and all those kinds of things,” said Storch, whose agency’s clients Motley Crue and Five Finger Death Punch will perform at the F&M Bank Amphitheater in September.

“FivePoint was a great venue to help artists that are in that in-between stage, and not fully ready for arenas,” he said. “Long Beach having an amphitheater is going to grow the market again.”

Amphitheaters are also crucial to veteran artists with established fan bases. The long-running hard rock band Tesla — who also will perform at the F&M Bank Amphitheater in September — has not played a show in Los Angeles or Orange counties since the closure of FivePoint, which hosted the group twice.

Brian Wheat, the band’s bassist and manager, said he’s excited the new venue will help change that. “Sheds are great in the summertime, and outdoor summer gigs always create a great atmosphere for both bands and fans,” he said.

Much like the F&M Bank Amphitheater, FivePoint Amphitheatre was designed to serve as a temporary venue following the closure of Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre, which operated from 1981 to 2016. (From 2000 to 2014, it was known as Verizon Wireless Amphitheater.)

At 11,000 seats, the amphitheater is roughly two-thirds the size of the Hollywood Bowl. Its permanent replacement will be “architecturally iconic,” said Mayor Rex Richardson, while this temporary version is likened to a “summer shed.”

(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)

From its opening in October 2017 until its closure, FivePoint hosted nearly 500 concerts, including artists such as KISS, Dave Matthews Band, Charlie Puth, Morgan Wallen and Luke Combs.

Venue operator Live Nation — which manages more than 300 facilities across the country — initially hoped to build a permanent amphitheater nearby, but scrapped those plans in 2023 after the Irvine City Council ended negotiations. Soon after, Live Nation announced the venue would shutter.

After learning of Live Nation’s fallout with Irvine, Richardson and members of his economic development team attended the final FivePoint concert, a performance by the Zac Brown Band, to “explore the feasibility if we were to do the same thing.”

Three months later, Richardson announced plans to build a temporary amphitheater in Long Beach to bridge the gap until a permanent facility — which he envisions as an “architecturally iconic and significant” waterfront venue akin to San Diego’s Rady Shell at Jacobs Park — can be permitted, financed and constructed.

The site’s location is central to its appeal, said Dan Hoffend, executive vice president of North American venues for Legends Global, the operator for F&M Bank Amphitheater. “If you sit in the very top row — what you would consider the worst seat in the house — it’s a spectacular view,” he said. “The Queen Mary is sitting there in all its glory. You’re looking across the harbor. What would be perceived as the worst seat is actually the best seat because you see it all.”

Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson, left, and amphitheater general manager Tra Jones sit in the stands. Even from the nosebleeds, you still have a view of the waterfront at the F&M Bank Amphitheater.

(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)

Tra Jones, general manager of the new amphitheater and a Long Beach native, said he’s striving to make it feel less stopgap and utilitarian than FivePoint.

“It doesn’t have a temporary feel at all,” he said. “We looked at all our surroundings and said, ‘What does this look like from a stylistic point of view?’ We leaned into the port/SteelCraft vibe — a very cool industrial look. When you walk in, you’re experiencing a vibe. That’s what we want to resonate with concertgoers coming here.”

The word “vibe” also pops up frequently in conversation with Richardson. Under his watch, Long Beach recently started branding itself as “Vibe City,” which he said is an attempt to encapsulate the charm of L.A. County’s second-largest city, and the state’s seventh-largest.

“Long Beach is special, but it’s hard to explain why if you haven’t been here,” he said. “Because you have to experience it for yourself, the best way to describe it is that it’s a vibe.”

Still, Richardson is aware that vibes can only go so far. During an April meeting with residents of downtown Long Beach, attendees were more interested in discussing homelessness and a recent uptick in traffic fatalities than how a new concert venue might add to the city’s cultural cachet. Some downtown residents have circulated a petition regarding noise-related concerns.

“The job of the mayor is to meet the needs of your residents today — keeping a roof over your head, making sure it’s safe to walk down the street, making sure you have access to amenities and services in your community — but also to think about the future,” he said.

That means finding a way to offset revenues from oil extraction, which currently finance many municipal services, and are projected to drop from more than $50 million annually to around $21 million by 2035. According to Richardson, the new amphitheater — managed by Legends Global, but owned by the city — will help cover that shortfall. The venue is projected to be profitable within five years and generate nearly $29 million in revenue by 2036.

Oil revenues, which pay for city services, are projected to drop by more than half. The amphitheater is being pitched as a budget gap solution.

(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)

“We were fortunate that revenue from oil provided a lot of our services and built our beautiful waterfront, but as California moves away from oil production, we have to plan a more sustainable future by investing in what we know will be here in the long haul,” Richardson said. “In order to do that, we have to invest in arts and culture and tourism.”

Richardson is betting on music at a time when other cities — including Los Angeles — are doubling down on sports, warehousing or data centers. The amphitheater is also meant to remind the world of the city’s impact on pop culture.

From War to Warren G and Sublime to Snoop, Long Beach has a rich musical history. The city hosted the first concerts by the Beach Boys and No Doubt, while Rock & Roll Hall of Famers Elvis Presley, the Eagles and Iron Maiden all graced the stage of the Long Beach Arena.

While that venue currently holds more conventions than concerts, Long Beach has hosted notable outdoor music festivals in recent years, including Warped Tour, Day Trip and Dreamstate. Richardson believes the success of those events helped prove the city’s viability as a concert destination.

“This is the first step toward a legacy of leaving our city in a more economically resilient position,” Richardson said. “At every big turn in our city’s economy, we’ve leaned on arts as a way forward, and this is no different.”

Even the bleacher seats represent Long Beach pride at F&M Amphitheater.

(Eric Thayer/Los Angeles Times)