There comes a point in a man’s life—once twenty-seven, now thirty-three—when you wake up one day and realize it’s not the 2010s anymore.

Suddenly people have this quiet resistance to “minimalism,” almost mocking it. Apple now has social media. Bands—even my favorite bands—seem to have traded the rustic rawness of their younger live performances for something more restrained, more on-the-grid, apparently what the current market appreciates. That, or maybe their bones and cardio just can’t take it anymore.

And why not? Kids today come to concerts for the music they hear on streaming services. They expect to hear that music—more or less as it is—not the screeching and freshly detuned strings courtesy of guitar flips and a significant disregard for the sacred practice of playing parts as recorded. And how did we ever think the vocalist going out of pitch, tossing the high notes and screams to the audience halfway through a ten-song set, was a good thing?

Rawness? Authenticity? Feelings?

More like mediocrity.

“This sucks.”

Then one day—roughly a decade after graduating college—you finally have enough money to buy a ticket to the very last run of that huge metal concert your high school classmates used to rave about back when all you had was lunch money, and you were “too young” to go to dangerous events like that.

For some reason, hanging a bunch of things on your bag—let alone using those single-compartment, zipperless, structureless tote bags—has become the preferred urban warrior setup over, say, a perfectly fine, secure Jansport backpack with nothing dangling to trip over in a crammed bus or MRT during rush hour.

And I’m still trying to figure out what comedic device people are looking for these days. Routines get cancelled for shock value and provocativeness on one end, while absurdism or sarcasm lands with nothing on the other. I wonder what makes people laugh out loud in 2026 beyond Trump bloopers and TikTok clips of womxn dismantling patriarchal heteronormative systems by not shaving their armpits.

It’s their body. Their choice.

I enter my card details and click checkout.

I’m holding this sculptural thing my girlfriend bought me called a Sunnies Flask—the one with the smooth pebble cap. I chose the colors. It has my name laser-etched on it. I pack my bag, plan my commute route, and—as usual—don’t dress up for whatever “vibe” the cultural engagement ahead might demand. Part laziness, part refusal to overthink.

So I show up exactly as I am.

At the venue, there’s the familiar electricity—that nervous jolt of adrenaline. The same feeling you get at the gates of that rundown sports complex in Quezon City that used to fill up every summer with people in black shirts, studded belts, and bracelets.

My mood is slightly dulled by a recurring dry cough, but it can’t drown out the call of the thumping subwoofer, the strobes, the personal humidity of a packed crowd.

I know that feeling.

That’s sacred ground calling.

Then I step onto the sacred ground—and this time the payoff is getting hit in the face with pink.

Pastel colors everywhere. Cream, blue, yellowish tones. It feels a bit like getting sucked into an energetic Barbie convention, except more grounded in reality—and I voluntarily walked into it with my own money.

Still, it’s familiar.

There are the rituals: small talk, greetings from scene kids, people who already know each other. Friends. “Gangs”—if people still call them that. Some in heels, some in oversized tops, slacks, and top-siders.

My body can’t handle alcohol the way it used to anyway, and there’s no Red Horse booth here giving you a free beer per ticket in a red cup.

Instead, you get ice cream. Layered pink, cream, and yellow ice cream.

You line up for something called a sparkling yuzu espresso—refreshing and weird, but good enough that I’d have it again. In fact, I do, because I just bought a pair of pastel blue Islander slippers.

Yes, Islander.

The same slipper brand from those late-90s ads of kids biking around and slinging them across pavement while playing street games. Somehow Islander has made it into IRL Barbie Land.

And I still don’t know why I thought buying such light-colored flip-flops was a good idea when my rugged gunk has never had a good relationship with things like this. These are Islander slippers. They’re not supposed to be hot summer fashion items.

But here we are: three Instagram-ready, beach-perfect colorways—the way Sunnies always does it—and a line for them.

The dissonance is strange. This whole fever-dream era feels like the kind of thing that should repel people like me.

But it doesn’t.

My picnic-checkered wristband comes with two free fair games, and suddenly I’m diving headfirst into this estrogen funhouse. I haven’t held darts or tossed hoops in almost a decade, and I definitely haven’t fallen in line for it.

Still, I figure it would be nice to win one of those floppy-eared stuffed animals for my girlfriend.

Which—thankfully—I do.

Honestly, half my motivation for being there was for her anyway. Beyond the novelty and curiosity of cultural immersion, there wasn’t going to be much use for the picnic starter pack that came with the wristband once the event was over, nice as it was.

Eventually I head to the area I actually signed up for. True to form, I lay my mat as close to the DJ as possible among the sea of picnic mats and chairs. I eat my Sunnies-branded hotdog—supposedly laced with jalapeños—that does almost nothing I expected it to do.

I pop open the second and last Spanish latte bottle that came free.

And that’s about it.

I go home with my neck intact, my shirt still dry, and my new pair of slippers—which, as of writing, are the brightest and cleanest objects in my room.

It feels oddly unresolved that I’m confident I can go to work the next day after attending an event like this. But at least now I know that when I buy my next batch of indoor shorts, I’ll probably be looking for those cute pastel terry-towel dolphin shorts to match my new Sunnies Islanders.

Am I really about to assemble my first-ever summer outfit for an upcoming trip because of this whole experience?

I’m thirty-three.

And honestly, nobody really cares.