BOB Fest 2025: Scheisse Minnelli, Aninoko, Ansible, George Crustanza, Hacksaw, Jewdriver, Of the Adversary, Erik Core
2601 Adeline St, Oakland
April 19, 2025
The inside of the First Church of the Buzzard felt like an old theater’s storage room, the walls of this West Oakland warehouse covered in random paper mâché artwork.
Though this was an all ages show, as real punk rock shows tend to be, the average age of attendees was definitely over 50. Anyone under 30 was tagging along with an older relative. Imagine a block party full of grown-ass people who drank from garden hoses and haven’t given an f about anyone else’s opinion since last century.
This was not a crusty punk scene. Most of the attendees looked socially functional but still irrefutably punk in their own unique ways.
Collectively organized, BOB Fest is a biennial, international, DIY, not-for-profit punk gathering held in Bath, Bremen, and Oakland. In addition to being a gathering of long-time bay area punks, BOB Fest was also an opportunity for bay area punks to meet European punks.
Day 4 of of this year’s festival included bands from Germany, the UK, and the Bay Area: Scheisse Minnelli, Aninoko, Ansible, George Crustanza, Hacksaw, Jewdriver, Of the Adversary, and Erik Core.
The entire block was closed to vehicular traffic to accommodate the large overflow crowd, with canopies lining the outside of the concrete building to shade the vendors selling band merch, political literature, and lumpia.
Through a small door carved out of a larger metal roll-up door, attendees came and went from the performance venue: a stuffy warehouse full of people peacefully coexisting. The crowd moved their bodies in appreciation of the music, but I would be lightweight lying if I said there was an actual mosh pit. As previously stated, this was an older crowd, regardless of the punk credentials.
The drinks were limited but inexpensive, and there was barely ever a line to get a drink. Perhaps coincidentally, there was also relatively little drunken behavior beyond good moods and dancing.
“It was a reunion for me, especially, of punks and skins from the 90s to early 2000s when I was making my way from Vallejo to Oakland and eventually SF,” said Aninoko frontman Rupert Estanislao after the show. “It was playing to a room full of people whose bands I have seen and loved and worn shirts of.”
Aninoko is a bay area hardcore band of Filipino immigrants, and as the second to last band to perform, they played furious mid-tempo to fast songs in the Filipino languages of Tagalog and Bisaya. Their lyrics are politically and socially conscious, with a focus on issues affecting the Filipino diaspora: tenant rights, healthcare justice, immigrant rights. Estanislao is also a spoken word artist who appeared on Def Poetry Jam. He shares the lineup with guitarist Loi Fajardo, bassist Jesse Gonzales, and drummer Amon Vonn.
In the 2000s, Estanislao and Fajardo were in the trailblazing band Eskapo. Gonzales, who co-founded the PinoisePop music festival with his brother Ogie, later joined Estanislao and Fajardo in the band Bankrupt District, Aninoko’s predecessor.
BOB Fest was Aninko’s first US show since returning from a tour of their homeland, the Philippines. In true homecoming fashion, between songs Estanislao pointed out people from the Bay Area punk scene that he has either known for years, or punk musicians that he has wanted to meet for years.
He acknowledged musicians whose shows he had attended as a teenager, musicians he had played shows with as an adult, and musicians whom he knew from just living in Oakland in the 2000s. He also reminisced about long-gone music stores and zines he used to read. The audience cheered heartily with each memory.
The simple fact is, punk is old.
The good news though, is that being old is punk af.
