Want to ditch Mom and Dad? Warped Tour offers a different kind of day care

By ANDY OLSEN
LOS ANGELES TIMES
VENTURA, Calif. -- Rachel Bates Freed would never dream of letting her uncool mom tag along to a punk rock festival. But the 14-year-old can't drive, and the concert was too far for walking.
Baby-sitting was the answer.
Rachel's mom, Betsy, 45, and dozens of other parents found refuge from the noise of the Warped Tour 2003's visit to Ventura in the air-conditioned calm of a "reverse day-care" tent, with soundproof headphones and a big-screen television. Outside, Rachel and her friends bounced from stage to stage.
This year, dozens of teen-agers left their parents in day care as they cruised the annual music festival at the Ventura County Fairgrounds. Many of the elders didn't mind being left out of the crowd of nearly 10,000 who packed the park to see such bands as Rancid and Bowling for Soup.
Still, it was an odd turn of events for baby boomers from the Woodstock generation to find themselves being baby-sat at a rock festival. John Ziese, 47, of Camarillo said he was 7 when his brother sneaked him out of the house to see a Jimi Hendrix concert in the 1960s.
But on Wednesday, he was in the baby seat.
Why, oh why?
"I lost a bet in the community," Ziese said as he weaved through knots of teen-agers clad in black and moved toward the day-care tent. "We drew names from a hat to see who would bring everyone's kids. I lost."
The Warped Tour, promoted as the granddaddy of punk rock festivals, mixes music performances with skateboarding contests and social activism. The target age group is 14- to 20-year-olds, according to Arielle Bielak, a punk-rocker-turned-activist who directs a new social-awareness division of the festival.
With so many young kids in the mosh pits, organizers felt a need to add a certain gravity to this year's tour.
Bielak's office promotes causes that range from suicide awareness to care for those who are mentally ill.
It was this aspect of the festival that impressed several adults who lounged in the day-care facility, which had a sign duct-taped to one of the tent's walls warning "Parents Only."
Compared with past years, Wednesday's festival was downright calm. Gone were the tortilla fights and wrestling matches that colored previous festivals.
But the music was as loud as ever.
Suzanne Squires, a librarian from Ventura, said she asked her co-workers if any would be willing to take a day off to brave the earsplitting chaos with her and her 14-year-old daughter.
They wished her good luck.
Against all logic
"It's really not half as bad as I thought it would be," Squires said as she flipped through a copy of "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" while a hip-hop beat thumped through the tent's walls.
"It's just normal teen-agers. I expected something a lot darker," she said.
The "reverse day-care" tent is in its second year at the festival.
Growing interest in the idea has led organizers to offer more options to moms and dads wary of venturing out into the Warped world.
The soundproof headphones and big-screen television featuring movies are new, as is a barrel of cans of ice water that sits in the middle of the small tent that houses a dozen camping chairs.
At larger shows such as those in Long Beach and San Francisco, masseuses stand by to make relaxing as easy as it can be in a plastic structure wedged beside the PlayStation 2 tent and a hip-hop stage.
The noise still overwhelmed Betsy Bates Freed, Rachel's mom, who bought earplugs to dampen the hip-hop and save her hearing in the rare moments she left the orange tent.
Finding shelter
Retired '70s music star Mac Davis, who dozed with his legs outstretched in a corner of the day-care tent, said the Warped Tour was nothing like the music festivals he had played in.
The main difference was the decibel level of the music his 14-year-old son listened to, he said. But the man who wrote "I Believe in Music" said it really didn't matter.
"I do what I do, and they do what they do," he said. "Music is music. It's good for the soul."