When We Were Young had one of those lineups that looked fake the first time you saw it. The Used. Atreyu. Story of the Year. Pierce The Veil. Bands that once occupied MySpace profiles, burned CDs and bedroom walls were suddenly sharing the same festival grounds in Las Vegas. For anyone who came of age during that era, the whole thing felt a little surreal.
Broken Promises came prepared. We brought exclusive merch, a skate ramp, temporary tattoos, games, giveaways and a massive inflatable Devil Bear that could be seen from across the festival grounds. We wanted the booth to feel like somewhere people could hang out instead of simply walking up, buying a shirt and disappearing back into the crowd.
Then Las Vegas decided to throw a wrench into the entire weekend.
The Festival That Almost Never Happened
Day one of When We Were Young was cancelled before the gates opened after high winds made conditions unsafe. Fans who had traveled from around the country suddenly found themselves wandering Las Vegas with nowhere to go and a festival ticket that, for the moment, was completely useless.
It was a rough start. Months of planning disappeared with one weather update and there was absolutely nothing anyone could do about it. For Broken Promises, it also meant watching a massive weekend we had spent months preparing for get cut in half before it even started.
Thankfully, the gates opened the following day.
Any disappointment from the cancellation seemed to disappear pretty quickly once people got inside. Fans had already lost an entire day and nobody seemed interested in wasting what was left of the weekend. The Broken Promises booth stayed busy, the merch started moving, and by the time everything was over we had sold 7,000 tees in 48 hours.
That number still sounds a little ridiculous.
Things Got Weird From There
As the weekend went on, the booth started becoming less of a traditional vendor setup and more of a place people kept circling back to. Members of The Used, Atreyu and Pierce The Veil stopped by. Blake Webber and Mod Sun made appearances. Fans were getting temporary tattoos, skating the ramp, entering giveaways and hanging around to see who might show up next.
At one point, the Blink-182 bunny was skating our ramp while dropping what appeared to be a hint about the following year’s lineup. There are very few places where a six-foot rabbit on a skateboard can somehow feel completely normal, but When We Were Young was apparently one of them.
The Devil Bear took on a life of its own too. The giant inflatable quickly became one of the easiest ways to find us, towering above the booth and making itself into an unofficial meeting point for anyone trying to navigate the festival. People stopped for photos, pointed it out from across the grounds and generally treated the thing like it belonged there.
For Broken Promises, it kind of did.
Music and skateboarding have always been part of the brand, and When We Were Young brought both together in a way that felt natural. We weren’t trying to force ourselves into the conversation. A lot of the people walking around the festival had grown up with the same bands, clothes, skate videos and questionable decisions that helped shape Broken Promises in the first place.
When Nostalgia Actually Works
There is always a chance that something built around nostalgia will feel forced. Enough time passes and eventually somebody figures out there is money to be made selling people a cleaned-up version of their teenage years.
When We Were Young could have easily gone that direction, but being there felt different.
People still cared. They knew the songs. They wanted the shirts. They were excited to see bands they had followed for years while also discovering what those bands looked and sounded like now. Nobody needed to pretend it was 2005 again for the weekend to mean something.
Maybe that is why Broken Promises worked so well there. The brand has always borrowed from those same worlds without pretending the clock stopped. Music changes. Skateboarding changes. Clothes change. Eventually we all stop logging into MySpace. The things that made those years important tend to stick around anyway.
By the end of the weekend, the wind had taken one day from us, 7,000 tees had found new homes, the Devil Bear had somehow become a festival landmark and the Broken Promises booth had turned into something much bigger than a place to buy merch.
Not bad for a weekend that almost got blown away before it started.
So now we want to know: who should Broken Promises work with next?
