On Saturday, alternative rock icons and their fans gathered at Nationals Park in Washington, DC for the return of HFStival after a 13-year hiatus.
The festival was started in 1990 by local rock station WHFS and has been held at many DC area concert venues, including RFK Stadium in DC, M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore, and Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland. At the time, the festival was one of the largest music festivals on the East Coast, featuring big name artists such as the Ramones, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Jane’s Addiction.
This will be the first time Natsu Park has hosted the event, and organizers are expecting 29,000 concert-goers.
For many rock fans, the return of HFStival was a long-awaited event. Many millennials came out to the festivals, reminiscing about their high school days. Some people in the park were wearing old HFStival t-shirts, or even t-shirts from WHFS, which went off the air in 2008.
Mike Rosen of Falls Church, Virginia, told WTOP he came back because he missed the event and the music.
Many people at Saturday’s concert shared memories of previous festivals, including KC of Alexandria, who recalled breaking his spine during a concert in 1997 at age 14.
“I was crowd surfing and they dropped me,” KC said.
Another unusual story came from John Willono of Germantown, who told WTOP that in the past he’d been able to get backstage because a friend was performing there.
“I once walked into Billy Idol’s dressing room and he was in a situation that I shouldn’t have been in,” Willono said.
Tom Turner of Annapolis recalls “selling beer” to old people stuck in traffic on his way to RFK Stadium in 2004.
Rock bands Lit (“My Own Worst Enemy”), Filter (“Take A Picture”), and Tonic (“If You Could Only See”) opened the show under clear DC skies that festival-goer Lee Van Voorhis described as better conditions than he’d experienced at the 1992 festival.
“I remember going to the Prince George Equestrian Centre and it was muddy and dirty but there was great music playing on different stages,” Van Voorhis said.
The crowd was sparse when Lit, Filter and Tonic took to the stage in the early afternoon, but as the day went on the crowd began to grow for Jimmy Eat World, Liz Phair, Bush and Incubus.
The music rang out into the night, with Death Cab for Cutie and The Postal Service closing out the night.
Check out the photos from HFStival below.