40th Street Block Party

40th Street in Oakland is one of my favorite spots in the Bay. Between 1-2-3-4 Go! Records, Billie Joe Armstrong’s guitar shop Broken Guitars, and an all mac’n’cheese restaurant The Homeroom, it’s the kind of street I can spend hours on. So when I heard there was a block party happening there with One Less Zero as the headliner, obviously I couldn’t miss it.

One Less Zero is led by frontwoman Sara Rose Wright, wife of Green Day’s Tre Cool. It was not long before I saw Tre walk in and out of 1-2-3-4 Go! with her, and I was immensely proud of myself for not following him and/or yelling for him to come take a picture with me.

It’s a chill event and no one else was hassling him. Kudos for being normal, Linds.

I ran into my friend Marnie. She’s a huge Green Day fan too, so I shouldn’t have been surprised to find her there. We spent a decent amount of time scarfing down mac’n’cheese while we waited for One Less Zero to come on.

I thought Jakob Danger was supposed to play the event too, but I either was mistaken or missed him.

I wasn’t familiar with One Less Zero‘s music, but I was really impressed by them. They’re super fun, and Sara is a beast onstage. Mad respect for her.

Tre was in the crowd and I was standing as close I was willing to get.

There was one kid going hard the entire set, but it’s difficult to mosh with only two people, so I didn’t join him just yet.

When they finished playing, the crowd starts chanting for an encore. Sara looked a little confused, like she wasn’t sure what to do, and then she told us they’d never been in this situation before. No one’s ever cheered for an encore before. So she told us if they played one more song, we all had to go hard for it.

So of course, her husband right there, fucking Tre Cool starts a mosh pit. He walks around just kinda shoving people a little bit. There’s a ton of space in the pit, but once everyone’s going crazy, I had no problem joining in. And I was moshing with Tre Cool. Life = made.

I left the event pretty happy. I didn’t need to chase Tre down for a picture. I think moshing with a longtime idol kinda tops that.

Regardless of his presence, I really enjoyed One Less Zero‘s performance and I would totally see them again.