THINGS YOU LEARN from a Vans Warped Tour: Asians can sunburn. Quite easily, it turns out, since there were few places to hide from our friendly fiery orb this past Saturday at Pier 30/32. Winding through the churning humanity assembled for this year's Warped Tour is like touring a demographic cross-section of the class of 2007. An old-timer in line behind us regales his brood with tales of seeing Nicks and Buckingham play together for the first time – they look duly unimpressed. My photographer notes that we are only a pier away from the makeshift holding cell the city set up for the mass arrests during recent war protests. At least the arrestees got to stay out of the sun.

In the midst of this cynicism, I'm amazed at the physical feats that Warped demands. With more than 41 bands on the main stages and a rotating cast of locals, the musicians and crew build a miniature village on a daily basis. Stages 20 feet high and longer than a truck trailer are set up at 5:30 every morning of the tour and torn down by 10 p.m. This mini-economy includes a barbershop, pretzel stands, and a beer garden. It resembles a punk rock trade show, or perhaps a flea market unloading Gen Y swag.

Critiquing Warped Tour for its commercialism would be missing the point. No one attending really seems to mind – in fact, they seem to like being catered to. Your parents might not understand you, but Sum 41 and its sponsors certainly do. There's no Warped ideology: staff at a Revolution Books table hand out pamphlets on kicking the ROTC off campuses, while those at a Marines recruitment booth give out T-shirts as prizes in a pull-up contest. No one seems to care, when Jello Biafra joins Ice-T for Body Count's one notable song – "Cop Killer" – that Ice has been playing a cop on TV for years. Picking on Vans for peddling punk is as pointless as accusing the bands of "selling out," an elitist sour-grapes response to popular success.

Even sideshow underdogs the Phenomenauts, a band ostensibly "keeping it real," have as keen a marketing sense as Vans. Keeping with the carnival nature of Warped, a battle for the minds and wallets of young America, the Phenomenauts provide one hell of a show, relegated to a special zone of the pier with other van-bound tailgaters playing through their own generator-powered PAs. Their merch table is awash with goods sporting the "P" logo, and about 20 groupies sit on the ground waiting for their set to start. It's a sight to behold, a true example of DIY moxie condoned and contained by the hegemonic Warped beast. Bassist Captain Chreehos tells me how cooking hot breakfast for the hundreds of band and crew members helped earn the Phenomenauts a spot on the tour, including laminated all-access passes equivalent to full citizenship in Warped land.

Even though the Phenomenauts have entered the belly of the beast, they and their brethren are still the underdogs of Warped. They do not travel in the big air-conditioned trailers: they have a van dubbed "the Phenoma-Bomber," festooned with plastic toy-model parts meant to replicate the surface of the Death Star. They play something like three sets a day – at their four o'clock show, the generator poops out on them, and they claim it'll be fixed by 6:20. We putz around a bit more, brains baking and eyes glazed, while the 'Nauts work out their tech issues. Just as the band on the nearby Ernie Ball stage finishes, someone hits a woozy space sound sample, and the Phenomenauts make their entrance. The vision of grown men in Rocketeer jackets, goofy helmets, and visors is less than impressive in the fading sunset, but the Phenomenauts turn their makeshift appearance into a spectacle. With a blast of fire-extinguisher foam, the music begins – retro rockabilly throwback that is a welcome reprieve from the bottled angst on the main stages. Antics include Silly String, a cymbal lit on fire, and Chreehos hoisting his upright bass in the air like a swing dance partner. It's fun, even if the gimmicks are hokey. Kids are singing along, and, better still, they are on the same cracked concrete ground as the band.