Invasion On Planet V

For the release of Volcom’s new film, “Aliens Was Here,” the boys at the Stone rolled up the cargo bay and let the huddled masses into their Costa Mesa mothership. 

Packing their skatepark for the 16-minute Indonesian foreign invasion, the crowd took advantage of bottomless PBR and pizza, babes and bros cheering for standout sections from Noa Deane, Balaram Stack, Mitch Coleborn, as well as a few choice cuts of raw brilliance from Burch, Mauro Diaz, local darling Andrew Doheny, Gony Zubizaretta, and a sprawling roster of Volcom’s international talent. 

There were Aliens in Costa Mesa last night, certainly. Chatting with Mauro Diaz, we agreed: that many pretty young things congregating amongst a pack of so many short, male mundys, it honestly felt like they’d arrived from another planet. Glow stick chokers, antennae, and balloon animals bobbed above the chaos. 

Our ace in the hole photog (and total dish), Victoria Smith, slipped through the crowd snapping shots, as we were greeted by “Aliens” producer and Volcom vet Rich Olivares, who’d done the remarkably difficult work of wrangling the film’s posse to Bali for six-weeks, surely akin to herding feral cats or nailing Jell-O to a wall—but were interrupted by technical difficulties with Andrew Doheny and Metal Neck’s Matt Tromberg’s band, Power Lunch, the quartet cutting their raucous jam short, as the soundsystem chose that inopportune moment to fail them. 

Alas, the party soldiered on. Packs of PYTs stumbled out into Post-Industrial Costa Mesa, headed somewhere. Beers stashed in hoody pockets, the team hopped in a white van promising it would take us where we needed to go, the “Aliens” talent present landing at The Wayfarer, formerly the Detroit Bar, which has played host to some of Volcom’s most notorious big nights over the last two decades, ragers with ASG and The Line going nuts.

Walking in with Mauro, Tromberg, and the boys, the three-piece on stage lit into a Dead Kennedys riff as we ordered a round and Christian Fletcher strolled up, slapped his hand good and hard on our backs, and… 

…that’s when things get fuzzy.