I was at the All-American Rejects' house show in Minneapolis– only it wasn't a house– it was a punk rock bowling alley!

I went to the secret show for All-American Rejects in Minneapolis and figured I should write about it on the blog, right? For context, I was very emo/scene/hipster in my teens/early twenties. I even wrote about it on my blog → Finding Emo (read here). And as a bonafide alumni of emo stuff, I just knew I had to be there. I had little faith I’d get in, but I actually made it, so here’s the tale…

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The All-American Rejects started playing their 2nd minneapolis show. They asked the bowling alley to dim the lights for their first song…

I was scrolling tiktok before work on a Friday morning. I was presented with a slew of videos from a Chicago house show where All-American Rejects were performing either one or two nights before. I was like, “dang that’s neat,” and moved on. But later that day on my lunch at 2pm, I saw another TikTok, brand new, with only 200 likes, of the lead singer, Tyson Ritter, hinting at a Minneapolis pop-up THAT NIGHT. I have never signed up for a text update so fast in my life. I also signed Eric up too, for double the chances, hehe.

Source: The All-American Rejects Tiktok account

FYI… The theme of this night was “luck,” because so many times I nearly gave up, but I got lucky, time and time again. Finding out about the show before it started, is a lucky win, because this is one of those things where you find out the day after, and you were at work or something. Somehow I found out BEFORE the masses lined up, which I take as pure luck.

Well, I signed up for the text updates 20 minutes too late. The address was already released for a house in South Minneapolis. I saw people comments online about fans already lining up at 3pm? Horrible news for a girl like me, at work, making a stupid dumb living until 6pm. Thankfully due to rainy weather and high demand, they moved the location last minute to the local punk rock bowling alley, Memory Lanes. (Lucky moment 2 for us) That sort of evened the playing field, because the location meant…. new line?

Doors were set for 7:30 and the show set for 9pm. Working until 6pm, I knew I’d be rushing. I had to drive home through rush hour, change my clothes, then drive 15 minutes over to Minnehaha, and find parking near Memory Lanes. Well, we made it into line. My brother, Eric, and I got there around 7pm. We were standing at the very end of the alley behind the bowling alley. We were in a good spot, considering that after us, the line continued and wrapped completely around the street corner, circling the block!

The worst part was the waiting. We were there way longer than we planned… We were underdressed, only wearing light jackets or no jackets at all, and it rained an obnoxious mist the entire time. I know it’s not nice to say, but the weather actually helped weed out the weak. The line was slowly disintegrating along with the average movement forward.

A real lopsided .7 close up of me in the freezing rain

Finally, someone came by with an update from security: 
- Memory Lanes was at capacity AT 7pm, so they started the show early!  
- BUT, they added a 21+ show at 11pm (LUCKY MOMENT 3)
- The first 500 left still in line were to get a wristband to come back for the later show, doors reopening at 9:45.

We chanced it and froze in the line. We figured we MUST be within the 500 person threshold, especially since we noticed so many people bowing out. We received our wristbands at 8:50pm, and a girl from further back in line ran up to ask the staff how many wristbands they had, and they said, “We only have 30 left!” which meant if we hadn’t seen like 50 people bow out over the course of 2 hours, we wouldn’t have even made the cut! (LUCKY MOMENT 4). 

We ran back to my brother’s car and cranked the heat up, charging our phones while we dried off. At 9:20, we got back in line for wristband holders, and FINALLY, we were in!

The stage was set up on the left side, directly on the bowling lanes. Everyone was just happy to be in the room. Two hours of suffering were worth it once we were drying off indoors. Roaring mumbles echoed from the crowd, parallel with the crackling boom of the bowling strikes. Yes, the fans bowled as we waited. It was so quintessentially early aughts music video themed. Guitar Hero video game devs would be drooling at the sight. 

The camaraderie was off the charts– Probably due to our communal suffering. There’s nothing quite like standing in sideways misting rain and gusting wind for 1.5 hours… It really brings a group of strangers to near-best friendom. Everyone was giddy once they got through the small glass double doors. There wasn’t a bad vibe in the whole joint. A girl I talked to in line crossed my path and said, “Oh my god, you made it! We’re HERE.” I was like “Hell yeah, girl. We made it!” 

As for the show, The All-American Rejects played all their biggest hits… Swing Swing, Move Along, Dirty Little Secret, It Ends Tonight, and Gives you Hell. There were one or two new ones in there, too. The set was short and sweet landing at about 50 minutes to an hour. I was overjoyed to be in the crowd– a mix of millennials like myself and younger fans too– just going absolutely wild with pop punk nostalgia with The All American Rejects atop some punk rock bowling lanes.

As someone who used to go to shows in rooms as big as my entire apartment, it felt like home. You just don’t see bands do small shows at houses or bowling alleys anymore. You hear sometimes of the surprise Green Day sets and stuff like that, but this show was truly something special. Now that the cat’s out the bag, I’m not sure any of the other shows will stay small. Our Minneapolis show was the one that sent it over the edge, for sure.

The Rejects gained a ton of notoriety for doing the small circuit of local house shows promoting their new album, Sandbox (2025), and they took a pause for a few weeks, but are now back on the road again. The Rejects are also set to tour with the Jonas Brothers Fall 2025, for the 20th Anniversary of the Jo Bros.
Tickets for that are here, for those who missed their shot for their small show!

ALSO, for more about Memory Lanes’ punk rock bowling schedule, here’s their calendar!

If The Rejects head to your city, I highly suggest checking them out. It was really one of those “inner child healed” moments, and everyone deserves to have that feeling of community in the live music scene. This is one of those shows that Minneapolis will be talking about in a decade, and I’m so glad I’ll be one of those people who can say, “I was there that night. It was great!”

Thanks again for reading the blog, my friends!
This was one of those things I wrote a month ago and forgot to post. I do that a lot. I probably have at least six other travel stories, essays, or rough draft lists that I thought about posting, but felt it was “too late.” BUT, fear not. I’m a yapper, and I will always have stories to tell.

For anyone who enjoys what I do on the blog, feel free to head over to my SUBSTACK? yes, that’s correct. I signed up for Substack years ago as a subscriber, and lately I decided to dabble with writing on that platform for more pop-culture or fashion-forward topics. We will see. I haven’t published anything there quite yet. ;)

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