Oakland’s Stay Gold Deli is known for its large portions, true-to-tradition slaws, and, for fans of hardcore music, spin kicks.
On Monday evening, it was host to a show headlined by Catalyst, a Providence, Rhode Island-based skramz band that dropped its debut album in 2021 and now enjoys Spotify plays in the millions.
Located at the crooked intersection of San Pablo Avenue and 27th Street, Stay Gold has a laid-back disposition, from its dirty white facade to the records that line its wall inside. The floor is sticky, checkered, and linoleum. Outside, there are several large picnic tables under tents and an outdoor pool table. Food and beer are both counter-service, but food service stops once the punk show begins, lest your po’boy be pummelled.
Since opening in 2016, Stay Gold has long earned a reputation as a place for kids to scream and thrash. Show deposits are south of $200 and the venue’s only true requirements are that ticketing be enforced, the space is respected, and the bands get paid. This modest barrier to entry has nurtured newcomers and underground acts, especially in punk, emo, and hardcore who have added Stay Gold as a stop on many a West Coast tour.
When I got there, the door was wide open and no one checked my ticket. Inside, a four-piece teenage band occupied the opposite wall, and a few dozen people crowded around them. Their name, I’d later learn, was Eclypso from Santa Rosa. It was their third time playing Stay Gold.
“It's a legendary DIY spot,” said Steven Baltadona, 21, who planned the sold-out event. Baltadona grew up in Antioch and had attended several shows at Stay Gold before promoting the Catalyst one. “They’re just like, trying to do good for the scene and not trying to be greedy. And they want us to do the same.”
For bands like headliner Catalyst, who are on their first US tour, combination spaces and DIY spots are more common than traditional venues. In fact, some of the most famous hardcore moments of the past 15 years have taken place outside sanctioned concert halls, such Live Without’s classic Denny’s show in Santa Ana, or, more recently, when Gel and Scowl took over the parking lot of a South Jersey Sonic Drive-In. A couple years ago, Bay Area-based bands False Flag and Surprise Privilege threw a show on a moving BART train. I used to routinely beg for rides to the now-closed Everybody Hits batting cages in Philadelphia, where bands like Soul Glo played before graduating to Coachella. And nearly a decade before their Gen Z dreamboat rebrand and subsequent festival appearances, Turnstile was playing arcades in rural New Jersey.
I wonder if a similar pipeline is in store for Catalyst. For most of my life, the general population hasn’t had a palate for the genre’s high-pitched screams, blast beats, and breakdowns. Standing among a diverse group of emoviolence and hardcore punk fans at Stay Gold, it seems like Catalyst is reaching listeners beyond the underground.
The inside quickly filled up and the crowd swelled forward the moment Catalyst got on the mic. Those in the front row were often inches from the musicians’ faces, simultaneously screaming along to the music and battling the crowd behind. Two concertgoers on either side of the band tried to hold the PA speakers steady, though like everyone else, they swayed within inches of collapse for most of the set. Crowdsurfers writhed just below the ceiling beams. Some stood on chairs. Off to the side, the bartenders leaned on the counter and nodded along. The mic was periodically handed to especially eager people in the front, many of them younger than me, who yelled “Fuck ICE” over and over again.
These kinds of shows are, by their very nature, chaotic, anti-grammable, and uncomfortable. They’re electric and, at times, familial in ways that are impossible to achieve at other venues, from dive-y staples such as the Rickshaw Stop to the hyper-engineered productions at Chase Center.
When some people hear “hardcore,” they probably think about getting knocked down. Not me: I think about getting lifted up. There are so many elements of the subculture — straight-edge, anti-fascist, anti-capitalist, queer-positive, and radically nonhierarchical — that have always made these shows some of the safest of my life.
“The thing with DIY venues, especially one like this, is that it's a much more intimate setting for bands and the crowd. Being able to connect with people not just through the music, but through contact and being on the same level as them because at the end of the day we're all just like, the same type of people,” said Eclypso vocalist Anthony (we’re leaving his last name out because he’s a minor).
The strangeness of a hardcore show at a deli was driven home to me when one of the Catalyst members got so drenched in his (and other people’s) sweat that he ripped his tank top in half and tossed it offstage onto an unfortunate onlooker, where, two hours earlier, Stay Gold diners were eating Reubens and pork belly.
