PittsburghMusic

The Legend of Club Laga, Oakland's All-Ages Music Venue

From 1996 to 2004, Club Laga on Forbes Avenue was where touring bands played Pittsburgh on the way up. Here's the real story of Oakland's all-ages venue.

By Local2 min read

The Legend of Club Laga, Oakland's All-Ages Music Venue

If you spent any time in Oakland between 1996 and 2004 with a band T-shirt and a hand stamp, you remember Club Laga.

It sat upstairs at 3609 Forbes Avenue, between Atwood Street and Meyran Avenue, in a building that had already lived past lives as a movie theater and a bowling alley. For eight years it was where touring bands played Pittsburgh on their way up, and where a lot of local kids saw their first real show.

Three Clubs, a Lot of Stairs

Laga was part of a stack of clubs run by Ron Levick. He started in the early '90s with The Attic, a sports bar that packed in crowds for Penguins and Steelers games back when plenty of people didn't have satellite TV at home. In 1996 he took over another floor and opened Club Laga as an all-ages music venue. The Upstage, a dance club, operated on a lower floor, and shops held the street level.

Getting to any of them meant climbing stairs. A lot of stairs. More than a few Oakland bar crawls ended somewhere in that stairwell.

What It Was Like

Laga had an industrial look, with exposed scaffolding, bright lights, and a big dance floor. On a busy night, around 600 people crammed in. Because shows were all-ages, the bar area was fenced off, and you needed the right hand stamp to get a drink. Younger fans had an arcade with video games to kill time between sets. Cover charges were cheap, usually somewhere between $5 and $10.

The all-ages setup was the club's strength and its challenge. Levick later said some college students stayed away because they didn't want to party next to high schoolers.

Who Played There

Laga really took off in 1997, when promoter Jon Rinaldo of Joker Productions moved his shows there after leaving the Graffiti. Laga became his home base, and he booked hundreds of acts a year. By one local music historian's count, more than 1,000 bands came through during its run.

The lineup was all over the map, which was the best part. On the punk and emo side: Dropkick Murphys, Less Than Jake, Flogging Molly, Jimmy Eat World, Dashboard Confessional, Taking Back Sunday, Coheed and Cambria, Fall Out Boy, and My Chemical Romance. Hip-hop and funk: The Roots, Public Enemy, Wu-Tang Clan, Ghostface Killah, George Clinton, and Erykah Badu. And everything else: Danzig, Insane Clown Posse, Death Cab for Cutie, They Might Be Giants, The Dresden Dolls, John Mayer, Maroon 5, Smash Mouth, and yes, Vanilla Ice.

Local and regional bands got plenty of stage time too, including Anti-Flag, Don Caballero, The Juliana Theory, The Clarks, the Buzz Poets, Punchline, and The Berlin Project, a Laga regular.

The End

The early 2000s were rough on Pittsburgh clubs. Insurance costs climbed after 9/11 and again after the 2003 Rhode Island nightclub fire that killed 100 people. Attendance dropped. When Metropol in the Strip closed in 2003, Laga picked up some of its shows, but the math wasn't working anymore.

Club Laga closed in early April 2004. Levick gutted the space and converted the building into apartments and a grocery store.

Were You There?

Tell us the Laga show you still talk about. And if you want to wear the memory, we make a Club Laga shirt and a Kicked at Laga shirt. Hand stamp not included.

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