PittsburghMusic

Graffiti on Baum Boulevard: The Club That Caught Bands on the Way Up

For nearly two decades, Graffiti on Baum Boulevard booked national acts on the way up and gave local bands a stage. Here's its story.

By Local1 min read

A band on stage under yellow lights

Photo: Nainoa Shizuru on Unsplash

Before Club Laga, there was Graffiti. From the early 1980s until 2000, the club at 4615 Baum Boulevard, near Craig Street, was one of the places Pittsburgh went to see bands right before they got big.

A warehouse with a lounge inside

Tony DiNardo opened Graffiti in an old warehouse in North Oakland in the early '80s. The outside was rough brick. Inside was a roomy showcase club with a cafe and pub, and it earned a reputation as one of the nicer rooms in the city to see a show.

Along with the Decade and the Electric Banana, it was part of a cluster of Oakland clubs that held up the local music scene for years. Locals called the trio Oakland's Bermuda Triangle.

Who played there

Graffiti's booking was famously all over the map. National touring acts shared the calendar with bands nobody outside Pittsburgh had heard of yet. R.E.M. played there. The Red Hot Chili Peppers played there in the '80s. And according to The Pitt News, Nirvana played Graffiti in September 1991, less than a week after Nevermind came out.

Local favorites like the Affordable Floors and the Cynics came up on its stage too. Surviving show posters in the Pittsburgh Queer History Project's archive give you the flavor: five bands for three bucks on the Fourth of July, 1985, with a phone number to call for tickets.

The Rock Challenge

Graffiti also ran the Rock Challenge, a battle of the bands for local acts. The prize included studio time, and a musician who played the club told The Pitt News that Rusted Root won it one year and used the prize to record its first album. The Challenge outlived the club and ran until 2006.

The end

Promoter Jon Rinaldo, who had booked shows at Graffiti, moved much of his booking to Club Laga in 1997. Graffiti itself closed in 2000 after the building changed hands and was turned over to cars. Accounts differ on the details: some point to a Porsche dealership, others to a private car collection.

Saw a show there? Tell us which one. We'd like to hear it.

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