Mod80s Disco Presents The Trims
Elbo Room Oakland
Oakland
Feb. 2, 2024
I have fond memories of late nights-into-early mornings spent dancing the night away at the Elbo Room in San Francisco, just a three-minute walk from my old apartment. As long as you didn’t mind the funky smell wafting from the downstairs bathroom, you could easily have a proper Friday night feelin’ alright.
The Elbo Room in Oakland opened in 2018, just in time to make up for the San Francisco outpost closing that same year. The upstairs room of the East Bay location isn’t as cavernous as its SF counterpart, but the vibe still stands. If you’re at all confused which Elbo Room you’re at, the neon wall-sized graffiti in the upstairs room will help you out: It’s scrawled with the word “Oakland.”
The other night at the club, I ran into dancefloor friends I usually see in San Francisco. “Isn’t it great that we have this place here in the East Bay?” my friend asked. Even though San Francisco is just a BART ride or bridge drive away, the gulf between the City and the Town can seem insurmountable, even on a weekend. So I understand the sentiment. Taking BART across the bay takes less time than taking the subway from Manhattan to Brooklyn, but sometimes you just want to keep it hyper-local. The eastside of the Bay deserves a proper night out just like its better-known cousin.
But I love collecting moments of musical synchronicity around the world, feeling at home no matter where I am, whether it’s joining with throngs of Danes singing along to the Smiths at a nightclub in Copenhagen, doing karaoke with friends in a private room overlooking a subway platform at 3 a.m. in Tokyo, or sipping cocktails named after britpop songs in a Parisian bar at an indie night near the Left Bank. If you explore hard enough, you really can feel at home in the world.
I’m used to vintage vibes, and the night’s entertainment at the Trims show didn’t disappoint. Pockets of mod, goth, and britpop fans are sprinkled throughout the Bay Area, so recapturing the music scene of the ’80s through the aughts isn’t very hard. The opening DJ knew how to preach to the converted, starting things off on a mellow note — Smiths for the populists, Pale Saints and Cocteau Twins for dreamy shoegaze moments, gothic energy from Twin Tribes, a little something from The Faint and the Arctic Monkeys to hint at the dancefloor mood to come.
By the time the Trims came on, the mood was in motion. The band hails from San Jose, but they could just as easily have come from NYC. Think Interpol circa Turn on the Bright Lights—moody, post-punk rock meant for dark clubs like this
With an energetic guitarist who jumped and writhed expertly in time to the rhythm, you could close your eyes and imagine a double bill with the Strokes around the early 2000s, just before they hit the bigtime.
After a long night and a heavy rain, I settled in to the sounds with a good cider, drinking in the night. I felt right at home.
