The dance parties and free Monday night shows will be no more along Silver Lake Boulevard: After a decade—and many more before that under different names—the Satellite will no longer host live music.
In a message posted to its Instagram account on Friday, the Silver Lake venue says that it’s removing its stage and slowly pivoting to more of a restaurant and bar. “To all of the Satellite fans out there, I am sorry to say that we will no longer be doing live shows or dance parties,” the post reads.
The Satellite, like the rest of L.A.’s music venues, has been closed since mid-March and plagued by the financial realities of trying to run a music venue when you can’t actually legally (or ethically) host any shows. “It has really hit us hard,” the statement continues. “We can no longer afford to wait for the day we will be allowed to have shows again. If we do that, we will not have the money to continue and will be forced to close forever.”
Though the transition to a full-blown restaurant will take quite some time (largely due to a lack of funds), the Satellite hopes to start serving food and drinks in its parking lot once it has its kitchen reopened, or if it’s able to get government approval to hire a food truck.
The venue spent the mid-’90s and aughts as Spaceland, then a central part of L.A.’s Eastside indie rock scene that hosted acts like Silversun Pickups, Death Cab for Cutie and Beck. In 2011, it switched over to the Satellite and took on a dancier bent with parties like Dance Yourself Clean. The spot also regularly hosted oddball comedy from the likes of John Early, Jon Daly and, perhaps its longest-running residency, Neil Hamburger’s monthly Sunday night shows.
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