THE RITZ COREY O’BRIEN
Written by Brandon E. Roos Photography by Arabela Espinoza
The Ritz theritzsanjose.com SoFA District 400 S 1st Street San Jose, CA 95113 Social Media theritzsj
The love for music was first ignited when Corey O’Brien was introduced to punk at Winchester Skatepark. In the years since, he’s worked to create spaces for live music in his hometown, often when none were available. The Ritz may seem to simply be an upgrade, a relocation and expansion of the former Blank Club. There are plenty of details—larger capacity, greater amenities, busy location—to support that claim. Given Corey O’Brien’s local history, though, there’s also something more personal at play. Music needs to live somewhere, somehow, some way—even if that involves trying to figure it out yourself—and O’Brien’s efforts as a promoter and club owner over the years have been guided by this principle. His efforts with the Blank Club were a reaction to the exodus of live music from downtown San Jose at the time. The Ritz continues these efforts by presenting great live music with all the bells and whistles O’Brien wished he’d had at the Blank. The Ritz also represents the revival of a storied club that was once a key component of the SoFA District’s former heyday. Well before the years of disrepair, when the reflective, scale-like tiles of the Angels sign swayed quietly in the breeze, the club was best known as F/X, then the Usual. O’Brien worked at F/X and frequented the club under both its F/X and Usual incarnations over the years, so the corner space has continued to carry an allure for him.
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“I always loved this room,” O’Brien reveals, seated at a stool in the club’s front bar—outfitted in all black. “It was a real scene down here that the people made. It wasn’t forced.” It took two years of discussion with the building owner to arrive at a deal, but in April 2015, one of the darkest spots in SoFA was finally reactivated. For O’Brien, skating and music have always gone hand in hand. “I got into music through the skate park,” he says, referring to the now-defunct Winchester Skatepark, his former stomping ground. “Back then, skateboarders got into punk pretty early. All the older people at the park were getting into punk, and we got into punk and started going to shows.” He and his friends would head to San Francisco multiple nights a week—to clubs like Mabuhay Gardens— catching Flipper, Black Flag, the Damned, and Dead Kennedys. Unlike his brother Gavin, lead singer of skate punk legend the Faction, O’Brien never joined a band, but he did try his hand at being a promoter. For his first show, he brought Social Distortion, a favorite of his at the time, to San Jose City College. Another effort was a backyard show featuring the hardcore groups Necros and Whitecross. “Back then, bands would hang out,” he explains. “So we would just approach them and try to get them to play down here. We’d rent a hall, and the next time they came up, they’d play here. At the time,” he adds, “there were no clubs in San Jose. Not one.”
