Luigi’s Slice, a hip pizza joint in the MARRS Building that for years has also acted as one of Sacramento’s few all-ages music venues, has been sold to the owners of Azul Mexican Food and Tequila Bar, located just steps from Luigi’s in the same building. The space will close for about three weeks starting on May 17, 2014 and will undergo renovations. It will remain a pizza place under a new undisclosed name, but it is uncertain if the new owners will continue to host live, all-ages shows.
“It’s heartbreaking about the uncertainty of the new owners doing music,” Luigi’s co-owner Linda Brida (she runs the business with her husband, Greg) recently told Submerge. “I’m going to talk to them more about it.”
Brida mentioned that while it’s a bummer they have to sell, it is something they’ve been mulling over for some time. “We’re a mom and pop shop, and we treat our employees like family,” she said, noting how important it was to them that most of their employees be re-hired by the new owners. The Bridas still own the original Luigi’s Pizza Parlor located at 3800 Stockton Boulevard. It’s been in their family for 60 years.
Local promoter and music scene OG Jerry Perry, who frequently throws all-ages shows at Luigi’s Slice featuring both national and local acts, wrote an honest straight-forward post on his Facebook page on April 12, 2014, about the closing of Luigi’s and the uncertainty of live music happening there after the switchover.
“I consider little ol’ Luigi’s to be one of the most important rooms in the Sacramento scene,” he wrote going on to say “Sacramento may not know it yet, and actually rarely ever understands the impact of changes such as this, but losing this venue will create a huge disconnect between young people and live music in the scene, and forces so many young local artists back to playing stageless coffeehouses, or bullshit pay-to-plays, maybe occasional house-parties, or nowhere at all.”
Submerge attempted to reach out to one of the owners of Azul but did not hear back as of press time. We reached out to Perry to see what he and others have lined up at Luigi’s before May 17, and it turns out it’s a stacked next few weeks of awesome shows, so get out and support while you can! Check it: Circle Takes the Square on April 25; The Kelps on May 3; Sun Monks on May 9 with The Horde and The Harem; Kurt Travis (of A Lot Like Birds) on May 14; and The Dollyrots and Slime Girls on May 17, which may be the final night of shows. Perry also told Submerge that he’s adding more shows to that list and that he plans on reaching out to the new owners to speak with them to discern the future of all-ages shows. We’ll keep our readers up to date as we learn more about the fate of the venue.
If you attended last Saturday night’s show at Luigi’s in Davis as part of Davis Music Fest, you would have never known you were witnessing the final show the venue would host. The very next day, Luigi’s quietly closed its doors for good. “It just didn’t resonate and never got better,” owner Linda Brida told Submerge of the all-ages venue and pizza joint, going on to say that Davis “is an interesting animal.” They wanted to tough it out to the one-year mark (they opened on January 21 of this year), but it just didn’t make sense financially to keep it going any longer. As of press time there was no indication as to what business would fill the location.
The closing of Luigi’s in Davis leaves the small college town with very few legit (i.e.: not house shows) all-ages venues for both touring and local bands to play. One remaining example is the ever-popular, long standing Sophia’s Thai Kitchen, which hosts all-ages shows on their patio during fair weather months.
“Unlike Sophia’s, Luigi’s didn’t have a clientele that treated the place like a local,” said musician Lauren Cole Norton, who plays in The Souterrain.
“If there was going to be anyone in the audience, they were going to be people you had invited out,” she said, as opposed to a built-in crowd that comes out no matter who is playing. Her band had played Luigi’s during the venue’s opening weekend and she remembers that the “place was hopping.” But, she added, “You could see already how it was going to be tricky to get people to pay to come down to the basement when they could hang out upstairs at the bar and listen for free.”
“We thought that was what Davis wanted,” Brida said. “It was not their cup of tea. It just didn’t take off.” She pointed out how hard it was to close the location knowing that their 15 employees would be out of work.
Luigi’s two Sacramento locations, 3800 Stockton Boulevard and 1050 20th Street in Midtown (which also holds all-ages shows) will both stay open. The Midtown location is scheduled to be remodeled later this year, something that Brida says they’ve been planning for a long time. It will include a kitchen expansion and a cleaning up of the “Fungarden,” the room adjacent to the eatery where countless touring and local bands have had the pleasure of performing.
“There’s lots of wear and tear, and there’s lots of things that we’re trying out,” Brida said of the Midtown location.
Wear and tear or not, there are some killer bands playing at the Fungarden throughout the month of July, so keep an eye out on our calendar section, pick a show, grab some friends and enjoy some live music for cheap (cover is typically around $5). And while you’re at it, grab a slice and a beer. You know how the saying goes, Sacramento, you never know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.
