Death Guild is the oldest continually operating

gothic Gothic or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths **Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...

industrial Industrial may refer to: Industry * Industrial archaeology, the study of the history of the industry * Industrial engineering, engineering dealing with the optimization of complex industrial processes or systems * Industrial city, a city dominate ...

dance club Dance is a performing art form consisting of sequences of movement, either improvised or purposefully selected. This movement has aesthetic and often symbolic value. Dance can be categorized and described by its choreography, by its repertoire ...

in the United States, and second in the world (preceded only by

Slimelight Electrowerkz, also known as the Islington Metal Works, is a three-floor music venue in Islington, London. In addition to mainstream club nights, it hosts the weekly goth night club Slimelight and other alternative events. Layout Electrowerkz ...

in London). Death Guild opened on March 15, 1993, and is currently held every Monday at

DNA Lounge DNA Lounge is an all-ages nightclub and restaurant/cafe in the SoMa district of San Francisco owned by Jamie Zawinski, a former Netscape programmer and open-source software hacker. The club features DJ dancing, live music, burlesque performance ...

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

. Death Guild has always been an 18-and-over dance club, a rarity in San Francisco where most dance clubs are 21+. Death Guild has also been the promoter of most of the gothic and industrial live shows in San Francisco since the mid-1990s. The Death Guild crew have also been responsible for a theme camp at

Burning Man Burning Man is an event focused on community, art, self-expression, and self-reliance held annually in the western United States. The name of the event comes from its culminating ceremony: the symbolic burning of a large wooden effigy, referred ...

since the mid-1990s, which is well known for the Death Guild Thunderdome.

History

The party was created by David King (DJ Decay) at the now-defunct venue The Pit (now AsiaSF). In June 1994, the club moved to

for one night, and then to the

Trocadero Transfer The Trocadero Transfer was an after hours nightclub, dance club in San Francisco from its opening in December 1977 to the late 1990s. It was located at 520 4th Street at Bryant in the SoMa neighborhood. In 2000, the club was bought by a new owner, ...

, which remained its home for several years, with DJs Decay, Lucretia, Melting Girl, Joe Radio and Damon. The Trocadero began having licensing problems in 1997, eventually closing for good in early 1998. In March 1997, Death Guild moved to Big Heart City, and then to Manhattan Lounge in November 1998. It returned to Big Heart City in June 2003, and in October 2003 moved to Glas Kat, a new venue in the old Trocadero space. Death Guild finally returned to DNA Lounge in October 2008, immediately after DNA Lounge had succeeded in changing its liquor license from 21+ to one that allows 18+ and all-ages events. Resident DJs are currently Decay, Melting Girl and Joe Radio in the main room, with DJ Sage and DJ Bit in the upstairs lounge. Both rooms play a mix of

gothic rock Gothic rock (also called goth rock or simply goth) is a style of rock music that emerged from post-punk in the United Kingdom in the late 1970s. The first post-punk bands which shifted toward dark music with gothic overtones include Siouxsie a ...

darkwave Dark wave (also typeset as darkwave) is a music genre that emerged from the new wave and post-punk movement of the late 1970s. Dark wave compositions are largely based on minor key tonality and introspective lyrics and have been perceived as be ...

, EBM,

futurepop Futurepop is an electronic music genre that has been characterized as a blend of synthpop, EBM and dance beats, based on trance and techno.Peter Matzke, Tobias Seeliger: ''Das Gothic- und Dark-Wave-Lexikon.'' Schwarzkopf und Schwarzkopf, Berlin ...

power noise Power noise (also known as rhythmic noise and occasionally as distorted beat music) is a form of industrial music and a fusion of noise music and various styles of electronic dance music. It should not be confused with "power electronics", whi ...

, and

synthpop Synth-pop (short for synthesizer pop; also called techno-pop; ) is a subgenre of new wave music that first became prominent in the late 1970s and features the synthesizer as the dominant musical instrument. It was prefigured in the 1960s a ...

. DNA Lounge has been providing free audio and video

webcasts A webcast is a media presentation distributed over the Internet using streaming media technology to distribute a single content source to many simultaneous listeners/viewers. A webcast may either be distributed live or on demand. Essentially, web ...

of all the club's events since its 2001 renovation, so Death Guild has been continuously streaming live over the Internet from the venue every Monday night since October 2008. When non-essential San Francisco businesses were forced to suspend operations in early 2020 due to the global

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...

, Death Guild immediately went online-only via DNA Lounge's webcast. The venue reopened for live events on June 18, 2021, allowing Death Guild to resume in-person nights on June 21, 2021. With

still closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Death Guild then became the longest-running active goth club in the world.

Thunderdome

The Death Guild camp at

features one of the event's most popular attractions, the Thunderdome, a recreation in the appropriate desert setting of the arena from the film ''

Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome ''Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome'' is a 1985 Australian post-apocalyptic dystopian action film directed by George Miller and George Ogilvie and written by Miller and Terry Hayes. It stars Mel Gibson and Tina Turner in a story of a lone roving warri ...

''. Participants in the Death Guild Thunderdome engage in improvised combat using padded mock weapons while suspended in harnesses from the top of the arena via

bungee cord Bungee cords equipped with metal hooks A bungee cord (sometimes spelled bungle; also known as a shock cord) is an elastic cord composed of one or more elastic strands forming a core, usually covered in a woven cotton or polypropylene sheath. The ...

s. Spectators climb the exterior lattice of the arena to observe from the sides and above.

Awards

Death Guild won "Best Weeknight Dance Club" in

SF Weekly ''SF Weekly'' was a free alternative weekly newspaper founded in the 1970s in San Francisco, California. It was distributed every Thursday, and was published by the San Francisco Print Media Company. The paper has won national journalism awards, ...

's "Best of San Francisco" readers' poll in 2001, and won "Best Dance Party" in the

San Francisco Bay Guardian The ''San Francisco Bay Guardian'' was a free alternative newspaper published weekly in San Francisco, California. It was founded in 1966 by Bruce B. Brugmann and his wife, Jean Dibble. The paper was shut down on October 14, 2014. It was relaun ...

's "Best of the Bay" readers' poll in 2020. It was runner up for "Best Dance Party" in 2021.

References

External links

* {{Goth subculture Nightclubs in California Goth subculture Industrial music Electronic dance music venues Goth venues Club nights