other words, it is the perfect fit for Rhonda and her ambiguity.
As we walk inside in the early afternoon Rhonda’s team are already hard at work painting the blank canvas that is Club 333. It’s a sensory overload. Diva signs and Rhonda slogans hang everywhere. Go-go booths adorn the pillars. A handmade life-size Rhonda sign sits on the stage in all of its glory. Later we find out that adjoining the main hall is a smaller room decked out to the nines in all gold. All of these decorations, from the lifetime’s worth of glitter to the disco-themed mirror covered Rhonda legs, were brought in just for this event. The team of around 12 people that the guys have put together work in perfect harmony. Unlike other nights around town, Rhonda brings in everything for the night, from the custom DJ set-up to the transgendered bouncer. The amount of money and time that is put into doing this is what really makes Rhonda rise above the rest. She wants to be grand. She wants you to walk in and be amazed. She wants you not only to attend but to be part of the event. “We want to bring the craziest loudest people and marry them with groundbreaking music,” says Loren, typecasting Rhonda. “It is supposed to push boundaries and be culturally relevant and move the scene in many directions.”
Goddollars
just for the sake of being different, but to compel their every want and desire in this world. Words do not do them justice in any language, be it our own or someone else’s. If we had to pick one however, it would be ‘dedicated’; dedicated to all facets of Rhonda, dedicated to make it the most interesting party on the block, dedicated to bringing the best music to Los Angeles, dedicated to make it aesthetically the most unique experience. Starting out throwing parties known as Tik Tok, the two eventually got kicked out of their loft due to a specific night that has gone down as Rhonda folklore. “There was a shady Top 40 club next door and when the patrons got kicked out of the club they would come up to our door and see our party going on and want to come in,” Gregory recalls. “Our bouncer was not, you know, a professional bouncer so it was tough for her to really tell the difference between who should be going to our party and who was just coming from next door. Long story short, it ended with heads butting and us getting maced and pepper sprayed, as well as irreparable damage to the building. Our landlord had enough of us and kicked us out that weekend!”
In 2008 blog house and electro were ruling the Los Angeles club scene and the boys were not impressed, inspiring them to throw their own parties. “Like, we would have to go see Green Velvet play at some shitty huge mega club with a bunch of realtors on ecstasy, and it was not like the people liked the music that was playing,” Loren recalls. Not far from the truth of the matter, the EDM scene in Los Angeles at the time was trite and cheap, money being thrown at any artist whose electro track garnered enough blog posts to become relevant.
Walking into Club 333 we did not know what to expect, having never been there before, but our research uncovers that it has played host to candy raves with the worst kind of electronic music as well as Latino concerts. Nestled behind the 110 Freeway in the heart of Downtown Los Angeles, it is the perfect location for the hipsters coming from the East as well as the partiers out West. It also has an unsuspecting door set on a side street that one would easily pass by if not seeking it out. In
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Rhondavous, the night in question that DJ Mag USA attend, is an offshoot of their regular night A Club Called Rhonda. Centered around a large room and one or two main acts, Rhondavous is a way for them to present the diva in all her glory on an even bigger stage. With recent big named acts including Dimitri From Paris, tonight’s guest is LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy.
A Club Called Rhonda, created in 2008, has a much more storied past than can be explained in three pages. Starting out at an old Guatemalan MS-13 front known as Guatelinda, the night was renowned for its debauchery.
They got their inspiration from parties that used to be thrown at an old house down Avenue 50 called Black Diamond where they would throw these themed parties that spared no expense on detail. “They were all artists and would build these ridiculous things without any care in how it would fuck up their house,” Greg recalls at a later interview at Echo Park Records. “They’d pretty much ruin their house for the parties just to make it look amazing.”
It’s at this point that we should introduce the third mover and shaker involved with Rhonda, Alexis Rivera. Head honcho over at Echo Park Records, he met the boys a long time ago when he was a part owner of a dubious all ages downtown bar called Little Pedros. “I started doing all these parties. I am an idiot and I did not know that you were forced to card people. We were a restaurant too and served food so I thought we could get around the rules,” he recalls. With his connections in the industry he is the go to guy for the boys when searching out talent. Recalling some of the more ridiculous times when Rhonda was at Guatelinda, Alexis, the most outspoken of the group, can tell you tales for hours on end. After eventually finding out that Guatelinda’s never actually had a liquor license, and after a prolonged break, they moved the party to El Cid, which is where they forged a lasting relationship with owner and polarizing LA figure Steve Edelson. “We pretty much ruined El Cid and forced the owner to sell it due to how crazy our parties were getting. When we had House of House play, people were literally jumping over walls to get into the venue,” Rivera remembers.
Edelson then purchased Los Globos in Silver Lake and invited the boys to move into the new venue. After about a year-and-a-half of city permit holds on Los Globos, the boys were finally able to move there on March of 2012, where they were joined by
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