Bay Area music venue shutters after just 5-year run in struggling city

Don’t cry because it’s over…

Oakland club and music venue Crybaby will close at the end of this month after just four years in business, the venue announced in an Instagram post Tuesday.

Located at 1928 Telegraph Ave. across the street from the struggling city‘s Fox Theater, the club focused largely on hip-hop and R&B music, hosting DJ sets and live performances.

“Five years of loud music, sweaty dance floors, and the best people in Oakland,” the venue’s closure announcement read, rounding their years open up to five.

“Crybaby is closing its doors at the end of this month, and all we can say is THANK YOU. To everyone who came through, black, brown, queer, and every community in between— *you* made us what we are.”

Crybaby first opened in March 2022, taking over the space of Uptown Nightclub, which closed in September 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The post did not share a reason for the closure, but thanked their staff and encouraged patrons to support them during their final weeks of operation.

At the time, owners Miles Palliser, Dominic Green, Jesse Tittsworth, and Conrad Loebl said the club set out to support local artists and revive Oakland’s nightlife scene post-COVID-19.

“I want people to come on down and say, ‘I saw this band that I’ve never heard before. I saw this DJ I’ve never heard before.’ I want for people to have those kinds of life-changing experiences through the sounds of music,” Green told the Oaklandside in 2022 ahead of the club’s opening.

The venue took its name from the 1990 film “Cry-Baby” by John Waters.

The closure comes a year after Green and Tittsworth opened Ceremony, a much larger, 1,000-person-capacity music venue, at 1220 Broadway in Oakland. The goal of the new venue was to host touring and international acts.

Crybaby has several events scheduled for its final weeks, including an R&B party on Nov. 20, an over-30s’ day party on Nov. 21, and its final concert, headlined by rapper BbyMutha, also on Nov. 21.

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