The Ritz

A 500-capacity room at South First and San Salvador, in San Jose's SoFA district. The building went up in the 1940s as a movie theatre and passed through several lives — the Gay Theatre, then the Pussycat, then a run of nightclubs — before standing empty for seven years.

Corey O'Brien, who co-founded the Blank Club, reopened it as The Ritz in 2015 with a handful of other veterans of the local scene. It books national touring acts and regional names across rock, hip-hop, Latin and electronic music, and is one of the rooms downtown San Jose's revival has been built on.