The soft beat of Chicano soul music bleeds through the dark street as more people enter a record store in San Fernando, past a sign in the window: “‘ICE, BIGOTS, MAGA’ are not welcome.”
Vendor booths have replaced vinyl racks, some selling miniature lowrider replicas and Chicano-inspired artwork. Those who attended the event were crowded in the center of the store, dancing to soul music. One salesman cut and styled hair into slicked-back pompadours and high bouffants.
It was a night inspired by the pachucos, a 1930s-40s Mexican subculture of zoot suits and ducks, caló slang and jazz, that rose up against discrimination as a means of self-improvement and felt especially relevant as immigration agents began rounding up more Latinos in Los Angeles.
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Above all else, Midnight Hour is a record store, its rows lined with hundreds of vinyls collected from around the world. But in the northern San Fernando Valley, it has been a public road and gathering place since it first opened during the violence. When Wildfires destroyed Los Angeles early last year, the store turned into a donation center.
And since the ICE crackdown began last summer, it has become a safe haven for the city’s immigrants and a go-to headquarters for the resistance.
“It’s moments like this that make you realize what a community this is,” said Sergio Amalfitano, who owns the store with his wife, Alyssa Castro Amalfitano. “You know, this is turning our backs on each other when we are all struggling.”
He thought of the parallels between today and 1943, when thousands of white soldiers and civilians attacked pachucos and other young people of color in what became known as the Zoot Suit riots.
“Every ten years or so, it comes up again and they start asking our questions,” Amalfitano said. “It is more important than ever to express your feelings … that you are not the same, you will not give up your culture or the history of your people.”
Amalfitano invites grassroots groups to use the store to organize, create posters and safety materials, hold “know your rights” workshops and conduct community vigilance groups at nearby Home Depot stores.
Midnight Hour Records is a meeting place to celebrate music and culture.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
The storefront doubles as a concert venue, often for hardcore and pop punk shows. Other days, an art gallery or a pop-up market. When the city is in crisis, the building becomes an activist headquarters. Its business model can be unconventional. The couple doesn’t charge small vendors to sell in the store during events and they don’t take a dime from the merchandise sold by the bands while they’re playing at the venue.
“Everything political and everything is connected,” Amalfitano said. “We live without a community slogan about property. We want our community to improve, and the only way a community can succeed is if we all come together, right?”
But the community foundation may not be able to keep the doors open in January, when the lease is up. The mom and pop store, like many across the country, is struggling inflation and the economy and poor stability with increased immigration regulations.
Patrons browse vinyl albums at midnight records.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
The Midnight Hour existed as a record store long before establishing a physical presence.
Amalfitano, who has spent his career in entertainment booking and DJing, has long booked music shows at venues in Los Angeles under the Midnight Hour Social Club. He and his wife started selling one of his records during pop-up events to pay for the night.
The San Gabriel Valley native had long run a silk screening business as his main source of income, a trade he inherited from his father, who immigrated to the US from Argentina with his mother in the late 1970s, fleeing the country’s brutal dictatorship.
When COVID-19 hit, live events came to an abrupt halt. The couple had long dreamed of a permanent home in the San Fernando Valley, the region where Castro Amalfitano grew up and where the couple has settled and raised their three children.
With the land closed, the couple took the plunge, spending all their savings to start a brick and mortar business in the city of San Fernando.
The couple brought friends and family together, and their idea quickly came to life. The bassist in Amalfitano’s hardcore punk band ACxDC helped build the benches that line the store’s two tiers. Amalfitano’s father stained the wood used for the stage. A friend who produces the record has set up local sound equipment. The tattoo artist designed and hand-painted the shop’s logo — a crescent moon and stars hugging vintage font letters.
“We didn’t expect the rush we got on the first day. On the second day, we ran out of money,” said Amalfitano. “We should have just gone into our collection and sold part of our collection, because we needed inventory.”
Michelle Argote, a stylist who offers her cheap services on pachuco nights, worked in various stores in the outdoor mall when she was young, and has been visiting the record store since it opened.
“We’re all like a boat trying to stay afloat,” said Argote. “We must continue to live, we must have public places like these, we will not lose those.”
On Feb. 5, Midnight Hour held an event to prepare students for a planned walk across the Valley to protest ICE the next day.
The Bad Bunny song floated through the speakers as about 50 high school students crouched over picnic tables painting and writing signs: “ICE out of our schools,” “Immigrants build America” and “Fight ignorance, not immigrants.”
Lawyers gave a “know your rights” workshop and Amalfitano led a piñata explosion, which the store owner called “a classic form of catharsis,” encouraging students to release pent-up emotions in a safe way.
“You are part of history, you are part of the war,” he told the students. “We want to continue to emphasize that you are important.”
Midnight Hour’s stance on social justice issues has been rooted in the store’s ethical stance since its inception. The invasion of immigrants last summer was the reason to continue, said Michelle Elisa Lima, an artist born and raised in the Valley who works with the Amalfitanos to coordinate community events.
In August, Lima held a benefit show at the store and raised $2,500 for families affected by ICE. He created an art installation titled “You raise y Sueños,” or “Roots and Dreams,” and invite attendees to bring photos of their immigrant loved ones.
The art piece started with one picture of Lima’s mother and eventually, the entire wall was filled with pictures representing almost 100 families. The installation was displayed at San Fernando City Hall during Latin Heritage month.
“We are starting to try to help people, and provide this safe space that allows people to do something without going on the street and protesting, because not everyone can do that,” said Lima. “Everything has grown as we expected, which proves again that the people here want it. They need it.”
Although the store’s events are often filled with energy, those moments are still tainted by “an underlying fear that is like a dark cloud within our community,” Lima said. If you speak Spanish and are black, that automatically puts you in that fear bucket.
The Midnight Hour usually does just enough to keep the lights on, relying on vinyl and merchandise sales that have dwindled a bit as the economic crisis took its toll on people. Social and musical events are run by friends who volunteer their time, and only about two employees are kept on staff.
Attendance at events at the store has increased, but sales have declined since the raids began last summer, Amalfitano said.
The store credit just increased.
Except for Midnight Hour Records, which is struggling to stay afloat.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
The outdoor mall was struggling to get foot traffic as families were afraid to leave their homes. And as people struggle to find basic necessities, vinyls aren’t at the top of their list, Amalfitano said.
“This is the reality we all live in now,” said Castro Amalfitano. “It is difficult to be a small business in a country that does not pay attention to that.
“We’re just fighting to stay.”
