All-Age Velocity: A Perfectly Demented Punk Experience

“No Alchohol (sic)

No Stage Diving

No Fighting

No Nazis (no hand signals or you will be removed).”

*

The sign above Velocity’s doorway merely hints at how demented--and we mean this in the nicest way--this weekly, all-ages punk club really is.

Located in suburbia along the outskirts of industrialized Torrance, the warehouse/rehearsal space that houses Velocity each Friday becomes one giant, twisted aggro scene, resulting in the ideal punk-rock club. Combining plenty of angry kids, aggressive live performances and near-intolerable heat (management plans to fix the air-conditioning), Velocity uses all the right ingredients to create the Southland’s most consistently heated mosh pit.

During a recent performance by Glu Gun, whose encore consisted of the lead singer dripping a bloody side of beef all over his body, the entire club swelled up into one big raging pit. One amusing result was that numerous, erect Mohawk hairdos wilted, soon resembling male pattern baldness ‘dos.

Not even the club’s muddy sound system can lower Velocity’s sky-high testosterone level. On any given Friday, as many folks appear to be entering the 400-capacity club as are being dragged out by security guards. True to the doorway’s sign, members of the security crew--who are decked out in Hawaiian shirts--literally tossed a Nazi wanna-be off the stage and out the door after he’d interrupted a performance by Orange County’s China White. Thankfully, though, the accompanying cheers were in support of his dismissal.

* Velocity, 22410 S. Normandie Ave., Studio K, Torrance, all ages, $7 cover, (310) 533-0319.