Blacktop Ballroom — 400-cap rock and roll room

88 FOUNDRY ST DOORS ON THE ALLEY SIDE CAP 400

EST. 2009 ● EIGHT BILLS THIS MONTH ● EARPLUGS FREE AT THE BAR

Loud enough to mean it.

Blacktop Ballroom is a four-hundred-cap rock and roll room with a knee-high stage, a PA that hits you in the chest, and a calendar that never apologizes. Garage, punk-adjacent, and the classic stuff played like it still matters. Doors at 7:30. Set times are real.

JULY 2026

The wall

eight bills · every poster printed in code, fresh each run
print run no. 1 — tap a poster for times & tickets
A guitarist mid-swing on the Blacktop stage, red and blue wash, fists up in the front row
FRONT ROW, LAST SUMMER — NOBODY ASKED THE PHOTOGRAPHER TO MOVE

Four hundred heads, shoulder to shoulder. The stage is nineteen inches high because a barricade is an apology and we don’t make those. The PA is flown left–right with two folded-horn subs under the lip — mixed for chest, not chart. There is no bad spot in this room. There are only spots closer to the kick drum.

  • CAPACITY400, fire marshal counted twice
  • STAGE19 inches. That’s it.
  • PAflown L–R, 2 × folded-horn subs
  • BARRICADEnone. never.
  • EARPLUGSfree at the bar, forever
  • SINCE2009, same address, same smell
The house rig backstage: stickered tube head on a 4x12 cab, sunburst guitar leaning on it, one bare bulb

The house rig

A 100-watt tube head older than most of our openers, a 4×12 that’s been re-coned twice and re-stickered a hundred times, and a sunburst that lives here now — its owner left it after a residency in 2017 and comes back to visit it like a dog.

Touring bands: it’s yours if the van breaks. Locals: ask nice.

POSTED AT THE DOOR

House rules

  1. Earplugs are free at the bar. Ask once, keep them forever. Your ears are the subscription.
  2. The stage is knee-high and the barricade doesn’t exist. Respect the nineteen inches. The band can see your face — that’s the point.
  3. If someone goes down, everyone picks them up. First law of the floor. Not negotiable, never has been.
  4. Set times are real. 9:30 means 9:30, not 9:30-ish. Openers never get cut short. Ever.
  5. Film a song, then put the phone away. One clip for the group chat. The rest is for your chest.
  6. The sound tech is always right. Tip the bar. Say thanks to Deb on your way out.