Los Angeles is a city known for its storied music history, from the glittering rock ‘n’ roll mythologies of the Sunset Strip to East LA’s raw punk rebellion. But nestled within its cultural fabric are lesser-known yet profoundly influential spaces like Cell 63, a short-lived but legendary DIY venue that became a cornerstone of the early 1990s underground punk music scene in the suburbs of the San Fernando Valley. Though Cell 63 was just one small space in a vast underground network, its story reflects something much bigger: the power of music and art to build community.
A moment at a show captured in this piece titled “One Step Ahead,” on display now at Inside Cell 63 (Photo: David Sine)
In 1992, 17-year-old Nathan Peterson transformed his parents’ basement into a thriving, fully functional punk venue called Cell 63. Active primarily between 1992 to 1994, the venue bounced between the iconic basement space and local warehouses, going on to host well over 200 bands and more than 100 shows. Dubbed “the Home of Punk” by the Los Angeles Times in 1992, Cell 63 served as a vital cultural and creative hub within the Los Angeles music scene, fostering artistic expression, community, and the DIY ethos that defined the 1990s punk movement. At its peak, shows happened every three days, drawing crowds of anywhere from 25 to 150 people, including kids from the neighborhood, skaters, punks, artists, and bands traveling from across the country and even internationally. It served as a launchpad for artistic expression and an incubator for the energy of 1990s punk rock.
Unlike the corporate venues dominating the Los Angeles scene, Cell 63 was entirely grassroots. It wasn’t about making a profit; in fact, attendees could get in free by donating clothing or canned food at the door. Shows were booked for teens, by teens. There were no giant headliners or corporate sponsorships. Instead, local bands like Jughead’s Revenge played the same stage as touring acts like Huggy Bear, creating a decentralized network that extended beyond LA to the broader punk and hardcore communities around the country.
When shows were shut down by local authorities, as they frequently were, Nathan would pivot and use Cell 63 to host group discussions, offering an open space for attendees to engage in dialogue about the world around them. The venue also organized local graffiti cleanups, hosted community art shows, and even offered self-defense lessons. These efforts reinforced its place as more than just a music venue but as expression and connection, even when the music had to pause. The focus was always on community and solidarity, not on profit or image but creating a space where people could come together to create without the pressures of the mainstream or corporate interests. In that sense, Cell 63 embodied the radical potential of punk — not as a fashion statement or a genre, but as a community practice, a way of living and making art that rejected the idea that you needed permission or resources to be heard. If you didn’t see the world you wanted to live in then you built it, and that’s exactly Cell 63, that’s exactly what they did.
The Los Angeles Times wrote about Peterson’s creation of a punk scene in his parents’ basement (Photo: Inside Cell 63)
“It didn’t matter whether you were a skater or a punker or anything else, it was a place where you could feel welcome,” says Andrew Kline of the band Strife. “That was the beauty of it.”
For Kline and his bandmates, playing at spaces like Cell 63 provided an opportunity to learn, grow, and improve as musicians. He reflects on the challenges punk and hardcore bands faced in Hollywood during their early days, noting, “At that time, Hollywood venues weren’t very accepting of the punk and hardcore bands. We got an opportunity to learn how to be a band, to play in front of people and become better at what we did.” Now, over thirty years later, Strife is still going strong, a testament to the lasting impact of those formative experiences.
Before Face to Face began headlining stadium tours, they were playing for less than 100 fans at the Cell 63 basement. Before Rage Against the Machine exploded onto the world stage, vocalist Zack de La Rocha was fronting Inside Out, a band that played in Cell 63’s warehouse. And before Jawbreaker signed their near million-dollar deal with Geffen, they were playing a $4 show in that same basement, building the following that would propel them to success.
The upcoming Inside Cell 63 exhibit is a tribute to LA’s underground scenes, to those who built them, and a reminder of the importance of DIY spaces. Featuring archival flyers, raw photography, rescued ephemera, and first-hand oral histories, the exhibit transports visitors into a moment when creativity thrived in unlikely places. To walk through Inside Cell 63 is to step into a time when LA’s cultural landscape wasn’t dominated by corporate festivals or $100 ticket prices, but by kids passing around hand-drawn flyers and building stages out of pallets found in the back alley.
Inside Cell 63 shifts the focus to the very foundation of punk itself: the communities and the DIY ethos that allowed punk to survive and thrive. The exhibit brings attention to the everyday people, highlighting how seemingly small DIY spaces have, often quietly, built and maintained punk scenes from the ground up. It serves as a reminder that DIY spaces like Cell 63 had to walk so the big venues could run, laying the groundwork for the scenes, sounds, and communities that larger stages would later embrace.
One of the many Cell 63 show flyers and other memorabilia currently on display (Photo: Inside Cell 63)
The collection of materials in the exhibit aren’t just relics of the past, but tools that helped create a community and culture, showing how youth-led spaces can challenge the mainstream. This act of preservation provides future generations with insight into the power of grassroots organizing and artistic expression while contextualizing a history of underground communities vital to Los Angeles.
By putting the community at the forefront, Inside Cell 63 serves as both a historical document and a call to action: continuing punk’s legacy through collaboration and grassroots activism, reminding us that the power of art, music, and community lies in our hands. Inside Cell 63 asks us to listen closely and remember that spaces like this don’t simply appear, and they don’t survive without care, effort, and community. They are built intentionally, with grit and a fierce commitment to creating something bigger than any one person. They are both a collective effort and an act of defiance.
Inside Cell 63 reminds us that culture is never static and that no space, no idea, and no community is too small to leave an impact. The exhibit highlights the incredible effort it takes to maintain a space where art and expression are free to evolve without the constraints of the market, and how essential it is to protect and nurture these spaces in order to keep them alive for future generations. This exhibit that speaks to the enduring power of punk — not as a genre, but as a movement rooted in creativity, resistance, and community.
The Inside Cell 63: Pop-Up Punk Rock Exhibit will be running from March 28th to April 6th at BEAM Studios in Van Nuys. Get your tickets today and follow @insidecell63 on Instagram for the full list of operating hours and a lineup of exciting special events, including live punk shows, a punk rock panel discussion, pop-up piercings and tattoos, punk rock kids’ crafts, and much more. Don’t miss out on this immersive celebration of punk history and culture!
