ATB
By You, For you, forever
AboveTheBridge - a music focused platform driven to build community - started as an Instagram account run by Dante Pellegrino at age sixteen inside a movie theater in Concord, California and has evolved over the years through blogs, interviews, concerts, and festivals. Now in 2026, AboveTheBridge has grown into LA’s newest music establishment, ATB The Venue.
For the opening weekend of ATB The Venue, Reckless Magazine gave Dante a disposable camera to document the shows from his own perspective. He talked to us about the highs and lows of opening a venue, reflections on the opening weekend, and the endless pursuit of building community.
Los Angeles, USA
What is the story behind AboveTheBridge?
I started AboveTheBridge when I was sixteen in a movie theater in Concord California. It started as an Instagram account, then a blog, then an interview series, then a concert, then a festival, and now after seven and a half years it is a venue. It has never really stayed in one form for more than a few years, but everything we've ever done has served the goal of building community. After spending years in the Bay Area local scene where I am from, I moved the operation to LA in 2022 and we have been operating here ever since.
How has it grown and evolved over the years?
AboveTheBridge's mindset has always been fueled by building community, but the medium has changed drastically over the years. I think one thing that has always worked in our favor is how willing we have always been to embrace change and find the next thing, it has allowed us to evolve and take advantage of opportunities as they come. Everything we've ever done has been a trial by fire. Sometimes things don't work, actually most things haven't worked, but we have learned to rally our mindset around those failures and walk away with valuable lessons. Those lessons always inform the next thing we want to explore. I always say that I don't even know where ATB will be in the coming years, but I am grateful to be along for the ride.
The AboveTheBridge journey has led to opening a venue in Los Angeles, called ATB The Venue. Why did you decide to go into this venture?
Opening a venue has been one of the only consistent dreams that I've had since I was a kid. In person community is more vital now than it ever has been. I feel that the internet age and the signifcant drop in true third spaces have led to an increased sense of dread and loneliness among young people. We need each other really desperately, maybe now more than ever. Nothing will make you remember how much we need eachother more than dancing with a stranger or singing lyrics back to your favorite artist or slamming into your homie in a circle pit. That stuff means something to people, it meant a lot to me and helped me find out who I truly was when I was younger. My main priority is creating those same experiences for other people that were created for me, everything else is secondary. We opened a venue because AboveTheBridge's core purpose is to bring people together.
How did the venue come to life?
When I first moved to LA I started attending more shows than I realized at a venue called Makeout Music. I didn't know it would happen when I first began going to these shows but pretty quickly that place became like a second home to me. I just kept finding myself there unintentionally because they booked with genuine culture and real taste in mind. It took my breath away every time. I remember so vividly the feeling of seeing Ari Rivera, or Deloyd Elze, or Corook, for the first time when I first moved here, I didn't know that spaces like this existed in 2023. The owners of that venue, Tim Chin and Geoff Bywater, taught me a lot. They created a community that rocked me to my core and as the saying goes "you stick around the barber shop long enough and eventually you'll get a haircut." When they decided that their time running a venue was ending, they transferred that energy into helping AboveTheBridge open our first space. There is no way we could have done this without them. It was a dream come true and opened my eyes to a whole new future. I owe those guys a lot.
What were some highs and lows of putting this together? What have you learned?
Working on something like this comes with some pretty intense emotional peaks and valleys, but not for a second do I ever question if it is worth it. We first got the space in July, and knew we couldn't open until January at the earliest. Those months were some of the toughest of my life for a whole bunch of personal and finnancial reasons. I began working full time at a restaurant in Manhattan Beach to be able to pay the rent on the space, and my partner Mario Sosa did the same. We'd work our day jobs for 8-9 hours and then come back and put nails in the ceiling and cut wood and drill into the walls and shit. There were some months where we cut it prety close. Opening the venue was a long process, and some of the months where we were paying for a space that we couldn't yet throw shows in made this seem like a pretty impossible task. DIY basically saved us. Our community lended a helping hand every step of the way, and every time I doubted if we could do this they were right there to hold me up. We did almost everything in the venue ourselves. We built the stage, we rigged the discoball, we sourced wood from old lumber yards on Facebook Marketplace, we slept on the floor, we pretty much risked everything. Part of me felt like ATB had existed for six and a half years at that point and it was time to push the chips in, however, the other half of me felt like I was in too deep. I said for the first month that we were open that none of this ever really set in but there were a few moments that stick out in my head as sighs of relief and seconds that stood still where I was able to take all of this in. I remmeber when I got the final edit back for the venue announcement video while driving home from my restaurant job in Manhattan Beach. I got really emotional and for the first time I felt like I was on the other side of the hardest thing I have ever done. It hasn't really gotten easier and it probably won't for a while, but there isn't a second where it doesn't feel like it is worth it.
How was the opening weekend?
Opening weekend was surreal. Seeing so many of my favorite artists perform on a stage that my friends and I built with our own two hands was a feeling I will never forget. On night one we had Cheridomingo, Wayword, Lovers Peak, Moon Wave, Rain on Fridays, and the Citie. Night two featured The Sols, Integra Pink, Funds for Jimmy, and Blueberry. Night three featured Nevi, Bunny Lowe, Justin Tuell, G lune, Nuffer, Morgen, and 8rae. It was a celebration of some of the artists who have supported us the most over the years and of some of the friends we have made along the way. The overwhelming emotion was relief. I believe in myself a lot but there is certainly a part of me that thinks everything I do is going to fail. I think that is part of being an artist or an entreperenuer, you're just in this constant state of disbelief when things workout but you need to ignore the doubts a remain in a state of delusional optimism. Opening weekend felt like one chapter of my life closing, and another one opening. I am very excited to see what the story has in store next.
How do you see the future of ATB, The Venue?
As everything with AboveTheBridge is and will always be, the venue is a work in progress. Chasing something is one of the world's greatest gifts and I cherish that every single day. I am eternally grateful for the chance to do something special and create something that helps people and I fully intend to take advantage of that opportunity no matter the direction it goes in. I see this space as a precursor to the next one, and that space as a precurser to the one after that, maybe one day we can take out Live Nation and make artist friendly show structures the norm. I really want to create a space that helps people find themselves, that is what Bottom of the Hill, and 924Gilman Street, and Brick & Mortar, and Oakland Secret, and Stay Gold Deli, and so many spaces in the Bay Area did for me, so I think I owe it to the universe to pay it foward. That is the plan. Live music is everything, and this venue is by you, for you, forever.
