By the time I arrived at Seafood City Supermarket, a Filipino chain based in California, another Late Night Madness party was already at full tilt, surging to a remix of Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us.” As a Hawai‘i-born Filipina who calls San Francisco home, the scene felt familiar to the tambayan (hangouts) of my childhood, even if the setting was new. Here at the store’s Daly City location, chatters of Taglish (a mix of Tagalog and English) filled the air, lines at the hot food counters snaked past the checkout stands, and there was an ease with which new arrivals like me slipped in, as if the party had been waiting for us all along. Working my way toward the center of the mosh, I saw bodies mid-twerk, -bounce, -krump, and -twitch, while onlookers raised nonalcoholic slushies in rhythmic unison. Even the employees had abandoned their stations, spinning life-size cardboard cutouts of people advertising international phone plans and remittance services into unlikely dance partners.
Fringe gatherings in surprising places are nothing new—from Burning Man in the Black Rock Desert to dance parties in Paris’ catacombs or East Berlin’s bunkers—and part of their allure is how they relocate nightlife into spaces not designed for it, whether that’s out of creative expression, defiance, or simple necessity. Call them “third places,” a term coined by American urban sociologist Ray Oldenburg in 1989 to describe the informal, accessible areas outside home and work where people gather and build community. Churches, libraries, and night clubs are obvious examples, but the supermarket—particularly an ethnic grocery in an immigrant enclave like Daly City, home to the highest concentration of Filipino Americans of any mid-size city in North America—might come as a surprise. But according to a 2021 study from peer-reviewed journal Public Health Nutrition, food retail stores like these are an important point of culture and connection for Asian Americans.
At Seafood City, as everything does in the Filipino community, it starts with food. Late Night Madness originated as a celebration for the launch of Daly City’s food hall—the company’s first—where the cafeteria-style street-food spread includes glossy chicken barbecue skewers and bright red hot dogs sizzling alongside whole grilled tilapia, thick slabs of inihaw na liempo (grilled pork belly), and crispy, golden turon (banana lumpia with jackfruit) in foot-long, carnival-size portions. What began as a one-off party grew into a biweekly phenomenon that has since spread to multiple outposts in California and five stores in Canada.
Even on ordinary nights, the food hall is packed with families who come just to eat, with diners spilling onto any available surface once the tables fill up. (I can vouch for the utility of the grab-and-go shelves—just push aside the pre-packaged meals to make room for your tray.) On party nights, that energy moves with whomever’s behind the decks: Early sets from JP Breganza helped spark the series—an Instagram reel of him dropping a remix of Whitney Houston’s “How Will I Know” at a Late Night Madness event last September is what pulled me out of dance-club retirement—while other locals like DJ Umami bounce from Original Pilipino Music sing-alongs like “Otso Otso” to crowd-pleasing Bieber bops, Mariah anthems, and K-pop hits like “Golden.” Even world-renowned turntablist DJ Shortkut—back in Daly City for the first time in years—delivered a standout set for his hometown crowd.
“Why spend $3,000 on bottle service at a club when you can go for free and still feel the same energy?” muses Daly City native Dean Urriza, cofounder of the community enterprise SF Kollective, which organizes the Late Night Madness parties on behalf of Seafood City. “People are looking for something more accessible—a space where they can just show up, be with their friends, and enjoy.” Nightlife, broadly, is on the decline: A 2025 study found that up to 64 percent of independent venues are not profitable, owing to rising rent and insurance costs, a pandemic-born proclivity for staying home, and diminishing alcohol consumption, which is now at its lowest point in 90 years among U.S. adults.
On the opposite coast, in another immigrant enclave, a similar instinct took hold. When the members of the DJ collective Mundo—a pan-Caribbean crew led by Chris Veras, Rich Pascasio, and Emilio “DJ Guari” Quiñones—became frustrated by the lack of nightlife beyond hookah bars and bottle-service clubs in their home borough of the Bronx, they put their own spin on the scene, staging raves in local bodegas. For Veras, one half of Dos Flakos with Pascasio, the appeal is rooted in the everyday: “Even when I’m going out—I’m fly, I got my fur jacket on—I still stop by the bodega,” he says. “The lady’s like, ‘Oh, papi, you look nice today.’ It’s a community thing.”
Keeping true to the clandestine nature of raves, gaining entrance to one of the dozen events in 2024 and 2025—starting in the Bronx and then expanding to a nationwide Bodega Rave Tour, with tickets for the fall 2026 tour available now—was not as simple as word of mouth. Prospective partygoers had to request access to the group’s private Instagram channel, then gain entry to a chat on the encrypted messaging app Signal, where the time and location were revealed on the day of. Layers of selection and secrecy only heightened a sense of exclusivity that’s typically reserved for velvet ropes and VIP lounges.
Mundo DJs specialize in music from global soundsystem cultures, from the bass-heavy thump of Brazilian funk and the log-drum pulse of South African amapiano to the rhythms of Caribbean dancehall and the guitar-driven sway of Central African Congolese rumba, fueling a crowd that is simmering and sweaty. In true bodega fashion, the space remains operational during the event—serving the party the same way it serves the block—which means that in the Bronx, you can grab a nutcracker (a sugary, neon-hued potent potable often poured into plastic bottles) and a pastelito or a chopped cheese, all while bodies press and sway just a few feet from the counter. “We’re using what we have available around us—that’s the essence of rave life,” Veras says.
Meanwhile in Austin, the vibe is not so much grassroots but bluegrass: The True Texas Tunes music series—free live shows staged inside H-E-B supermarkets, often centered in the stores’ in-house barbecue restaurants—leans away from spontaneous DJ pop-ups toward a roster of local artists. The group partners with Housing Opportunities for Musicians & Entertainers (HOME), an Austin-based nonprofit that supports aging musicians. “We really want our customers to linger and spend time, not just run in, grab something, and leave,” says Heidi Anderson, creator of the series. Every third Saturday at the South Congress and Lake Austin locations, live music spills into the aisles as shoppers pause mid-errand to listen, their carts idling with half-filled baskets.
Because musicians need groceries too, the line between stage and store can get blurry: When jazz singer-songwriter Suzanna Choffel performed last August, she was greeted with a curation of black pepper varieties after joking online that she needed to pick some up after her set. (Trying to capitalize on the momentum, multi-instrumentalist Dave Madden posted that he “needed to remember to grab five pounds of fresh crab,” but no such luck.) And when guitarist Redd Volkaert, known for his twangy style, shared the bill last February with boogie-woogie pianist Floyd Domino, the toe-tapping effect was immediate: Shoppers found themselves bouncing into quick steps between smoked brisket and baking supplies as a cracking tune played out during an ordinary Saturday grocery run. “It was the kind of surreal, only-in-Austin moment that this duo can conjure without trying,” recalls Hanna Cofer, executive director of HOME.
In the comfort of these familiar settings, briefly reimagined as electric third places, such spirited sessions are perhaps inevitable. For me, the value of Late Night Madness wasn’t about an exciting new iteration of nightlife or the magic moments such singular setups naturally stir. In the end, my metric was sentimental: I heard the music I grew up with, recognized faces that looked like family, and felt the familiar pulse of a Pinoy party immediately. Though the series has since settled into a more intermittent, pop-up cadence, its reach and resonance remain—a “cultural moment,” as Patricia Francisco, the company’s director of events, puts it—made possible by seeing a grocery store as something more than its aisles and inventory. “Some people,” she says, “have even called it a movement.”
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