After fires, L.A. teens just want to feel normal.
Attendees dance in the crowd during the band Kim Theory’s EP Release Party at Backyard Party on November 15.
As Seen in LA Times | Dec 1, 2025
By Lynda Lin Grigsby
Photography by Ronaldo Bolaños
New all-ages venue is ‘a way to escape’
- Backyard Party is an all-ages music and event space on the border of Pasadena and Altadena.
- It’s also become a clearinghouse for free instruments for musicians affected by the January wildfires.
- At a recent show for a teen band, all the pain still lingering since the fires was left at the door as teens rocked out, dancing with abandon.
Through a veil of dark hair tendrils, Audrey Cymone stares intensely into the darkened room. The 16-year-old singer of the high school band Kim Theory croons the melancholy-tinged lyrics from “Growing Pains,” their song about adolescent angst.
Why can’t things just be the same?
The question hangs in the air as the sound thickens during soundcheck — guitars climbing, drums cracking. It carries double meaning here at Backyard Party, a new all-ages music venue in a nondescript business park on the border of Pasadena and Altadena.