A Room with History Above, and a Future Ahead
The Basement is a live music and culture venue located beneath the historic Woolworth’s Building in Downtown Bakersfield. Designed as an intimate, flexible room, it exists to bring people together around sound, ideas, and shared experience.
It is part of a larger home built on the values of community, creativity, and commerce. A place where familiar faces meet new ones, discovery happens naturally, and good nights make way for great memories.
The House
The Woolworth’s Building stands restored and open as part of downtown Bakersfield’s daily life. For decades, it served as a place where people gathered, ate, and crossed paths. Today, the building carries that role forward under new local ownership with care, intention, and long-term stewardship.
A House for the City
The Woolworth’s is a lived-in house for the city. A place where food, music, conversation, and creative work coexist under one roof, shaped by the people who show up and use it. Each space inside the building contributes to that shared purpose.
Grounded in Community
The Basement brings that energy into a subterranean room below street level. It creates space for local artists, touring acts, and ideas in progress to exist side by side in a setting defined by sound, presence, and connection. The culture here reflects Bakersfield itself. Expressive, collaborative, and grounded in community.
Active and Alive
Alongside the Luncheonette and future spaces within the Woolworth’s Building, The Basement helps shape a house that feels active and alive. A place built to be gathered in, returned to, and carried forward by the city around it.
Sound Comes First
The Basement is built around sound. The room is intentionally intimate. The system is designed for clarity, depth, and presence. When music starts, the experience is immediate and immersive.
Programming is genre-fluid by design. Live music of all kinds, comedy, pop-ups, readings, and one-off gatherings all live here, unified by a consistent standard rather than a single sound.
If it is happening in the room, it’s there for a reason. Rooted in Bakersfield and shaped by the people who show up.
Built to Last
The Basement is locally owned and thoughtfully stewarded as part of the continued care and activation of the Woolworth’s Building.
This is a venue designed to grow with the city and the community that fills it. Truly a venue for the ages.
