Last December, Google’s Local Year in Search determined that “the Bakersfield, CA area searched for emo music more than anywhere in the U.S.” Since Bakersfield is the nation’s current undisputed epicenter for exploring one’s own darkest emotional depths, there has to be a place where these forlorn masses can gather.  

A tiny shop called Stage Fright Clothing in the middle of Bakersfield’s downtown retail corridor supplies all who’ve felt misunderstood, mistrusted or just a little mistaken for being someone or something else.

“I moved here when I was about 11 years old. That’s when Jerry’s Pizza had events, concerts once or twice a week,” Stage Fright’s owner, Lorena Rodriguez, told SFGATE on a recent October afternoon while sitting behind the counter of her shop. Stage Fright is orderly but packed with everything anyone would need to go from normcore to instagoth: from tight black pants and vintage band T-shirts to the tips of their black nails. “When I went into high school there were all these emo shows, and for me — like a lot of people here — that’s where I could feel connected.” 

As Rodriguez spoke about the early aughts emo scene in town, she gave credit for the movement really bubbling up from the DIY band-friendly basement of the pizza parlor — which sits catty-cornered from Stage Fright.  

“Obviously, there’s a lot of emo around,” Jose Jimenez, then-manager at Jerry’s Pizza & Pub, the downtown pizza joint/punk club that kicked off the emo movement when it opened in 1992, told SFGATE last year. “Jerry first started when the scene, the emo bands were starting to rise. Then it pretty much came into emo core. Then punk became popular, and alternative became popular, and now black metal. 

“But emo is where it all starts.”   

Rodriguez agrees, noting that teens who step into Jerry’s for the first time are suddenly exposed not only to new music and the friends who come with it — but also to a different way of looking at life in town. 
 
“I feel like that’s where a lot of kids kind of meet with other races because we like the same music and movies,” she said.  
 
One of the goals of her shop, she said, was to carry that feeling of ennui mixed with community over into an accessible physical space that wasn’t a club. “As far as the emo movement, whether I was there or not, music was always just a part of my life,” she said. “I loved Hot Topic, and I loved horror movies, too. I guess this stuff is all related, but also when you’re looking around Bakersfield, it’s hard to find some of it — horror stuff, especially.”  

And so far, it’s working. Rodriguez and her husband Salvador started with a pop-up at a local swap meet on Oct. 1, 2019. Right away, it was a hit, and people started to seek her out. After spending a few months looking for a permanent space, on July 4, 2020, she opened her shop downtown on 19th Street, in a small storefront (now painted black) that sits in the heart of an ascendent block. On the corner is the Woolworth’s building, which is undergoing a complete renovation. Across the way is the Kress building, a 1931 classic that survived the earthquake of 1952 that destroyed many of the downtown’s historic structures.  
 
The location is entrenched in a sought-after, walkable block that’s increasingly busy, Rodriguez said. And that rise in popularity is due at least in some part to her business. Rodriguez said her first priority is to make sure that the store is a gathering spot. 

While Stage Fright picks up a lot of foot traffic, especially on weekends, when people come downtown to enjoy the nightlife (while official hours list closing time at 6 p.m., it can stay open as late as 10 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays), the shop also draws regular crowds by hosting a street fair called “Friday Fright Night Market” the second Friday of every month. The street fair draws big numbers, and it gives a chance for other local vendors (along with the region’s emos) to congregate.  

“We try to do a little market, and that brings in more people,” she said. “We cater to alternative. We are also really close to the bars, so there are people walking around and they come in to see us.” 

“I don’t remember how we connected. It was an Instagram thing,” Rodriguez said as she described arriving at the store to a “huge line” around the block for the event. Massari ended up interacting with his fans for five hours straight. “[It] was supposed to end at 9, and he didn’t stop doing autographs till 10.” 

The event was just further proof, Rodriguez said, of how much Stage Fright has resonated here. “A lot of the alternative scene is down here, and a lot of people and businesses we support support us,” she added. 

For customers like Candace Brown and her daughter, both raised in Bakersfield, Stage Fright has become a multigenerational go-to for a couple of emo kids, one of whom just happens to be the parent. 

“My daughter and I go there often,” Brown told SFGATE. “The first time we saw it we were at a car show downtown, and she saw a life-size Michael Myers out front. It’s a really cool place, full of nostalgia from the 2000s emo rock scene.  

“You can tell she hand-picks a lot of the items. They are all unique. My daughter mostly collects the band tees and pins for her backpack. I’ve gotten a few gifts for friends as well.” 

Rodriguez said a lot of emo-slash-horror fans from the Los Angeles area know about the shop, and people from all over the country buy from its website. So does the emo scene stretch out far beyond Bakersfield? “Oh yes,” she said. “We’re basically everywhere, I think.” 

But the big question remains: What are today’s hot sellers? 

On the music side, “right now it’s a lot of Korn,” Rodriguez said. This makes sense, as Korn — a band from Bakersfield that helped define the nu metal genre and went on to sell more than 40 million records — got its start 30 years ago across the way in the basement at Jerry’s.  

But Korn’s resurrection in popularity coincides with a big surge overall in early aughts music and movies, Rodriguez said. “Slipknot, Deftones, all Y2K-type music — everything from that era.” 

She also said 1980s legacy goth acts like the Cure and emo OGs like the Smiths remain popular. What isn’t happening? “We don’t get a lot of classic rock, which is surprising,” Rodriguez continued. “But we’ve got a lot of kids that like black metal, which is odd because, at least growing up, I didn’t see that scene. But it’s turning out more here. There’s a lot of metal shows that happen at Jerry’s now.”  

On the horror side, Rodriguez said her customers are all about the two “Terrifier” movies, the 2016 and 2022 splatter-core throwback films written and directed by Damien Leone. The “Scream” franchise and Ghostface items are also flying off the shelves this spooky season, Rodriguez said.  

“Here at the shop, it seems to be anything early 2000s,” she said, noting the passage of time and how her faves are now nostalgic to some of her younger customers today. “I grew up with My Chemical Romance — and even they’re like vintage now.”