A Black Celebration: 10 year Anniversary
Published 12.27.25
December 5th was the 10th anniversary of A Black Celebration! ABC is a Depeche Mode heavy dance party that takes place on the first Friday of every month at Johnny Brenda's.
I'm not enough of a veteran to be able to say that I've been here since the beginning, but I've been going to ABC religiously for at least 4 years now and I've had nothing but good experiences!
The resident DJ is DJ Baby Berlin. She has several regular events every month and books shows sometimes too. ABC is my favorite event of hers. She plays some contemporary stuff, but it's mostly the classics, which makes it pretty accessible to newcomers. If you're just getting into the club-ier side of the goth scene in Philly, this is where I would recommend you start.
In some ways this ABC was similar to others, but there were some fun additions for the 10th anniversary!
There was a guest DJ (which is typically the case). His name is Stalagmike, he's based in NYC. The guests are usually fine, though I almost always prefer Baby Berlin's sets. I wouldn't say that this guy's picks were super memorable, but I do remember a few tracks I hadn't heard before being interesting.
The visuals this time around were really great. I guess this guy Don Vincent Ortega did them. I'm not super familiar with his stuff, but I poked around his website a little bit. It's all fine, very sleek, commercial stuff. Not being shady at all here, the quality is evident, but it's not the type of stuff that I'm into (crap)(take a look around this site lol).
Blue Jean did a burlesque performance to Personal Jesus. I'm not a huge burlesque person but it was solid, people were definitely entertained. It was also just one number, so even those who weren't into it probably didn't feel too disrupted by it.
There were a lot of interactive elements that were fun! There was a camcorder and some old mini TVs set up that people really enjoyed, tons of snacks everywhere, and a sort of scavenger hunt going on. The scavenger hunt was sort of guerilla marketing, Baby Berlin had event flyers all over the place and some were marked as "winners" and were redeemable for an A Black Celebration 10th Anniversary t-shirt! (I have one, ofc).
There was also a Dave Gahan look-alike contest. Honestly, I had hoped for more participants but there were enough to keep things interesting (four I think?). There were a couple good contenders for it but ultimately Jenna swept (iykyk).
Overall it was a great night! I heard most of what I like to hear and had fun dancing as usual. The added activities and treats were definitely a lot of fun and made it a really memorable anniversary.
