Flint Local 432

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Thanks @veneno_nyc for the order! Also, huge thanks to @factorytwo for being such an amazing community resource, I couldn’t do this without you! #DIY #buttonmaking #punkrock #factorytwo #flint

Want to perform at Local Fest IV?

We’re currently accepting performer and vendor submissions through Friday.

July 25, 2026
Flint Local 432

Email [email protected] for consideration.

Lineup announcements begin next week.

LOCAL FEST IV IS BACK.

Join us on Saturday, July 25th from 4PM - 10PM at Flint Local 432 for an afternoon and evening celebrating Flint’s creative community through live music, art, vendors, and more.

The event is free and open to all ages.

Interested in performing or becoming a vendor?

We’re currently accepting submissions through Friday. If you’d like to be considered, send an email to [email protected] with information about yourself, links to your work, and any relevant details.

Lineup announcements begin next week.

Save the date. More information coming soon.

July 25, 2026
4PM - 10PM
Flint Local 432
124 W First St.
Flint, MI 48502

Liz Ele turned connections she made at the Local into opportunity. Currently a drummer in several bands in Chicago, she frequented the Local in the late 1990s as a patron and performer. “A lot of my friends from high school played music, so we were there all the time. It was a haven. I never had a care in the world while I was there. It was incredible to have a place we could just call up and ask to play a show and they would just give you a date and provide sound and everything, and everyone making it happen cared deeply about what they were doing. We didn't know what a treasure we had as young musicians learning our craft.”

The steady flow of talent weekend after weekend at the Local provided Ele with opportunities to be inspired by talented bands across many genres, and not just from the Flint scene. “I saw so many great acts come through Flint and stop at the Local, and it gave me a taste of what really good bands sounded like. I could get right up close and see them and experience the music intimately.” These experiences inspired her to move to Chicago so she could pursue music as a career. “I was more and more inspired to pursue music, first as a hobby and more recently semi-professionally, so I moved to Chicago in 2002. I've played with a lot of really talented people and made many lifelong friendships,” she says.

More recently, Ele reconnected with Johnny Iguana, who has played the Local countless times over the years in bands like oh my god and The Claudettes. “He was in need of a drummer and invited me to audition. We just played our first couple shows together in early May, and I'm really excited to be playing with The Claudettes going forward,” she shares. “I certainly wouldn't have this opportunity today if it wasn't for the incredible Local 432 community. Now I’m going to support the tour and release of the new Claudettes record, Garage Glamour.”

The community that the Local fosters supports people far beyond those years of attending shows. “All of this is due to the efforts of a lot of people who cared about good music's ability to bring people together. Joel has built a great venue and an amazing community around music that is constantly giving back to the community,” Ele says. “It's gratifying to see the Local is still thriving and making safe spaces for young musicians in the Flint area and beyond.”

Over the years, the Local has hosted a who’s who of punk rock royalty, and produced some of its own. Every era has its share of nights to remember, shows where those who were there remember it forever. That love goes both ways, as many of those bands go on to spread the word about the Local and keep the club packed with great out of town talent alongside the homegrown favorites.

Scott McCloud of Girls Against Boys, Soulside, New Wet Kojak, and Paramount Styles has fond memories of Flint Local 432 as a trusted stop on tour for Soulside in the late 1980s. In the late 1980s, finding safe, reputable places to play was not easy for punk bands.

“Back then, there was a lot of skinhead violence at shows, especially in the Midwest, for some reason. Detroit did not seem like a good place for us to play. I got Joel’s contact information from Ian [MacKaye of Minor Threat and Fugazi],” he explains.

Soulside quickly discovered that the Local was a welcoming place for them. “At that time, the punk circuit was dotted with smaller cities like Kenosha, Wisconsin or Manhattan, Kansas. We didn’t know much about Flint before our first show, but we immediately recognized we’d found a place we liked playing. The Local drew a more youthful, super enthusiastic crowd. There was a focus on the fun of the music rather than punk skinhead posturing,” he says.

Soulside played the Local several times between 1987 and 1989. “We knew we could expect a good crowd each time, which always seemed like a homegrown thing. Flint seemed like the kind of place that could foster a local punk scene because, especially back then, having a safe, cool venue to play was essential to the whole music scene. I always knew when organizing a show with Joel was that his passion for the Local also meant that we were going to play somewhere where people would care, that it would be fair. After the first time, it was always a priority show for us. We weren’t going to miss the Local and Flint,” he says.

Erin Neeley Archuleta turned volunteering and performing at the Local into work with nonprofits and small businesses. “Volunteering and playing shows at Flint Local 432 was a fun, safe thing to do as a teenager, but it also helped me start to develop practical skills, like how to run a small business on a shoestring. I gained experience recruiting and managing volunteers and steering and maintaining their enthusiasm. I gained satisfaction from building community, and participating in creating spaces where young people felt safe and welcome. These were real responsibilities with real stakes, handed to a teenager in a peer-led environment who rose to meet them,” she says.

Her experiences at the Local as a volunteer prepared her for career opportunities. “The foundation I gained at the Local gave me the confidence to step into a Business Manager role at a local independent nonprofit radio station while I was still in college. I already knew how to stretch a budget, lead a team, and keep an organization running,” she says.

This turned into a career in nonprofit management and public service, and today, Arculeta is an executive ESG and Corporate Social Responsibility leader at an S&P 500 company. “None of this feels accidental. It traces directly back to a scrappy, all-ages music venue and the people who trusted a young person to do meaningful work. Organizations like this one don't just put on shows. They build future leaders,” she says.

You may recognize Johnny Iguana's name from the credits of the hit TV show The Bear. He is a co-writer of the show’s music. If you were around the Local scene in the early 2000s, you probably also never missed an oh my god show. The powerful trio developed a devoted following here, and the love affair is mutual.

“I played the Local on the advice of a Detroit venue I had pitched for an oh my god show. He put me in touch with Joel, and Joel gave us a show. I believe it was the year 2000, when our first EP had just come out. We continued playing the Local for years,” he says.

Flint has long been a favored city for out of town touring bands. We roll out the red carpet. Iguana loves that the long-running scene is built on all-ages shows. “There was nowhere else where we were able to build an all-ages fan base like at the Local. In Chicago, it was all bars, so it was special to play to three or four hundred people, most of whom weren’t old enough to go to a bar show and were only there to experience the music. That was magic,”

The band rode a massive wave of popularity in Flint for a few years. “All of us in the band looked so greatly forward to our two or three times a year when we'd play the Local. I wish we had full films of our shows there. The rapport with the crowd was the best of any of our shows. They knew every word. It made us feel that we wished the world was more like the Local,” he says.

Marc Jacob Hudson got his start in the Flint music scene in 1985, attending shows in the basement of the Capitol Theatre. “It was’t called the Local 432 yet, but the spirit was certainly there,” he says. “I continued going to shows through all its iterations, and played shows at most of them.”

Hudson was in the legendary early 1990s band Power on Hold, who were blending hip hop and rock before Rage Against the Machine was all over 1990s radio and MTV. “Right away it felt like both a social safe haven and a wild new frontier. In my high school years, the shows were a place to be away from the judgement and otherness that I found in other areas of my life, around a group of people that seemed to share a need for the same thing,” he says.

Hudson’s career as a producer and engineer took off. He has worked with some of the most acclaimed bands in punk and hardcore, including Against Me!, Cursive, Taking Back Sunday, and Sunny Day Real Estate, working as studio producer at his space Rancho Recordo, or doing sound at live shows. Even with this level of success, he remains committed to the Flint scene.

𝐵𝑒𝑡𝑤𝑒𝑒𝑛 𝑛𝑜𝑤 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑒𝑛𝑑 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑛𝑖𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑎𝑟𝑦 𝑓𝑢𝑛𝑑𝑟𝑎𝑖𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑐𝑎𝑚𝑝𝑎𝑖𝑔𝑛 𝑤𝑒’𝑟𝑒 𝑔𝑜𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡𝑜 𝑏𝑒 𝑐ℎ𝑒𝑐𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑖𝑛 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑓𝑜𝑙𝑘𝑠 𝑤ℎ𝑜 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑚𝑎𝑑𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐿𝑜𝑐𝑎𝑙 𝑤ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑖𝑡 𝑖𝑠 𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑦𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑠. 𝑇𝑜𝑑𝑎𝑦 𝑤𝑒 𝑐ℎ𝑒𝑐𝑘 𝑖𝑛 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝐿𝑖𝑠𝑎 𝐸𝑠𝑠𝑒𝑡𝑡, 𝑤ℎ𝑜𝑠𝑒 𝑐𝑎𝑙𝑚𝑛𝑒𝑠𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑝𝑜𝑖𝑠𝑒 𝑙𝑒𝑑 𝑡𝑜 ℎ𝑒𝑟 ℎ𝑒𝑙𝑝𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑟𝑢𝑛 𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑤𝑠 𝑏𝑒𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑠ℎ𝑒 ℎ𝑎𝑑 𝑎 𝑑𝑟𝑖𝑣𝑒𝑟’𝑠 𝑙𝑖𝑐𝑒𝑛𝑠𝑒!

Lisa Essett made her first visit to the Local at age fourteen. “I had no idea there was a space to see live music in Flint. It blew my mind, and was I ever thankful to have found it,” she says. From that first show came new friends, shared experiences, and a sense of community. “For a biracial kid from Grand Blanc, I really needed that.” By sixteen, she was working the door at shows. “I was so excited about that. At sixteen, it was the first time someone trusted me with something like that,” she recalls. It was only the beginning for Essett. “Soon after, Joel and Wade gave me other jobs to do. This laid the groundwork for me to start booking my own shows and working with bands in numerous capacities,” she explains. “I took the skills I learned at the Local and applied them to my work in social media and marketing. To build career skills from skills I learned at the Local as a teenager, that’s truly something, not to mention the lifelong friends I made back then.” Essett also went on to serve on the Board of Directors for the club.

Essett sums it up like this: “My career would be so different without punk rock, Joel, and the Local. I will rep for them always.”