No building. No mission statement on a wall. A practice — recurring music, art, food, and marketplaces that keep El Sereno connected as everything around it changes. Held in El Sereno. Open to any and all.
El Sereno is a predominantly Latino, working-class neighborhood of about 40,000 people in Northeast LA. Multigenerational families. Deep roots. Real pride. What it has historically lacked is dedicated gathering space — no community center, no LGBTQ+-specific programming, limited vendor marketplaces for residents without startup capital.
El Sereno Social Club exists to fill that gap. Not by building a building, but by practicing community. We turn backyards, working farms, factories, parks, and restaurants into sites of belonging, economic exchange, and neighborhood identity. As gentrification reshapes the neighborhoods around us, this work matters more, not less.
The demand is undeniable. Events sell out in hours. Vendor applications come in by the hundreds. People stop us on the street to ask how to join.
A lot of new people are moving in. Artists. Musicians. Storytellers. Healers. Communities of folks looking to connect with like-minded individuals — and looking for a neighborhood that still feels like one.
We see ESSC's role as connective tissue. Not the leading edge of displacement, not a velvet rope around a new scene — the table where multigenerational neighbors and new arrivals actually meet. The taqueros who have served this neighborhood for thirty years and the writer who just moved in last month, in the same backyard, on the same Saturday.
Every ESSC event takes place in El Sereno. Every ESSC event is open to any and all. Those two facts are the whole strategy.
Wine & vinyl nights, salsa dance halls, DJ-led pop-ups, and a summer Jazz series in the park.
Creative coffee meet-ups, factory tours, garden tours, and a rotating Children's Museum pop-up.
Supper clubs, brunches, LGBTQ+-inclusive taco nights, plant-forward dinners on a hilltop farm.
Flea markets and yard sales that move money to home bakers, vintage sellers, and small-batch makers.
Annual Garden Tour benefiting youth nonprofits. Kite Festival at Ascot Hills. Neighborhood-wide yard sale days.
Working relationships with Barrio Action, CD14 / Councilmember Jurado, LA-32 Neighborhood Council, and Cal State LA.
El Sereno Social Club has been doing this since 2024. The timeline below highlights twenty-plus documented events from our most recent season — held in backyards, warehouses, factories, parks, restaurants, and a working hilltop farm. Every one in El Sereno or directly serving it. The cadence keeps growing.
Andrew Rayas founded El Sereno Social Club. His grandparents lived in El Sereno. His mom grew up here and still does. Andrew has a home in the neighborhood. The work is rooted in three generations of family ties to this place.
What started as a desire to gather his neighbors has grown into a community platform reaching more than 27,000 followers and producing more than 21 documented events — from LGBTQ+-inclusive taco nights to arts programming, flea markets, and garden tours benefiting youth nonprofits.
Andrew partners with organizations including Barrio Action and maintains a working relationship with CD14 Councilmember Jurado. He leads ESSC not as an outsider with a plan, but as a neighbor who's invested in this neighborhood for the long haul.
I'm not trying to be the guy who fixes El Sereno. I'm trying to be useful to El Sereno. — Andrew Rayas, Founder
If your business shares the values we work from — local-first, community-rooted, generous — there's a way to get visible alongside ESSC. Not as a logo on a flyer. As a brand the neighborhood recognizes and trusts because we're the ones putting your name in front of them.
Brand visibility runs across whatever channels make sense for the partnership: mailers, posts, day-of event presence at recurring programming, and direct introductions to vendors, hosts, and collaborators in the network.
We're standing up a nonprofit arm so this work can be funded properly, scaled responsibly, and outlast any single season. Brand partners now become founding partners then. If your company is interested in either current-year visibility or longer-term participation in the foundation, the door is open — let's talk.