Dormont Concert Venue Unites Community from a Backyard Parking Pad
Anyone living in the Greater Pittsburgh Region knows of the need to respect the Pittsburgh Parking Chair, a time-honored tradition where folks are so possessive over their parking spots, they leave behind markers of all kinds – chairs, furniture, random objects – to reserve their territory once they drive away. It’s so popular that in Dormont, a cute residential suburb just over 10 minutes south of Downtown Pittsburgh, the police department sometimes posts reminders scolding residents against the practice, warning that officers will remove the chairs during their patrols.
Which makes it all the more endearing that Dormont residents Amy Kline and Stefan Flower are becoming well-known for their up-and-coming musical venue making its mark by giving their parking spot up. At least while the music’s playing.
The Parking Pad, located on a literal parking pad in the backyard of their Dormont home on Hillsdale Avenue, is perhaps one of the coziest, most intimate venues in the region. At the front of the house, guests can peruse a Little Music Library – “a little free library, but for vinyl and CDs,” according to Amy – on their way to the show. As bands set up on concrete slabs out back, community members prepare to listen to the music while spreading out on blankets and assorted random furniture, not unlike those often left out to save treasured street parking spots.
Amy, who serves as General Manager and runs the space alongside her partner Stefan, the venue's Production Manager, describes Parking Pad concerts as community events with a dedicated and friendly fan base, which has sometimes reached crowds of over 100 music lovers.
“At our house shows, it's a mini-festival environment with a potluck,” she says. “Kids are welcome and have a blast. The audience are true music fans wanting to see something different in a cool niche space.”
It also has a pretty great origin story.
During the height of the pandemic in 2020, in the time of social distancing and extreme boredom, Amy became inspired by viral videos of people in Italy singing on their balconies. Together, alongside hundreds of her neighbors, she launched the Dormont CoronaChoir, whose rendition of a hit song from Broadway’s Les Miserables, belted out from dozens of neighborhood streets and Zoom videos, landed her a spot in the New York Times.
The music continued with the launch of The Parking Pad soon after in the summer of 2021, during a period of time when music venues across the nation began facing closures and it became difficult for musicians to find a place to perform. Amy says The Parking Pad started simply because she and her family missed seeing live music. And they weren’t alone.
Since its start, the Parking Pad has hosted 16 shows in their backyard space, and has expanded into a production company hosting shows at additional venues in the area, including the Dormont VFW, Hollywood Theater, and various events locations in partnership with the nonprofit organization Dormont Arts, which Amy also founded. (Oh yeah, she also has a day job serving as Director of Client Success at a national events marketing company; when questioned, she swears to me that she does sleep at night.) All told, over the past three years, the company has produced about 40 shows, mostly featuring bands from the local jam, funk, and bluegrass scene.
We chatted with Amy during a brief summer show hiatus in July, and asked her to share more about her beginnings, future plans, and the importance of music and community. The below conversation has been condensed for space and clarity.
The Parking Pad was born during the pandemic, at a time when a lot of music venues were forced to shut down. Did you expect The Parking Pad to not only still be going strong three years later, but expanding to additional venues, when you first launched? What kept you going?
When we first launched, we were just a party in the yard, throwing shows for our friends to attend with bands made up of our friends. We were doing it to support musicians in the pandemic. We didn’t know we’d even do a second one, but it just worked and we kept booking them. Then bands started coming to us. Then venues started coming to us, like the Hollywood. That’s when we really jumped in and formed an LLC, got insurance, and became The Parking Pad Productions as it is today.
We keep going because of the encouragement of the community. It’s been so positive and our audiences and bands really seem to love it and like working with us. We’re fans first, but I bring a deep history of music marketing and ticketing into the mix and Stefan is an engineer who has a good ear and is learning sound mixing and engineering quickly (with help from an equally supportive tech environment who really wants to help each other be great.)
I can tell Dormont means a lot to you. What is it about this neighborhood that sets it apart from other places in the city?
I moved to Dormont in January 2020 and was immediately welcomed. I started the CoronaChoir and everyone took to this big weird idea, and made it so much better. I had a committee of people around me, supporting the concept, making promo videos, and acting as choir “leadership.” And that birthed Dormont Arts. It’s been amazing to be embraced in this way and see it all grow. In other words: Dormont is weird and lets me be weird AND noisy, and continues to let Stefan and I be weird and noisy. What’s not to love?