

One of the party’s early supporters, Mahasin Munir, appreciates how much Simon and Hyatt have molded the party since its early days. “For us, it was the opportunity to really bring that together with an intentional effort to build this community, particularly coming out of COVID, when people couldn’t have access to nightclubs and other experiences,” Simon says. “Both of us come from backgrounds in political organizing and also in dancing,” says Simon, who runs a social justice-focused investing company, as well as the Orisha House Dance Project. They looked at events like Saint James Joy block parties in Brooklyn and LA’s Utopia (when it was held in Leimert Park) as examples. Simon and Hyatt put their heads together and started thinking about what it would mean to put on a weekly party more formally. Then people were asking like, ‘Are you going to be here next week?’ It got serious when people were like, ‘Yo, how can we contribute? How can we keep this going?’” Co-organizers Sulaiman Hyatt (left) and Morgan Simon (right) at the Days Like This community dance party at Lake Merritt in Oakland on Friday, Aug. “And we would draw another circle on the ground. “Sometimes they’d see us dancing and people would be like, ‘Can, can we join?’,” Hyatt recalls. Soon, they attracted passersby who wanted to get in on the fun. “Hooked up a battery to it, got it rockin’, and we were off.” system or you know another organizer that has a P.A.
#Time out san francisco clubbing portable
When the portable speaker sound just wasn’t cutting it, Hyatt, a longtime community organizer, pulled his P.A.
#Time out san francisco clubbing Bluetooth
So they would meet up outdoors by the lake, draw six-foot circles on the pavement to ensure social distancing, crank up the Bluetooth speaker and get down. The longtime friends who love to dance needed an outlet when the pandemic lockdowns hit and venues closed.

And me and you - your mama and your cousin, too - are invited.ĭays Like This is a free, donation-based event that hosts up to 300 people each Friday, but it started in 2020 as a party of two: Morgan Simon and Sulaiman Hyatt.

This is the Days Like This community dance party. If you’ve walked around Oakland’s Lake Merritt on a Friday evening in the last two and a half years or so, you’ve likely come across a diverse crowd of people dancing to soulful house music, Afrobeats, hip-hop or funk at the lake’s Pergola.
