Donut panic, the music and vegan doughnuts are back

A driver plowing into the building and wall-punching punks can’t stop the music at a Grantville doughnut shop.

After a five month remodeling, the reopened Donut Panic segues from punk to Persian this Sunday.

Linda Dami, who has a UCSD degree in Anthropology, co-owns Donut Panic with her father Mark. It was while working at UCSD’s student-owned Groundwork Books and attending shows at Ché Café that she picked up a DIY ethic.

“I have a bunch of friends who are into bands and have DIY punk values,” the younger Dami tells the Reader. “A big reason I started to have shows here was because of all the shit that was going down at the Ché. A lot of the shows were getting canceled.”

So along with a friend from the band Remain in Vain who worked the door, Dami started throwing shows at Donut Panic shortly after she and her dad opened the store in 2014. She says she did about eight shows every other month or so featuring punk, hip-hop, and metalcore, including bands like the Vaginals, Debt Ritual, Satan Dance Party, and Nikki and the Mongoloids.

Then in January 2015 she let the guys from the PSO band throw a show there with their famous crew known as the “Lemon Grove Punks.” Linda regrets that her friend who normally works the door wasn’t there that night.

“There were a lot of high school kids who were moshing,” says Dami. And while the band paid to fix a hole in the wall, the bigger snafu was happening outside.

“The cops never bothered us before,” says Dami. “We would normally have people my age [mid-20s]. But this time there were a lot of high school kids drinking in the parking lot. The police came. Later someone came from the alcohol control board. My dad kind of felt bad.”

She says Donut Panic may rock again, “But it will probably be an acoustic open-mic-type of thing.”

In April of last year a senior driver drove into the building causing $30,000 worth of damage and a five-month shut-down during remodeling. “We lost some momentum. We still get the people who come in for our vegan doughnuts, but a lot of the locals don’t know we are open again.”

Dami says there are a handful of other San Diego vegan doughnut stores. “But most only do cake. We do cake and yeast-raised vegan doughnuts.”

She says Donut Panic took its cue for its next musical endeavor from her father.

“My dad is Iranian. On Sunday we have members from a Persian music collective called Dornob. They sing in Farsi and use traditional Persian instruments like the [stringed] Tar and the Tombak [drum], as well as more traditional instruments like keyboard and guitar.”

The Dornob show is 6–9 p.m. Sunday, January 17, with a suggested door donation of $3–$5. A vegetarian Persian dinner is also available