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Entertainment in San Francisco

NIGHTLIFE AND ENTERTAINMENT

Compared to many US cities, where you need money and attitude in equal measure, San Francisco’s nightlife scene demands little of either. It is not unusual for restaurants to provide live music and you can often eat and be entertained for no extra cost. This is no 24-hour city, and the approach to socializing is often surprisingly low-key, with little of the pandering to fads and fashions that goes on in New York or LA. For $30 you can get a decent night out, including cover charge and a few drinks. Always have your ID with you, otherwise you cannot get past the bouncers at all clubs and music venues. Though smoking is technically illegal in all bars and clubs, the law is routinely flouted by locals willing to risk a ticket.

The Sunday Chronicle ‘s “Pink Pages” supplement, along with the free weekly Bay Guardian or the San Francisco Weekly , are the best sources of listings . Ticketmaster (tel 415/421-8497, ) is the major ticket agency, with outlets in Tower Records and Rite Aid stores. Tickets.com (tel 415/478-2277, ) is also worth a try.

Bars

Since its lawless, boomtown days, San Francisco has been a drinking town. Even as the rest of California cleans up its act, San Franciscans continue to indulge; the city’s bars vary from seedy late-night dives to rooftop piano lounges touting glittering views.

Backflip Phoenix Hotel , 601 Eddy St, Tenderloin tel 415/771-3547. Fantastically retro bar adjacent to the hotel’s pool patio. Black-vinyl-clad waitstaff, entirely blue decor and a menagerie of bizarre and lively patrons. To write home about.

Brainwash 1122 Folsom St, SoMa tel 415/861-FOOD. Great idea - café/bar and laundromat where you can have breakfast and beer while you do your washing. Popular with the young and novelty-conscious.

Edinburgh Castle 950 Geary St, Tenderloin tel 415/885-4074. The best place in the city for British-style pints, fish and chips (still wrapped in newspaper) and a game of darts. The bar was prominently featured in the cult film, So I Married an Axe-Murderer .

Gordon Biersch Brewery 2 Harrison St, Embarcadero tel 415/243-8246. Bayfront microbrewery in a converted coffee warehouse. Great selection of beers pulls in a downtown twenty-something crowd.

Harry Denton’s Starlight Room top floor, Sir Francis Drake Hotel , 450 Powell St, downtown tel 415/395-8595. Join the dressed-up, grown-up, moneyed crowd and drink martinis to live-jazz accompaniment.

Occidental Grill 56 Belden Place, downtown tel 415/834-0484. Re-opened in a new location due to a fire, this Barbary Coast-style den is supposedly the birthplace of the martini, though that’s open to more than some debate. However, they certainly do make a mean one. Their second business, the Occidental Cigar Club, is around the corner at 471 Pine St.

Red Room 827 Sutter St, Tenderloin tel 415/346-7666. Like the name implies, everything - including the walls, the furniture, the glasses and many of the drinks - is red in this popular faux-dive.

The Tonga Room basement of the Fairmont , 950 Mason St, Nob Hill tel 415/772-5278. A must for fans of the ludicrous or just the very drunk. It’s decked out like a Polynesian village, complete with a pond and simulated rainstorms, and a grass-skirted band plays terrible jazz and pop covers from a raft in the middle of the water. Cover $3 after 8pm, outrageously priced cocktails, but worth every cent.

Tosca Café 242 Columbus St, North Beach tel 415/391-1244. A beautiful old bar with tiled floors, bow-tied bartenders and opera as the soundtrack. Come early as the bass from the nightclub upstairs can be bothersome.

The Up & Down Club 1151 Folsom St, SoMa tel 415/626-2388. This small, popular split-level club-cum-bar has earned a solid reputation for first-rate drinks and live music.

Vesuvio’s 255 Columbus St, North Beach tel 415/362-3370. Legendary Beat haunt in the 1950s, next to City Lights Bookstore. Still draws an arty, friendly crowd who prop up the bar into the small hours.

Zeitgeist 199 Valencia, the Mission tel 415/255-7505. A biker bar largely populated with nonmotorized bicycle messengers. A large patio makes it a haven for smokers.

Live Music

San Francisco’s music scene reflects the character of the city: laid-back, eclectic and not a little nostalgic. The options for catching live music are wide and the scene is definitely on the up and up, with the city regularly spawning good young bands. Check the San Francisco Bay Guardian and SF Weekly free weeklies, and the San Francisco Chronicle , for listings.

Bimbo’s 365 Club 1025 Columbus Ave tel 415/474-0365. Classy lounge with tableside drink service (2 minimum) and a varied high quality menu of music styles from jazz to ska.

Biscuits & Blues 401 Mason St tel 415/292-2583. Lively blues supper club with inexpensive Southern cuisine and hot blues acts nightly. Reservations recommended for dinner shows.

Blue Lamp 561 Geary St tel 415/885-1464. Quintessential dive close to downtown that features good acoustic acts (blues & jazz).

Boom Boom Room 1601 Fillmore St tel 415/673-8000, . Once owned by the late blues legend John Lee Hooker, this small, intimate bar delivers straight-ahead jazz or classic blues acts nightly; $3 cover weekdays and $7-$10 weekends.

Bottom of the Hill1233 17th St tel 415/621-4455. Potrero Hill hangout for rock & country music, live seven nights a week, drawing a late-twenty- to thirtysomething crowd. There’s an outdoor all-you-can-eat barbecue on the patio Sun. Cover for shows $4-7.

Bruno’s 2389 Mission St tel 415/648-7701. Swank jazz and swing bar/restaurant pulling the kind of attractive young things who are titillated to be in the Mission’s seedy section. Cover about $7.

Butterfly 1710 Mission St tel 415/864-5575. A sophisticated jazz and dining spot, with occasional poetry and performance art pieces. The food is very good (served till 1am), but come for the jazz.

Café du Nord 2170 Market St tel 415/861-5016. This popular bar is quite the place to experience live swing, jazz, Latin and blues over good food, or just have a beer and shoot some pool.

Elbo Room 647 Valencia St tel 415/552-7788. The birthplace of acid jazz, a smoothed out instrumental sound that provides upbeat background music for an intense pick-up scene.

The Fillmore 1805 Geary at Fillmore tel 415/346-6000, . The revitalization of a San Francisco institution, the Fillmore features big and little acts alike, for about $20-$25 a pop. A great place to imagine what it was all like in the 1960s.

Great American Music Hall 859 O’Farrell tel 415/885-0750. Historic former bordello and saloon that has been converted into a popular venue for rock, blues, and world music acts.

Lou’s Pier 47 300 Jefferson St tel 415/771-0377. An old favorite, and about the only decent place on the Wharf. Lou’s blues pulls a good crowd most nights.

Paradise Lounge 308 11th St tel 415/861-6906. Good SoMa venue to see up-and-coming rock bands (usually three per night), or take a break for a game of pool upstairs.

The Saloon 1232 Grant St tel 415/989-7666. North Beach’s best spot for R&B. Always packed, it creaks nightly as blues bands and crowds of enthusiastic dancers do their thing.

Tongue & Groove 2513 Van Ness Ave tel 415/928-0404. Local bands ranging from rock and funk to Seventies retro and alternative. Cover $4-8.

Clubbing

While clubbing in San Francisco may not have the feverish following of other cities, the clubs that exist are encouragingly inexpensive, and you can leave your attitude at home. A recent spate of police raids has put something of a damper on the scene and forced several popular spaces to shut down. But with a population as young and hip as this city’s, odds are it will be impossible to keep a good party down for long. The greatest concentration of clubs is in SoMa and, recently, the Mission . You must bring your ID to get in to all clubs; most require you to be at least 21 except for a few 18-and-over clubs. Expect to pay a cover charge ranging anywhere from $3 to $7 and up to $15 for the huge dance caverns like Ten15 .

Club Townsend 177 Townsend St tel 415/974-1156. Site of long-running gay and lesbian dance parties (Club Q for women, Club Universe and Pleasuredome for men) on the first Fri of every month, Sat and Sun respectively. Call their information line for the latest events.

DNA Lounge 375 11th St tel 415/626-1409. The music changes nightly, but the young hipsters are the same. Large dance floor downstairs, comfy sofas in the mezzanine.

El Rio 3158 Mission St tel 415/282-3325. Mixed crowds gather for changing nightly entertainment and some great giveaways, like oysters on the half-shell on a Friday. The popular live salsa on summer Sun afternoons draws a predominantly female crowd.

EndUp 401 6th St at Harrison tel 415/357-0827. Long after other places close, this is where everyone ends up. Certain nights attract gay or lesbian crowds like Girl Spot (Sat) and Fag (Fri). Good for the hardcore party animal - especially the all-day, all-night Sunday T-dance beginning at 5am.

Justice League 628 Divisadero St tel 415/289-2038. Hosting top-notch hip-hop and salsa acts, in addition to regular stints by adventurous DJs and poetry slams.

The Make-Out Room 3225 22nd St at Mission tel 415/647-2888. The hipster’s meeting place of choice featuring DJs just about every night. Tuesdays and Fridays are free starting at 10pm; otherwise plan on a $5-10 cover.

Nickie’s 460 Haight St tel 415/621-6508. This place rocks every night. Whether it’s Grateful Dead night, African, Latin or Seventies funk, Nickie’s is for the very lively.

Sound Factory 525 Harrison St tel 415/979-8686. Huge multilevel 18-and-over place with three rooms for simultaneous house, hip-hop and Latin dance parties.

Ten15 1015 Folsom tel 415/385-1015. Another huge club for serious sweating: 6 rooms with different music in each, especially deep jungle house, and cool laser light shows. You may have to wait in a long line Thurs-Sat.

330 Ritch 330 Ritch St tel 415/541-9574. Low-ceilinged and crowded with slender SoMa types. Serves food until 10pm, then DJs spin funk, soul, disco and British pop music on different nights. Live jazz on Satuday and a live swing band and free swing lessons on Wednesday.

Classical Music, Opera and Dance

Though the San Francisco arts scene has a reputation for provincialism, this is the only city on the west coast to boast its own professional symphony, ballet and opera companies. These companies rely entirely on private contributions for their survival and low-priced tickets are rare, if not nonexistent. Look out in summer for the free concerts in Stern Grove (at 19th Avenue and Sloat Boulevard), where the symphony, opera and ballet give open-air performances for ten successive Sundays (starting in June). Last-minute standing room tickets provide a cheaper option for those on a budget.

The San Francisco Opera Association (ticket and schedule information tel 415/864-3330) has been performing in the opulent War Memorial Opera House , 301 Van Ness Ave at Grove, since the building opened in 1932, pulling in big names like Placido Domingo and Kiri Te Kanawa on a regular basis. Its main season runs from the end of September for thirteen weeks, and its opening night is one of the principal social events on the west coast. Also housed here is the San Francisco Ballet (tel 415/865-2000), whose regular season starts in February, while performances of The Nutcracker occur during the Christmas season.

The Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall , 201 Van Ness Ave (tel 415/864-6000), is the permanent home of the San Francisco Symphony, hosting a year-round season of classical music and sometimes performances by other, often offbeat musical and touring groups.

Theater

The majority of the theaters in downtown’s Theater District are not especially innovative, but tickets are reasonably inexpensive - up to $20 a seat - and there’s usually good availability. The TIX Bay Area ticket booth in Union Square (Tues-Thurs 11am-6pm, Fri & Sat 11am-7pm; tel 415/433-7827) regularly has day-of-performance tickets for half price and full-price advance sales. It’s also an outlet for Ticketmaster and sells Muni tickets.

American Conservatory Theater Geary Theater, 415 Geary St tel 415/749-2228. The Tony award-winning ACT puts on eight major plays each season in the city’s best serious theater venue.

Beach Blanket Babylon Club Fugazi, 678 Green St tel 415/421-4222. This legendary musical spoof, filled with celebrity impersonations and towering hats, has been running since 1974. Highly recommended, but remember to book in advance.

Exit Theatre 156 Eddy St tel 415/673-3847. Avant-garde and experimental, the Exit is the place to go when you’ve wearied of the Broadway retreads.

Golden Gate Theater 1 Taylor St tel 415/551-2000. San Francisco’s most elegant theater (in its least elegant neighborhood), with marble flooring, rococo ceilings and gilt trimmings. A pity the program doesn’t live up to the surroundings - generally a mainstream diet of touring musicals.

Lorraine Hansberry Theater 620 Sutter St tel 415/474-8800. The mainstay of African-American theater in San Francisco. Traditional theater as well as contemporary political pieces and jazz/blues musical revues.

The Magic Theater Fort Mason Center, Building D tel 415/441-8001. Specializes in contemporary American playwrights and emerging new talent: Sam Shepard premieres his work here.

Theatre Rhinoceros 2926 16th St tel 415/861-5079. San Francisco’s leading gay theater group. Lighter, humorous productions, as well as those that confront gay issues.

Theatre on the Square 450 Post St tel 415/433-9500. Converted Gothic theater with drama, musicals, comedy and mainstream theater pieces. San Francisco’s main fringe venue.

Comedy Clubs

Bay Area Theatresports Bayfront Theatre, Bldg B, Third floor, Fort Mason Center (Marina Blvd at Buchanan St) tel 415/474-6776. An acting-based improv group that can be hilariously spontaneous. Definitely a less predictable comedy night out than at your average club.

Cobb’s Comedy Club The Cannery , 2801 Leavenworth St tel 415/928-4320. Pricey and usually full of tourists, but the standard of the acts is fairly consistent. Worth a look if everything else is booked up.

Punchline Comedy Club 444 Battery St tel 415/397-7573. Frontrunner of the city’s “polished” cabaret venues. Intimate, smoky feel; ideal for downing expensive cocktails and laughing your head off. The bigger names in the world of stand-up perform here, and it’s always packed.

Sports in San Francisco

San Francisco’s dedication to its professional sports teams can verge on the obsessive. Tickets for the big events can sell out, but it’s usually possible to show up on the day, and it needn’t cost all that much: an outfield seat to watch baseball from the “bleachers” goes for around $7, with seats closer in topping the scale at around $15. The Oakland team runs a promotion called “Buck Days” when select seats and all hot dogs are $1 on Wednesdays. Advance tickets for all Bay Area sports events are available through the Ticketmaster charge-by-phone ticket service (tel 415/421-TIXS, ), or through the teams’ headquarters.

Baseball : The Oakland A’s play at the usually sunny Oakland (aka Network Associates) Coliseum (tel 510/638-0500), which has a BART stop in front. The San Francisco Giants play at Pac Bell Park, where home runs sometimes splash into the bay (tel 415/972-2000). There are 500 tickets made available two-and-a-half hours before game time and long lines form early and often. Walk up to the ticket booths at 24 Willie Mays Plaza, near Third and King, to get them.

Football : The San Francisco 49ers , many-time Super Bowl champions, also play at 3Com Park, where you may have to pay as much as $100 (tel 415/656-4900), and the Oakland Raiders , blue-collar heroes, bash heads at the Oakland Coliseum (tel 1-800/949-2626).

Basketball : The reliably awful Golden State Warriors play at newly renovated Oakland Arena (tel 1-888/479-4667).

Ice hockey : The San Jose Sharks (tel 408/287-7070) play at their own arena in San Jose.

Soccer : The San Jose Earthquakes (tel 408/260-6300, ), major league soccer champs in 2001, draw large crowds at San Jose State’s Spartan Stadium. Women’s soccer, also played at Spartan Stadium, is represented by the Bay Area CyberRays (tel 408/535-0980, ), who won the WUSA championship in 2001, the first year of the league’s inception.

Stanford Stadium , scene of six matches in soccer’s 1994 World Cup , is on the campus of Stanford University, 27 miles south of San Francisco and not far north of San Jose. The Stanford Cardinal football team plays here during the fall.