Image via Mark Dabi
Pranav Trewn finds peace in his vinyl record collection.
“Doom Loop.” The phrase would make for a great band name. Unfortunately all the talk in San Francisco is not about some exciting local punk act picking up the mantle of the Dead Kennedys. Instead, everyone seems preoccupied with the notion that since the pandemic, the city’s urban core has been experiencing a cyclical freefall. It’s the collapsing office demand sinking real estate values, and subsequent cratering of the city’s coffers, all of which has supposedly tanked residents’ welfare. Whenever I’ve met folks in other cities over the last year, I have routinely been greeted with sympathetic fears for what my life must look like: dodging human filth, needles, and carjackings in a deserted downtown, on the rare occasions I leave my home at all.
Of course, those narratives are not entirely new to San Francisco – for decades now an inkblot for anyone wary of progressive policies to project all their deepest anxieties – but the tone has certainly grown more dire. And of course, the city is far from perfect, especially in a moment when we continue to struggle with a devastating fentanyl crisis and consistently run thousands of shelter beds short, with a mayor hellbent on bulldozing and busing people off the streets without regard for where they end up.
Yet ask people who actually live in San Francisco, and they’re likely to focus on all the ways city life has thrived since the onset of remote work policies, which brought people back to their neighborhoods, opened up public space to pedestrians over cars, and spurred small business demand. And where the city could have spent its recovery efforts on tax cuts to appease Elon Musk, they’ve instead largely focused on promoting civic life. This has materialized in initiatives offering free rent for entrepreneurs, weeknight block parties, and an abundance of live performances putting to work the city’s local talent, venues, and promoters that are still recovering from 2020.
The nightlife and entertainment sector has received among San Francisco’s most holistic, effective commitments in recent memory, with a wide variety of folks working across public and private enterprise to reawaken the city through music. Philanthropies like the Civic Space Foundation, for-profit promoters like Another Planet Entertainment, and government departments like the Office of Economic and Workforce Development (OEWD) alike have all experimented with some of their boldest programming yet, as part of a collectively understood thesis that live performance can be a crucial tool to stimulate the economy and civic engagement. While acting independently, each of these organizations’ initiatives are directionally aligned, and the combined effect has made this summer one of the liveliest the Bay Area has had since long before the pandemic.
“I think it’s easy to see problems that are happening in San Francisco, throw your hands up and say, ‘I’m not a politician, I’m not in elected office, I can’t do anything about it,’” Angelica Polselli, the Director of Community Engagement at the Civic Space Foundation, told me. “And I think what these organizations realized is actually if you make something, people will come out of their homes. People will come out in the streets. People are willing to spend money. People are willing to stay in San Francisco. We just have to give them a reason to, right?”
The Civic Space Foundation began operating last year its Civic Joy Fund, which is focused on “helping San Francisco bounce back through arts, culture, and community.” One of their core efforts has been a partnership with Noise Pop, the legacy independent music promoter collaborating with them on ushering in the “Summer of Music.” The program brings musicians across the city to perform outside local businesses on the weekends, something I stumbled upon myself on a foggy Sunday afternoon last month while en route to drop off a package. I pulled out my earbuds at the sight of a jazz trio playing outside of the dispensary down my block, and instead of racing to my original destination decided to slow down, sit, and watch for a while.
This is the exact type of planned serendipity the programmers hoped to facilitate, something even the organizers themselves have gotten swept up in. “I was riding my bike down Valencia Street, like literally going to run an errand, and it was just filled with sound because of the Summer of Music,” Polselli described. “I had forgotten it was happening because it happens every week, and suddenly there’s a six-piece jazz band over here, there’s someone rocking on a guitar over there, this store has a piano player.”
The inspiration to put on the series, now in its second year, came from Foundation co-founder Manny Yekutiel, who runs a popular community space in the Mission that could be described as something of a cafe-cum-bookstore-cum-venue. Yekutiel routinely hosted jazz performances in the business’ parklet every Sunday afternoon, and as Polselli – who managed Manny’s during that time – recalled, they asked themselves, “How can we take that one thing that is working here and spread it all across San Francisco?”
They found an enthusiastic backer with Joby Pritzker, who cares a great deal about preserving San Francisco’s storied music history. He funded the project’s inaugural year, and then came back again for this year’s installment. The result has been an inescapable spirit simmering throughout San Francisco’s neighborhoods, each small drop of music tucked into an unsuspecting nook culminating in a massive impact citywide. “It’s helping keep employed these artists that make San Francisco San Francisco. They are better able to pay their rent, stay in the city, and pursue their passion,” Polselli explained. “And it’s helping these small businesses that maybe aren’t getting as much foot traffic as they would like to become destinations. And then for the average passerby or pedestrian, it’s just bringing joy and a feeling of, wow this is a magical place we live in.”
This too is how Stella Lochman sees the impact of her own work to support San Francisco’s recovery through live music. “Culture making and participation is essentially what makes a city a city, and if we don’t have that then you could just go live anywhere, right?” she posited. Lochman is the Director of Activation and Programming for the SF Parks Alliance, a key partner in SF Live, an initiative announced earlier this year by Mayor London N. Breed and the OEWD that is funneling $2.5 million from the California State Legislature into programming across the city’s public spaces. Among its pillars is a series of free performances in three of the downtown’s underutilized parks, organized in collaboration between the Parks Alliance and Noise Pop with unique partners for each event.
The series began in July with the violin-wielding art-R&B hero Sudan Archives headlining a bill featuring the local acts Kossisko and Lalin St. Juste along the waterfront at Crane Cove Park. Despite dreary weather, the event was a resounding success, bringing in more attendees than Lochman expected. The music was coupled with a wide range of supplementary attractions, from sweet treats by food trucks to information booths for sustainability-minded start-ups to seemingly endless stalls selling arts, crafts, and clothing at the show.
It’s all part of an effort to “remind folks why they live in San Francisco,” Lochman explained. “And the benefit of living here when frankly, it’s hard to live here. Especially if you’re not economically at the top. So it’s meaningful for the city to invest in folks who they know need this – not just the venues, not just the bands, but the people of San Francisco need it too.”
Especially in a moment when inflation has constrained consumer spending down to maybe one monolithic stadium show a year, there is a particularly urgent value to free programming both making accessible beloved out of state acts and elevating the platform of local heroes. Before SF Live, the long-running Stern Grove Festival (who’ve been putting on summer concerts in their namesake park since 1938) has amassed such popularity that they consistently run lines around the block before doors open. The Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival brings three days of renowned artists to town every October, but more importantly, they bring tens of thousands into Golden Gate Park to picnic in the sun before flooding into the Inner Sunset and Richmond’s local bars and restaurants for the night. These events have proven the appetite for and appeal of community-minded entertainment, demonstrating that concerts could work as an urban planning tool for government leaders looking to inspire movement within the city.
“Even when that music stops, the energy continues, you know?” Ben Davis reasoned, noting the impact not just of the foot traffic music inspires, but the footprints it leaves behind. “So we’re just making lots of music across the city.” The founder of Illuminate, another partner under SF Live, he made his name in the city for putting on the Bay Bridge’s beloved (and soon returning) Bay Lights display. While originally beginning as a funding mechanism for that project, Illuminate expanded its mandate in the city to, as Davis put it, “create the impossible works of public art that bring out humanity’s better nature.” This has led to space-enhancing projects like a light show at the Conservatory of the Flowers and lasers projected from the Fairmont Hotel.
IIluminate’s work quickly expanded to include music, and they began programming Golden Gate Park’s long dormant bandshell. As part of the grants that established SF Live, Illuminate received a bigger budget to grow their bandshell programming, in addition to bringing shows to other underappreciated city venues like the Jerry Garcia Amphitheater and Fulton Plaza. Davis conducts this work alongside Steffen Franz, a lifelong music business professional who he describes as “kind of the Bill Graham of live free music in San Francisco”. Together, they jointly share the goal of “bringing the live music swagger back” to the city, which has materialized in a calendar of over 125 shows this year, including weekly programming like “Singer/Songwriter Wednesdays” and “Crucial Reggae Sundays” (the latter beginning at 4:20 pm, naturally).
Of course, some would argue that the swagger was never in danger. Another Planet Entertainment (APE) is San Francisco’s largest independent concert promoter, putting on hundreds of shows a year across the Bay Area (and increasingly the state), including in many of its most beloved venues like the Fox Theater and the Greek Theater. They also throw Outside Lands, the city’s annual three day music festival that last year celebrated bringing $1 billion to the local economy over its history.
Such an impact made APE an inevitable partner for the Mayor’s Office to work alongside for their nightlife initiatives. Mutual interest led to a deal between the City and APE allowing the promoter to leave up the main stage from Outside Lands in Golden Gate Park’s Polo Field this year for additional performances in the following weekends, in exchange for APE hosting three shows in and around downtown and agreeing to cover the MUNI transit costs for concertgoers.
The first of their events this year was a massive double-header of Skrillex and Fred again.. in the Civic Center Plaza outside City Hall, hosting 25,000 paid attendees and certainly more outside the venue who couldn’t score tickets. Their next event, while at a smaller scale, was a free day party with the homegrown label Dirtybird Records at Embarcadero Plaza. And in turn for organizing these events, APE got to hold a rare and sold out System of a Down on the same infrastructure they built for their marquee festival the week prior. All of these shows made prominent headlines, and were among the most heavily discussed topics by friends in the weeks that followed, both from those who could and couldn’t attend. Everyone is eager to see what they announce next.
Delighted by all this music and chatter surrounding it is Ben VanHouten, a longtime figure of the city’s music scene as a cofounder of its influential but unfortunately shuttered non-profit music blog The Bay Bridged. He serves as the Director of Nightlife Initiatives at OEWD, who put out the RFP that led to Illuminate, the Parks Alliance, and Noise Pop leading the charge for SF Live. After years of bureaucratic conceptualization, VanHouten has been overjoyed to see all these workstreams flood the city simultaneously.
“One of the things that’s been so interesting about seeing the whole landscape of events, activations, and creative output that is happening right now is that so much of it is people similarly aligned in their thinking, inspired by each other’s ideas, and in a sort of unspoken dialogue that is really about what opportunities are,” VanHouten said. “I think there’s as much shared buy-in as there’s ever been in the role of nightlife arts culture entertainment in being a centerpiece of our recovery.”
He sees the impact of these efforts beyond any specific economic or attendance metrics. “Part of this is about sending a message that San Francisco is this fun, thriving music city and it’s a great place to experience live entertainment,” he affirmed. “Which is something that many people who live here already know, but it’s important to remind folks who maybe didn’t go to shows for a few years, as well as continuing to send that message to regional, national, international audiences too.”
That message is resonating. For the first time of any summer I’ve spent in the city, I have friends in New York jealous of all the events I’m attending in the city. From watching Jerry Harrison and Adrian Belew perform the Talking Heads’ Remain In Light in front of the Giants ballpark to the Bhangra & Beats Night Market – another OEWD sponsored event – that brought Punjabi and Afrobeat lovers to the Financial District, I’ve discovered new corners to a city I had thought I thoroughly understood, attended concerts with friends who I can rarely get to stay out past 9 pm, and been outside more than the city’s usual period of “Fogust” compels me.
But for all that this funding has brought to the city, the future of SF Live is uncertain. “My biggest fear for funding around this kind of stuff is that people think the pandemic is over and we no longer need to fund public gatherings or joy or ‘getting people back out,’” Lochman sighed. “I feel like so many people can be like, yeah okay that worked, and then not do it again. People feel like COVID is behind us. But the need for gathering and community is greater than ever I think.”
VanHouten is sensitive to this fear of a one and done investment from the city. “Now one of the questions is, how do we sustain this? And what does that look like?” he posed. He offered one answer by bringing up a number of proposed initiatives his office is working on alongside the Mayor to support their nightlife sector goals, such as the rollout of “entertainment zones” that will allow people to walk with drinks openly on sidewalks and streets, as well as easing the application process for venues with regular permitting needs like blocking parking spots for vans and tour buses. He further cites partnerships with the pandemic-born National Independent Venue Association (NIVA) to pass legislation at the state level that can rightsize arbitrary regulations for the field.
“We are iterating in real time, and are still trying to learn, trying to pilot, trying to deploy new outdoor activity strategies,” he said. “We want to empower venues to take as many risks as possible, to be in a place where they feel comfortable taking risks, where local performers can take risks on stage and develop their careers.” It’s a rare line to hear from a government official, that they want the performing arts sector to experiment and push the boundaries further. Yet it also reflects a unique philosophy of mutual respect that’s taken hold between these businesses and public officials, one deviates from what is often an antagonistic relationship in other cities (look no further than the chaotic back and forth between Chicago and Riot Fest).
Noise Pop CEO Michelle Swing appreciates the approach the government is taking to enable new opportunities rather than put up red tape for her industry. “I think that the city was really thoughtful in thinking about how we can support these businesses who bring in so much to the local culture of San Francisco,” she commented. She sees the programming as an unqualified success: “I’ve heard this firsthand from people who have come from out of town, that they’re like, ‘Oh, this doom loop narrative that’s constantly shoved in our faces is just not the reality of what’s going on.’ The city is a totally different environment than what it was in 2020 or 2021. I think that it’s safe to say that that narrative is irrelevant at this point.”
And beyond the impact on both San Franciscans and the city’s spectators, SF Live has also facilitated the local industry players to move more harmoniously. “The nice thing about the initiative was that it brought together so many people and we weren’t all fighting over the same pot of money,” Lochman said. “We were working together with that pot of money. From a government funding perspective, I worry that we’re going to go back to just fighting over the same pool of resources. And I love the folks that do Downtown First Thursdays, I don’t want to fight with them. I want us all to be able to provide our services.”
That ethos is what has made all of this work a success in the first place – everyone coming together to collaborate on shaping a shared vision for their city. “This long government process is really just people who care a lot trying to have fun and support local artists,” Lochman summarized, before addressing directly the final collaborator necessary to sustain this mission: “But it’s equally as important to come out to these things. Your active participation in them is what makes them not just possible, but what makes them a good time and special. You don’t get to move to a city and appreciate its culture if you don’t also participate in it.”
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