A 24-year-old Daly City man has been arrested in connection with a mid-April incident in which he allegedly punched a woman who was working the door at the bar Midnight Sun in the Castro neighborhood.

As the Bay Area Reporter reports, San Francisco police arrested 24-year-old Vaizzah Taito of Daly City last week, booking him on one count of misdemeanor battery in connection with an April 18 incident at Midnight Sun.

In that incident, doorperson Calliope Solis, 35, said she was violently punched by Taito at around 10:50 pm when she refused to allow him into the bar — based on previous experience with his behavior.

Solis previously described the situation to the Bay Area Reporter, saying that Taito approached the door at the bar with two women, while she was checking IDs and taking cover charges. Solis did not know Taito's name, but she said she had met him through a mutual acquaintance, and about two years earlier he had grabbed her by the hair at The Edge when she refused to answer questions he was asking her about someone they both knew.

"I … said, 'You are not welcome here and you know why,'" Solis tells the BAR. "The girl [he was with] asks me, ‘Why isn’t he allowed in?’ so I [turned my] focus to her and said, 'He knows why.' As I’m saying that, he lunges around her and punches me in the face. I took a second to recoil, and by that time, he had already sprinted away."

Solis reported the incident to police, and she told the BAR that she had alerted other people working in the neighbhorhood to be aware that Taito could be violent.

"I have been living in San Francisco for eight years, and the longer I’ve lived here, the more I’ve gotten involved in nightlife, one way or another. A lot of people know me, so when I decided to take the job at Midnight Sun, I never thought something like this would happen," Solis said.

"As a trans woman, I assumed I would be protected and people wouldn’t think to harm me, but it happened," Solis added. "It’s devastating, and I’m angry, and I would like him to be held accountable."

She now tells the BAR that she is glad an arrest was made.

Dave Burke, who works in the office of Board of Supervisors President Rafael Mandelman, said to the BAR, "I want to thank the Midnight Sun for their persistence and cooperation in this matter. Violence has no place in the Castro, and it won’t be tolerated."

Taito reportedly made a court appearance on Thursday, May 28, and agreed to return on his own recognizance for a hearing on June 18.

This incident follows an unrelated incident of violence in the Castro neighborhood on May 18, in which a man with a pro-Charlie Kirk message on his vehicle allegedly assaulted a resident and sprayed a hateful message in graffiti outside a flower shop. No arrest has yet been made in that case.

Related: Man In SUV With Pro-Charlie Kirk Message Allegedly Tags Gay-Owned Castro Florist With Hateful Graffiti

The natural wine bar with a nightly dance party that took the Mission by storm in the last couple years is expanding in the neighborhood with a second venue, which will be a nightclub with food and cocktails.

Bar Part Time, which started as a pandemic pop-up and has become a popular fixture on 14th Street, was part of a natural wine wave that has drawn in a bevy of young Millenial and Gen Z drinkers in recent years. The Chronicle noted, when Bar Part Time opened in its permanent spot, that "natural wine — the rarer the better — has become a lifestyle token, emblematic of a certain sort of urbanity." And the wine bar tapped into the trend in a major way, continuing to take on a party atmosphere, especially on weekends, that would have been very foreign to most wine bars a decade ago.

Copycat hip-kid wine spots have since opened in LA, Portland, and elsewhere.

Bar Part Time's trio of owners, Dan Small, Jeremy Castillo, and Justin Dolezal, are now in expansion mode, and will be opening a proper nightclub with proper, high-ABV cocktails. It will be called Downtime, and as the Chronicle reports today, it's moving into the 6,000-square-foot space at 2243 Mission Street that was recently abandoned by the on-again-off-again Bissap Baobab.

Downtime will have a menu of zero-zero (ultra-unprocessed and natural) wines, in addition to a cocktail menu. For the latter, the owners have partnered with veteran bar guy Eric Ochoa, who's also a partner at Dalva, and previously worked at ABV and Bar Agricole. Ochoa tells the Chronicle that we can expect "inventive, delicious, classic" cocktails, in the bright vein of Dalva.

The food will be coming from the team behind acclaimed Berkeley spot Rose Pizzeria — though, curiously, there will be no pizza. Rose Pizzeria, as we know, is opening its first San Francisco location soon in the Richmond District, but they'll be doing something else, to be announced, at Downtime, in the way of bar snacks. And the link seems to be natural wine, which is also at the center of Rose Pizzeria's menu.

After some renovations and sound-system upgrades, Downtime is aiming for a late-fall opening.

Downtime - 2243 Mission Street - Opening this fall

A new club is coming to 11th Street in San Francisco's SoMa district, from Oakland-born rap artist Budda Mack, and it will be called The Budda.

Known for tracks like "Swerve" and 2023's "Twerk," Budda Mack is looking to branch out into club ownership, and he says he'll be opening his club The Budda in January in the former Slim's space (333 11th Street).

"San Francisco, Bay Area get ready for the opening of my night club in SF," Budda Mack announced on Instagram. "January is about to be different," he says, adding that The Budda will be"a new club bringing energy, culture, and unforgettable nights to the city."

Also, he says, "This isn’t just another venue, it’s a movement."

An announcement on the club's new Insta also says that the club is actively hiring.

Slim's, of course, was famously opened by Boz Scaggs in 1988, and it quickly became an iconic SF music venue, hosting legendary, intimate shows by Prince, No Doubt, Radiohead, Pearl Jam, Green Day, Snoop Dogg, Sheryl Crow, Beck, and many more. Slim's closed in 2020, and was reborn, briefly, as YOLO.

It's not clear if The Budda will exclusively be a hip-hop venue and club, and Budda Mack has not spoken publicly about the project, that we're aware of, outside of the Instagram announcement.

Stay tuned as we hopefully learn more. And, that January timeframe, just given how things tend to go around here, might be optimistic.

A new upscale billiards lounge with a cocktail bar has just opened on Mission Street, in the space that was formerly home to ECHO nightclub.

The Hall, which aims to "fill a unique gap in SF's nightlife" by offering a high-end billiards experience with food and cocktails, opened last weekend at 2565 Mission Street, across from Alamo Drafthouse. The two-level space has been transformed into a moody lounge and pool hall, featuring eight new professional pool tables by Diamond Billiards.

Each pool table is accompanied by floating, focused lighting, keeping the light where it needs to be and keeping the mood lighting dimmer in the lounge space.

The team behind it hopes that weekly pool league nights and corporate events will fill the space on weeknights, and table (not pool table) reservations are available seven nights a week for drinks and food, starting at 5 pm. Pool tables are available first-come first-served, and will run you $15 per hour for one person — or it'll be $25/hr for two people, and $30/hr for three people. There's a two-person minimum on tables during peak hours.

The venue offers a menu of signature cocktails and globally inspired street-food bites, with Brazilian cheese bread bites (pao de queijo), tandoori chicken kabobs, and corn-edamame fritters among the options. There is also a sandwich from the Brazilian street food tradition, the paozinho Brasilia, that features a grilled Brazilian steak skewer served on French bread with melted provolone cheese, cucumber, tomatoes, arugula, and spicy cilantro-garlic crema.

Cocktails include a plum gimlet, a Black Manhattan, a lychee Mai Tai, and an Old Fashioned with tamarind and date. There is also a passionfruit whiskey sour made with Kikori Japanese whisky, and Thai basil margarita on offer.

Beers are all priced between $7 and $9, with a couple of local brews offered including Original Pattern's Hazy IPA, and Harmonic's Skydog IPA. And wines are very reasonably priced at $12 per glass, or $50 per bottle, including a couple of good sparkling options (Moet, even).

The Hall is a new venture from a trio of entrepreneurs and friends, Modi Shantharam, Yuko Takahashi, and Joina Liao.

"We saw a gap in San Francisco's nightlife — a place that combines the sophisticated ambiance of a high-end cocktail lounge with the timeless appeal of billiards," says Shantharam. "The Hall isn't just a bar; it's a social destination designed to bring people together, whether they're a seasoned player or simply looking for a new spot to connect."

The Hall - 2565 Mission Street, between 21st and 22nd streets - open Sun-Thur 5pm to midnight, Fri-Sat 5 pm to 1 am - reserve here

That venerable, inimitable, sloppy palace of bad decisions The EndUp was born 50 (and a half) years ago, and they're now getting around to celebrating — appropriately kinda late — with a Union Square takeover dance party.

Once upon a time in an era of SoMa dominated by leather and country-and-western bars (The Stud, after all, began as a country-and-western themed bar, hence the double-entendre name), The EndUp was born. It was actually born in mid-November 1973, as a sibling establishment to The RoundUp, a western bar one block up 6th Street, owned by Al Hanken and Greg Loughner.

The bar was primarily gay from the 70s into the 90s, becoming known starting in 1974 for its Jockey Shorts Dance Contest — which was featured in Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City column in the Chronicle and subsequently featured in the PBS mini-series based on the first book of those columns.

It was always known as a big dance bar with indoor and outdoor spaces, and as an after-hours club — and the latter has made it legendary in an IYKYK kind of way.

In the 90s, it was home to the legendary Club Uranus, which birthed such stars as Justin Vivian Bond, Heklina, Kitty Litter, and Trauma Flintstone. And Fag Fridays launched in 1996 and ran through 2008, featuring an array of LGTBQ club DJs from the Bay Area including Ellen Ferrato and resident DJ David Harness.

After a series of ownership changes and the demise of those weekly LGBTQ events, the club became more mixed and attracted various crowds to events like Sunrise Sunday. And some bad vibes arrived in 2016 with two separate fatal shooting incidents that could have threatened the club's existence — one in June 2016 that took place inside the club, and one that took place outside in October 2016.

But The EndUp has endured, it was granted Legacy Business status by the city in 2019, and Saturday, June 15 will be a big 50th birthday bash in Union Square — potentially drawing a pretty huge crowd.

Given that the actual birthday was seven months ago, the Facebook invite just calls this party a "fashionably late" one.

"Known as San Francisco's most legendary after-hours nightclub and premier day-club, @endupsf celebrates dance culture fifty years strong since 1973," the club says.

DJs include Oscar G, Paul Goodyear, Dean Samaras, Brian Salazar, and Hawthorne. (See the DJ bios here.)

The free party in Union Square runs from 1 pm to 9 pm, Saturday — and, of course, the party continues at The EndUp after that, with DJ Oscar G doing an encore set, joined by DJs Hawthorne, Steve Fabus, and more.

A new dataset from some researchers who are studying the recovery of various cities' downtown cores, post-pandemic, suggests that while SF still lags way behind New York and other cities in terms of daytime, mid-week foot traffic, people are now frequenting bars and restaurants in downtown SF almost at pre-pandemic levels.

The new data comes from the University of Toronto's School of Cities, which has been tracking cellphone data in addition to real estate and other data to track the relative recoveries of multiple cities. The data looks at where cellphones move and then stay clustered at various hours in the day and night, and as KPIX reports, they've found that on some nights, downtown San Francisco is back to 94% of pre-pandemic foot traffic.

"We're measuring stops, that means we're able to look at people who are actually doing something – so it's actually activity downtown," says Dr. Karen Chapple, professor emerita at UC Berkeley and the Director of Toronto's School of Cities, speaking to KPIX.

When it comes to tracking the changes that have occurred to office work because of hybrid schedules, Chapple adds, "It's a moving target, which is why we have to keep studying it. It is still in flux."

This clustering of more people at night may be thanks in part to city- and non-profit sponsored activations like the Vacant to Vibrant program, and to recent conventions like the RSA Convention — which are likely to cause an uptick in activity at downtown restaurants and bars.

But even up at John's Grill, near the otherwise beleaguered Union Square, owner John Konstin has been telling various media outlets including KPIX that he had one of his best years for business in 2023. "Our sales have gone up, actually, here at John's Grill," Konstin said.

The area has also seen a few new openings in the last nine months that are attracting attention and foot traffic, like Chotto Matte on Stockton Street, and Four Kings on Commercial Street at the FiDi edge of Chinatown. New nightlife venues like The Dawn Club debuted in mid-2023 in the hope of waiting out the current slump and bringing more people to lower Market Street.

The Chronicle reports today that office vacancy in SF's downtown remains at a record high level of 36.6%, and by that metric, the city continues to lag way behind others in the recovery — and clearly has far more workers who have not returned to traditional 9 to 5 in-office schedules.

But SF's Chief Economist Ted Egan isn't too gloomy about the future, even if the recovery is going to require extra patience. "I think the story from a year ago hasn’t changed much," he tells the Chronicle. "I don’t expect that to last forever. The region has kept up its share of venture capital and is a leader in artificial intelligence, and that bodes well for the future of tech here."

And remote-work expert and Stanford economics professor Nicholas Bloom tells the paper, "Five years from now things should be back close to pre-pandemic trends... [But] I’m long-run positive on the city with the highly educated population nearby, connections to world-class universities, fantastic weather and Asia exposure... Yes, San Francisco has taken a knock, so ‘doom’ is appropriate but not ‘loop.’ Things are down but the city will recover, and indeed San Francisco is the classic boom-and-bust city."

Related: SF Chronicle Now Seems to Regret Amplifying the 'Doom Loop' Narrative It Heavily Amplified

Photo: Denyz Nevozhai

A new bar and nightclub serving Caribbean food, and featuring a rooftop cocktail lounge, is in the works at 1815 Market Street, near the Castro Safeway on Mint Hill.

It's the space that was formerly home to Peruvian restaurant Destino, and the SF Business Times has word of the project, called Dante's Inferno, from proprietor Dante Buckley. Buckley is a former video game designer who tells the Business Times, "There’s a lot of crossover between building video games and bars. It’s a world you get to create for people to come and enjoy. You’re thinking, how do you make it fun, how do you get people coming back?"

Drawing on his Jamaican heritage, Buckley envisions a cocktail bar spotlighting Jamaican rums, and a food menu with Caribbean dishes — the food side of things is being handled by consultant Greg Nasser of Borne LLC, and Nasser formerly served as operations manager for the restaurant group Back of the House, Inc. (Beretta, Delarosa, Starbelly, Super Duper, A Mano, etc.).

Renderings from Oakland-based Arcsine show a rooftop bar with lounge seating and a pool table, and the downstairs space will feature a dance floor.

It appears from the renderings that Dante's Inferno would occupy only the former Destino space, and not the corner space that was home to sister bar Pisco. Per the Business Times, it sounds like the building's other tenant on the Pearl Street side, Sushi Zone, is not going anywhere.

Buckley refers to this area as Hayes Valley, which it clearly is not — but it is close by.

This is the second new nightclub project that we've heard about since the pandemic, the first being Pink Swallow, which is due later this year in the former Harvey's space at Castro and 18th streets.

Dante's Inferno is still getting its permits, and construction has not yet begun. Buckley tells the Business Times that he is aiming for an opening in the first half of 2025.

San Francisco's oldest and arguably most beloved LGBTQ party space, The Stud, is set to make a grand reentrance on Saturday, with a new outfit and in new digs, celebrating every era that the place has lived through.

To use a by-now tired tech-world trope, this is either The Stud 3.0 or The Stud 4.0, depending on how you mark time and the transitions the nightclub has been through. First opened at 1535 Folsom Street in 1966 with a country and western theme, the bar evolved through the hippie era into a place that welcomed everybody, and was always up for a good time. Its first relocation happened in 1987, when it moved to the space most of us knew at 9th and Harrison streets. That era of The Stud had a couple of phases, and it became collectively owned by a group of nightlife professionals in 2016.

That group made the decision to shutter the club — which was on borrowed time with the landlord anyway, given plans to sell or redevelop the property — in May 2020, vowing to return at some point when the pandemic faded.

And that point has now arrived, four blocks down from where The Stud originated, with the grand reopening at 1123 Folsom Street happening Saturday, April 20. The space, which was most recently home to Trademark and two decades ago was Julie's Supper Club, was fittingly also a western-themed leather bar back in the early 70s called The Stables. Stud Collective member Rachel Ryan says that coincidence "feels like a very sweet, full circle moment to be happening right in the heart of the Leather and LGBTQ Cultural District."

The reopening party has been dubbed The Stud Time Machine, and starting at 6 pm Saturday, DJ sets and drag numbers will celebrate each decade and era of the club's existence, starting with The Cowboy Era of the 1960s. Local legend Gina LaDivina will do the first performance, and the era will be DJ'd by Hard French alums DJ Brown Amy and DJ Carnitas.

The Disco Era will feature some spinning by DJ Steve Fabus, who once upon a time had residencies at the Trocadero Transfer and the I-Beam. And Jim Hopkins will step in at 8 pm for The New Wave Era. The Club Kid Era will be represented by Bootie legend Adriana A, and Miss Rahni Nothingmore will perform.

The party continues on through the T-Shack Era and The Collective Era, with a performance by collective member Honey Mahogany. And DJ Adam Kraft and Beverly Chills will go on at midnight representing The Future of the Stud.

The space itself remains a work in progress, and the team continues to seek donations to help them finish several vital things, including the construction of a stage, and the demolition of the commercial kitchen in the space that will not be needed. As Rachel Ryan and Honey Mahogany announced today on Instagram, to that end, they're releasing another block of tickets for Saturday's reopening for those who want to secure their spot and donate at the same time. These tickets are $100 on Eventbrite — and this is the only way to buy an advance ticket right now, since a pre-sale very quickly sold out.

Tickets will still be available at the door, but there could end up being a line and capacity issues!

The regular Stud party schedule has not yet been announced, but in the coming days and weeks we should know more.

Previously: The Stud Announces Its Grand Opening at Its New SoMa Location Will Be April 20

The beloved, 21-story-high view bar at the Beacon Grand, formerly the Sir Francis Drake, is undergoing a facelift, and we finally have a reopening date.

It's always been part cocktail lounge, part nightclub, and part retro supper club in the space atop the Union Square hotel that's now called the Beacon Grand. And hotel guests and San Franciscans alike will again get to party up there starting this winter. As the Chronicle reports today, February 2 is the opening date for Starlite, which is getting a makeover to its interior, menu, and cocktails.

Northview Hotel Group bought the Drake in 2021, and it reopened for guests last March after a hefty makeover to the rooms. The top-floor bar and restaurant, which had been Harry Denton's Starlight Room from the early 1990s to 2011, was called just The Starlight Room for most of the last decade, and briefly Lizzie's Starlight Room in 2019, before closing for the pandemic.

The venue has had a number of makeovers over the years, including one a decade ago, but the Chronicle describes this one as having an Art Deco vibe, with makeovers to the velvet banquettes and "an emerald and golden jewel tone color palette."

The bar menu is being overseen by consultant Scott Baird, a co-founder of Trick Dog, who tells the paper he wanted to create "celebratory" cocktails for the list, and saying, "We’re trying to go back to making fun and interesting drinks."

These include a version of the Porn Star Martini, dubbed the Clarified Pornstar, featuring with vanilla-flavored vodka, passion fruit, and a sidecar of Champagne, with edible glitter on the rim of the glass.

The food menu is being overseen by DC chef Johnny Spero, of Michelin-starred restaurant Reverie, and Ken Fulk alum Alice Crumeyrolle is doing the design.

On the good news front, the iconic spinning star atop the hotel is set to be relit and begin spinning again soon. And, also spinning once Starlite opens will be nightly DJs, hosting "listening parties featuring a mix of funk, soul, disco and groove." Does "listening parties" mean the dancefloor won't get used? That seems unlikely.

The openings of different parts of the Beacon Grand have been staggered, with the hotel reopening last spring, but the hotel bar and restaurant, The Post Room, just opening last month.

The big former Scala's space on the ground floor, facing Powell Street, is set to become a new French brasserie from the Left Bank team and chef Roland Passot, as we learned last year. But there's been no movement on that since, and reps for the hotel had no update on the opening timeframe for that.

Starlite - 450 Powell Street, 21st floor - Opening hours 4 p.m. to 1 a.m., Thursday to Saturday, and 2 p.m. to 11 p.m. on Sunday - Opening February 2, but reservations are open now

Photo via Starlite

Legendary SoMa nightclub The Stud is indeed reopening a few blocks from where it lived until 2020, and the drag shows are set to begin again maybe by early next year.

SFist had the news a month ago that The Stud Collective — the 17-person group that bought the business several years before it closed in 2020 — had found a new location at 1123-1125 Folsom Street. The space, most recently a sports bar called Trademark, has changed hands a couple of times in the last decade, but was once known as Julie's Supper Club — which occasionally played host to LGBTQ-friendly parties like Rehab. Part of the two-building complex has also recently been used to host rotating pop-ups, like the "Golden Girls Kitchen."

Now, with a lease in hand, the team has gone public with the news. Decor from inside the former Stud will be relocated to the new space soon, but first it will be hosting one last overpriced pop-up "experience," called Jack N Juice Immersive Bar, which is some kind of mashup of Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas and Beetlejuice.

Stud Collective member Nate Allbee (who continues to work as communications director for Assemblymember Matt Haney) tells SFist that the team is aiming to be open by the "end of winter."

Strangely, in nightlife-heavy SoMa, one obstacle to reopening was getting this area — part of the Leather and LGBTQ Cultural District — rezoned to allow a new nightlife venue to open. As the team tells the Chronicle, there was a war-on-fun ordinance passed a number of years ago that first needed to be gotten around — which was done with the help of gay supervisors Matt Dorsey, Rafael Mandelman, and Joel Engardio.

"Even though we have legally recognized the Leather District as a cultural district and as an important cultural asset of the city, a few years before we did that, they passed a law that rezoned that entire neighborhood to make it extremely difficult to add new nightlife uses," Allbee tells the Chronicle.

To prepare for reopening, the collective has launched a new crowdfunding campaign with the goal of raising $500,000.

As was widely noted at the time of the May 2020 closure of The Stud, the club has survived and thrived following a move before. The original Stud, which opened in 1966, was at 1535 Folsom Street — later known as Holy Cow and most recently Eve. The nightclub relocated at the height of the AIDS crisis in San Francisco, in 1987, to the corner of Ninth and Harrison streets, and it was there that the late Heklina launched her legendary Trannyshack drag show in 1996 — later known as T-Shack and Mother.

In more recent years, the club had played host to another show, called SomeThing, hosted by VivvyAnne Forevermore, and dance parties like Go Bang.

"Right now we are seeing San Francisco in a precarious state where a lot of businesses are closing. We’re more determined now than ever to be a part of San Francisco’s success and rebuilding," said collective member Honey Mahogany in a statement to the Chronicle. "It’s an opportunity to create a scene and also continue this incredibly rich and long history of queer resistance, joy and celebration in San Francisco."

Previously: The Stud May Find New Life a Few Blocks Away From Its Former Home In SoMa

We must, given the players involved, take this with a massive grain of salt. But the latest word from the man who is ostensibly going to be the new manager of Badlands in the Castro is that it will remain Badlands, and it's reopening in two months.

Badlands, which first opened on 18th Street in the Castro in 1974, purportedly closed "permanently" in the summer of 2020, according to longtime owner Les Natali. At the time, Natali claimed, spuriously, that the nightclub would reopen that fall under new ownership and a new name, but that did not come to pass.

Various unreliable updates have come since then, including one in February 2023 when both Natali and new business partner TJ Bruce insisted to Hoodline that Badlands would be reopening, under a new name, within eight weeks. Bruce, who owns the Badlands locations in Sacramento and Portland, said he and Natali were hammering out details of their deal, and Natali told Hoodline that he was selling the business to Bruce.

Well, it is now August, and it does not seem that Natali has relinquished his interest in the club. Bruce now tells the Bay Area Reporter that he and Natali have come to some shared-responsibility agreement in which he will "slowly" take over the business fully, and he says he "will be managing the day-to-day business."

He also says that Badlands should be back open, still under the name Badlands, "within 60 days."

The Badlands liquor license remains in suspension, as Hoodline reported, but that suspension can be lifted immediately by the owners, according to the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control.

The lengthy closure of Badlands, which had been a nightlife anchor of the neighborhood for many years, is just one of several factors that have kept the Castro feeling quieter than ever since pandemic restrictions lifted. The Natali-owned Toad Hall across the street has been open and bustling since 2021, but another of his businesses, Hamburger Mary's (531 Castro), has remained closed since March 2020.

That closure particularly stings for local merchants and neighbors who listened for 15 years as Natali claimed to be trying to bring a restaurant back into the space after the closure of The Patio in the early 2000s. After many, many false starts, Hamburger Mary's finally opened in March 2018, only to close seemingly permanently two years later.

Bruce tells the Bay Area Reporter that he and Natali have "worked together for 24 years," but this is the first time they will have a formal business relationship.

Talk of Badlands becoming something else, under new ownership, came at a time of heightened race-related protests across the country in 2020, and followed years in which the club was dogged by stories of racist treatment of Black patrons going back to the early 2000s. Addressing those revived claims in June 2020, a month before the "permanent closure" announcement, Natali told the BAR that the allegations "were found without merit and were dropped" back in 2005. And, he added, "We welcome people of all races and all colors and we probably have the largest, most diverse clientele of any bar in the Castro."

Badlands first opened in 1974 and took on a country-and-western theme in the next decade. The bar has been under Natali's ownership since 1999, when it became a video dance bar focused on Top 40-type hits.

Previously: Badlands reopening remains in limbo after liquor license surrendered, owner Les Natali insists new management arriving soon [Hoodline]

Top photo by Steven Bracco/Hoodline

A pretty unique Pride Week offering kicks off Tuesday night at the historic, long shuttered and barely-seen-for-decades Hibernia Bank space at Jones and Market, and it's sure to be a campy queer romp in a very gay Gotham City.

The clever team from the recently formed Pop Culture Immersives — who brought us the grandly kinky Eyes Wide Shut spoof last fall, Thighs Wide Shut, at St. Joseph's Arts Society — is back with a 50-person cast of local kooks and queers, presenting Pride In Gotham. Tagline: The Dark Knight Came to Slay.

As you can imagine, this won't be a particularly faithful rendering of the Batman comic or mythology, but many familiar characters will be on hand for a Pride party hosted by Wayne Enterprises, a.k.a. Bruce Wayne. And suffice it to say, when some of Batman's familiar foes like Poison Ivy and the Riddler show up, things go very wrong and there's a mini-mystery to solve, for those who want to get interactive.

The Hibernia Bank space has long been a source of curiosity for many San Franciscans, just given that most of us have walked, ridden, or driven past it for years, and it's been boarded up and shut tight for all of those years. A full 11 years ago I wrote a story on SFist headlined "Hibernia Bank Might Finally Become Something Next Year," and guess what! It didn't.

The 1892 Beaux Arts bank is unique for the city, having survived the 1906 Earthquake and fire, with minimal damage, and it has not been a bank since 1985. In 2015 we heard the owners were looking for a tech tenant, or maybe a nightclub operator to take over. The place got a nice renovation around then and Hillary Clinton spoke at a campaign event there the following year. And around 2017 or 2018 the owners decided to turn it into a rentable event venue, which it has remained ever since — though there haven't been many publicly accessible events there.

Until now. The space has been transformed, with the main bank hall serving as the gala space where guests arrive and enjoy Champagne, intermingling with the gala guests who are actually actors. (Guests will also be treated to moments with guest MCs Peaches Christ and D'Arcy Drollinger this week, as well as the musical stylings of Miss Rahni Nothingmore.) And spaces both in the bank's basement and upper story have been transformed, with things like a Two-Face dancefloor, where a large spinning coin will dictate whether DJs Sugar and Spice play dance-y pop hits or dark, Berlin-style house music.

Poison Ivy will host the VIP lounge on the bank's upper level, which includes a posh spot underneath the grand rotunda.

Co-creator Michael Phillis, who created the all-male burlesque show Baloney and the drag character Patti from HR, told the Chronicle last week, "San Francisco has never looked or felt more like Gotham with all the privilege and potential living side by side with suffering and crime. ‘Pride in Gotham’ reflects that, with all these little morality tests and interactivity points where audience members can go with the good guys or choose to be bad."

And producer Daniel Sherman tells SFist that he's dying to bring these kinds of large-scale, immersive events back to the city — in the style of the popular Speakeasy show in North Beach, but way more queer.

"No two people ever have the same experience when you come to an immersive piece like this," Sherman says. "That's what I love about it. You're bound to interact with at least one of the performers during the course of the night, and whatever happens between you is never going to happen the exact same way again."

Sherman adds, "And this is a Pride party for us this week too, so hopefully the energy will be infectious."

Find both general admission and VIP tickets here, with the "show" starting Tuesday through Saturday night at 7 p.m. and ending at 10 p.m.

Some remarks at Monday’s 2023 Nightlife and Entertainment Summit have Mayor Breed getting some blowback from nightclub owners, when said she couldn’t think of a good nightclub in San Francisco.

Monday was the 2023 Nightlife and Entertainment Summit, an annual event were the bigwigs of the local nightlife industry “address the current issues facing the industry.” And they had Mayor London Breed speak, which seems a good get. But Breed’s remarks were not good music to the ears of the nightclub owners, as the Chronicle reports she remarked she couldn’t name a good nightclub in San Francisco.

The video is above, and Breed speaks at the 8:18 mark. You can judge for yourself if Breed stepped in it, as here’s what she said:

“The other day I was coming from dinner down near the Ferry Building and ran into some people from Canada,” Breed said. “And they were like ‘Where are you guys going? What’s going on in San Francisco tonight?’ Now to be clear, it was like barely eight o’clock. And I couldn’t think of where to tell people to go, where the party was at. Yes, we have a lot of various local bars and entities and other places, but I was like ‘Man, I can’t even think off the top of my head what might be going on on a Wednesday night in San Francisco that I could direct someone to. So number one, I need a list.”

It also may not have helped that she started her address with “For the nightlife community, you guys sure look like you’re not ready to party,” a joke that fell massively flat.

But definitely the not being able to name a good bar or nightclub left some club owners less than thrilled with Breed’s remarks. Amado’s and the Riptide owner David Quinby told the Chronicle, “To hear a mayor of a world-class city say that she couldn’t think of anywhere to tell a couple of tourists to go at 8 p.m. in a room full of people that are desperately trying to save their entertainment spaces was troubling.”

Breed could have named Oasis, as owner and SF Drag Laureate D'Arcy Drollinger had literally just introduced Breed at the event, and with whom she’s been recording Pride promotions. Her speech name-checked Lion’s Den owner Steven Lee, so she could have mentioned that club. Or she could have remembered Great Northern or the Black Cat, both of which she was busted at partying maskless during the highly infectious periods of the pandemic.

Related: SF Mayor London Breed Again Seen Partying Maskless at Nightclub, Again Says She Did Nothing Wrong [SFist]

Image: Joe Kukura, SFist

In case you hadn't heard, two new nightclubs are headed for downtown San Francisco, with the owners banking on the fact that the wholesale-abandonment-of-SF story has been overblown.

SFist told you last fall about The Dawn Club, a revival of a mid-20th-Century jazz club with an entrance just off Market Street that is returning, in revised and renovated form, to the same subterranean space it occupied in the 1930s and 40s. That space is in the basement of the Monadnock Building (685 Market Street), and the entrance will once again be on the side alley that backs up to the service entrance of the Palace Hotel, at 10 Annie Street.

The team behind it is being led by Future Bars partners Doug Dalton and Brian Sheehy — Future Bars being the hospitality group behind Bourbon & Branch, Pagan Idol, Rickhouse and more recent entries on the scene like Bottle Club Pub and Nightingale.

Sheehy tells the SF Business Times that they're aiming for a spring opening of The Dawn Club — it sounds like sometime in May — and the $3 million project's continued life is due in large part to landlords Brookfield Properties (own also own Stonestown) forgiving their rent during the pandemic and helping make sure the project didn't die.

Part of the deal also includes bringing two of Future Bars' other businesses to street-level spaces at the Monadnock — Lark Bar (the former Dave's) on Third Street, and next-door bottle shop Cask. Brookfield believes that the three businesses will provide amenities to the building that will benefit everyone in the long run.

As SFist discussed in October, The Dawn Club was a notable venue for what was called The Great Revival in American jazz, when young musicians, just prior to World War II, began rediscovering and being inspired by older New Orleans jazz. The space also played host to integrated bands at a time when this was not permitted by the local musicians' union.

The new 4,000-square-foot Dawn Club will feature live music, an extensive whiskey collection, and a bar program overseen by Future Bars bartender Jayson Wilde.

A few blocks away on Minna Street, the former Harlot nightclub space is also coming back alive, and has been in use as a lounge and event space. The Business Times reports that it is getting a $2 million remodel, and it will reopen this fall as Madarae, a spot focused on weekday happy hours and later-evening lounge nights on weekends.

The owner behind Madarae is Arash Ghanadan, who is an owner at Dahlia, Novela and Barbarossa. He promises that the new club will bring "a whole new experience" to the downtown scene with "state of the art" audio and visual elements, and a new cocktail program by Dan McGee. Menus are already online, and include a bar-snack menu with caviar, cheese board, and sandwich options.

The business's nascent website is billing it as a "boutique cocktail lounge and private club," and Ghanadan tells the Business Times there will be a private VIP area, as well as a glass-enclosed smoking section. A section of the website is advertising memberships — which are free, and which presumably are meant as a marketing tool.

At the moment, reservations are available for cocktails next week and beyond, so it's not clear when the remodel is happening. The Business Times notes that the place has been in use for private events for a while now.

In related news, the historic bank building at Sutter and Sansome is undergoing renovations to become a splashy new bar and restaurant called Holbrook House, which we first heard about almost a year ago. The opening timeframe for that project remains unclear, but may be later this year.

Photo: The interior at Harlot/Madarae, via Madarae's website

The condo-dwelling neighbors of the new Bissap Baobab on Mission Street are now trying to get the Senegalese restaurant and dance club’s alcohol license revoked, with complaints over the club’s fully legal and permitted live entertainment.

It seemed like a storybook ending to a long and difficult saga when the new Bissap Baobab, called “Big Baobab,” opened in September at Mission and 19th Streets. Longtime Bissap Baobab and  Little Baobab proprietor Marco Senghor was nearly driven out of the country in a Trump-era immigration crackdown, and the year-long legal saga essentially cost him both businesses. Yet it appeared a happy ending when Bissap Baobab was set for a comeback at the former Lupulandia Brewery space.

So much for the happy ending. The Chronicle reports that the new space’s condo neighbors are inundating City Hall with noise complaints about the place, and are even trying to have Senghor’s beer and wine license revoked. And he cannot get a hard liquor permit for the place until the beer and wine permit is resolved.

“Anything I do, they will complain,” Senghor told the Chronicle. “On Mission Street! It’s a commercial zone. Come on. They want the Mission to stay quiet, and they want the Mission to die.”

The Chronicle adds that “the neighbors have called 311 a dozen times to complain about loud noise,” and that “Each time, inspectors have found Senghor in full compliance with his permit.” The new Bissap Baobab has even restricted his own permit rights; neighbors wanted a music cut-off time of 10 p.m., Baobab countered by ending the outdoor rooftop deck music at 9 p.m.

This means yet another round of tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees and soundproofing for a beloved local business that’s been around in one form or another for nearly 25 years. As seen above, Senghor has started a GoFundMe for Bissap Baobab’s new round of troubles. “This conflict has led to a noticeable decline in business, difficulties in paying rent, difficulties in continuing to provide live entertainment, and an estimated loss of $300,000 in potential revenue,” the GoFundMe says. “The funds raised will be used to cover any additional soundproofing needed so that Bissap Baobab can peacefully coexist with the neighbors, to help pay the debt accumulated from the losses.”

Even the neighboring pre-school sent letters of support of the new Bissap Boabab to get its permit. But apparently, it's the condo above that Mio Preschool that is having the temper tantrums.

The Chronicle merely describes the opponents as a neighboring “building’s Homeowners Association,” and got no comment from them. But a look back at the Tuesday, July 19 Entertainment Commission meeting where Bissap Baobab got their entertainment permit (you can still watch that meeting online) shows it as the homeowners association (HOA) for 2235 Mission Street. “All the residents unanimously oppose this,” the HOA president said at the meeting. “We’re not NIMBY-ists. Given where we live, we are happy to have a lot of things, very diverse neighbors.”

“It would make our building unlivable. What they’re planning to do, we would not be able to live,” the HOA president added. “I love where I live, my favorite restaurants are all within a block. My favorite shops are all nearby. If they move in, I will not be able to live in my home anymore. But I also won’t be able to afford to move, because the property value would drop precipitously if a loud bar is next door.”

And you can add to this the irony that the neighborhood’s nightlife is actually featured in this condo’s marketing materials. A realtor’s listing for a condo at the address promotes that it’s "Steps from: Dandelion Chocolate, Tartine Bakery, Urban Putt, Dolores Park, Mission Chinese, Mission Cliffs, Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, Papalote's, Rainbow Grocery, ODC, Roxie Theater, Dog-Eared Books, Foreign Cinema, and Gracias Madre."

They might even have included Bissap Boabab had it been open when they wrote those marketing materials. But now that it is open, they don't want it, and it's another story of the "fun police" being hostile to nightlife, and preferring SF to a sleepy bedroom community.

Related: Baobab Owner Avoids Jail Time In Immigration Case [SFist]

Image: Joe Kukura, SFist