How many times have you faced Friday wondering what you're going to do with your weekend that's fun and cheap, or better yet, free? If you were to consult the funcheapSF list, you might decide to hang with an all-female skateboard collective on Saturday or go on a free sailboat ride on Sunday, and you'd even learn what it means to go on a dicewalk in the Mission.
FuncheapSF is headed up by Shannon (a Bay Area native) and John Hayes, two good samaritans who work hard in their spare time to bring some cheap thrills to our fine citizens. Located at www.funcheap.com, they're a San Francisco-based website that features upwards of 50 cheap, unique and fun event listings each week in the Bay Area.
We asked John how the list got started: "Both myself and Shannon are always going out and doing fun things (and both love to save money). Plus, we both became sick of hearing about a cool event only to find out that it had already taken place. We loved the idea of Recession Camp and we also were big fans of craigslist, but it was too hard to find just cheap events. So we set up a Yahoo group for just our friends. But then our friends starting telling their friends, and a year later we have 2600 people signed up! Since we've gotten so many people signed up we've been able to negotiate exclusive discounts at certain venues and events, as well as getting giveaways (like free movie passes)."
John and Shannon compile the list each week by subscribing to a ton of e-mail lists, checking flyers on Haight Street, collecting submissions from subscribers and visiting about 25 different websites. They do the work so you don't have to! Future plans include launching a full-fledged website by February 2005 with customized event listings and a "meet-up" area for some funcheap social networking. They also envision starting funcheapLA, funcheapSEATTLE, funcheapNY some time in the future, the same concept which begat SFist in the first place.
Join the funcheapSF list and let us know what fun, cheap things you found to do this weekend.