Make your poolside rave plans now for your final visits to the Tenderloin’s Phoenix Hotel, which will be permanently closing at the end of the year — but it will still have its last round of Pride parties and such for the remainder of 2025.

The Tenderloin’s famed Phoenix Hotel has not always been the kitschy 1950s-style retro motor lodge that hosts Pride parties and daytime raves by the pool that we know it as now. The hotel at 601 Eddy Street was previously the Caravan Motel, a pay-by-the-hour facility, which… you understand what kind of hotel that was.  

It became the Phoenix Hotel when local hospitality figure Chip Conley bought it in 1987, and transformed it into a destination for touring rock bands by offering free parking for tour buses. The hotel would draw stays from touring artists David Bowie, Sinead O’Connor, Kurt Cobain, and more, with Cobain reportedly carrying a letter to Courtney Love written at the Phoenix Hotel with him at the time of his death.


But we knew the hotel’s run could be ending when the property on which it sits went on the market for $15 million in early 2024. That property sold last August for a more modest $9 million to the San Francisco Baking Institute. But the Phoenix Hotel has decided not to renew its lease, and the Chronicle reports that the Phoenix Hotel will close permanently at the end of the year, albeit with some possibility that the could sell the brand name to a new proprietor.

“To be quite honest, it’s not even just the lease terms, it’s the nature of the neighborhood,” Conley told the Chronicle when breaking the news. “We have come to a place where after 39 years — and I am turning 65 later this year — maybe it’s time for the Phoenix to retire.”

“Maybe if I had been smart, I would have bought the land a long time ago, but, at the end of the day, sometimes you have to say, ‘It’s been a beautiful experience and it’s time for it to have its fat lady sings opera moment," he added.

Conley’s success with the Phoenix spurred his eventual statewide hospitality mini-empire Joie de Vivre, which he sold to Hyatt in 2010. The retro-hipster design kept the Phoenix Hotel and its parties a destination, even if the neighborhood around it was not one.

The restaurant and bar began as Miss Pearl's Jam House in the early 90s, and became Backflip in 1997, which was an immediately hot spot, followed by Bambuddha Lounge in the mid-aughts, and then its current incarnation, now almost 15 years old, Chambers Eat + Drink. (This 2011 piece from the Bold Italic discusses some of the party history.)

Those Tenderloin street conditions remained a liability for the hotel, and the Phoenix was even part of a 2024 lawsuit against the city for allowing things to get so bad. But the larger SF hospitality sector still has not fully rebounded from the pandemic, and Conley and his business partners did not see a path to profitability again anytime soon.

And so it is curtains, but Conley is choosing to announce the closure with seven months advance notice.

“When people know there is a final date now I think they are going to come out of the woodwork,” he said to the Chron. “Maybe they proposed to their wife there, or had an affair there or went there as a groupie 30 years ago trying to get a date with Anthony Kiedis from the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I think the Phoenix stories are going to start to populate.”


And there are still a ton of scheduled events at the Phoenix, including a Pride kickoff party and the annual Mighty Real poolside party on Pride Sunday, and a slew of weekend pool parties for the remainder of the summer.

Related: Phoenix Hotel Property Hits Market For $15M, Could Be Redeveloped as 450 Residential Units [SFist]

Image: Phoenix Hotel via Yelp