Given San Francisco’s current real estate development boom and its undeniably destructive impact on music venues, it’s nice to be able to report a bit of good news for the city’s scene: Social Hall SF, a new music venue, will open next month in the Polk Gulch, in the same building as the Regency Ballroom.
Run by Goldenvoice — the promotion company behind the Regency, as well as the Warfield and a slew of venues in SoCal — the venue has a capacity for 600 people standing or 425 seated. It’s located inside the 106-year-old Scottish Rites Bodies Regency Center at 1270 Sutter Street (a historic building, though it is not, as has often been misconstrued by music fans of a certain age, the modern-day version of the Avalon Ballroom, which was at 1268 Sutter).
Social Hall SF will host “electronic club nights, seated comedy events, rock concerts and more,” according to a release from Goldenvoice, and we have to agree that the club’s initial calendar is refreshingly eclectic: It kicks off Sept. 12 with internationally touring drag performer Alaska Thunderf–k; other notable dates include a two-night run for indie-electro band Neon Indian on Sept. 22 and 23, South African loop pedal guitarist Jeremy Loops on Oct. 15, LA indie-pop darlings The Bird and the Bee on Oct. 28, and legendary MC Kool Keith performing as his intergalactic alter-ego Dr. Octagon (in what’s sure to be a high-energy Halloween weekend performance) on Oct. 30.
Tickets for all shows currently listed will go on sale this Friday, Aug. 14.
Goldenvoice reports that the venue has been undergoing renovations for a year, and is ready to roll out new sound and lighting systems to go with the concert stage and, of course, a new bar. Worth noting, younger readers: “Most” shows at the venue will be all-ages, a designation that’s getting harder to find in the city as of late.
