San Francisco, CA
My thoughts on the San Francisco dance party scene
I still laugh at being called the “bad circuit party guy.” It was a moment three years ago when I had just become editor of The Bold Italic, and it must have come from someone who knew me—or knew of me—around 2015 to 2019.
Back then, I was in my early 30s and only recently active in the San Francisco LGBTQ+ community. I’m not sure I ever went to that specific kind of party, but I did drink; I kept an aggressive social calendar, and I organized events. A series of them at small bars—Q Bar, the Lone Star Saloon, SF Eagle, and others—I meant as a love letter to Comfort & Joy’s Pride party, Afterglow. (Maybe that’s what my critic meant.) And equally as a love letter to the drag queen, Juanita More.
At the time, I loved Ms. More’s Booty Call Wednesdays series, specifically for the amazing photography captured by one Cabure Bonugli. When my peer group debuted Glow at SF Eagle, Cabure was the first photographer we hired. I invested considerably on photo booths at every subsequent event. Glow also wasn’t my main fare; I mostly hosted weekly game nights where I took the photos.
I belonged to a group of misfit nerds who commonly shared stories of loneliness in the San Francisco LGBTQ+ community. This is a topic I distinctly remember a pair of bar owners discussing with me—that our group was a rare one within this age bracket to coalesce on the queer scene at that point. Other popular choices included a set of sex parties, gay kickball leagues, and a series of wine nights that featured the sort of Grindr eye candy with white-collar jobs and Fitness SF memberships.
Lately I’ve been expanding my horizons and going to more events. In reviewing this story, my partner asked what my argument was. I don’t have one. I might have just wanted to reset the narrative on my nonexistent circuit party habits.
But in writing this feature, I think the most honest thing I concluded about the San Francisco dance party scene in 2026 is that it resists a thesis. So do I.
A born-again circuit queen
I only started going to dance parties a bit more in the 2020s. I shimmied in tulle at Trixie Mattel’s Solid Pink Disco in 2024. In the last two weeks I went to a Cave Rave at the old Sutro bathhouse, and then Tinzo + Jojo made an appearance at 1015 Folsom. I found the latter two parties lacking something I can’t put my tongue on. Probably molly.
The cave rave felt particularly young and not well managed; and in a way, that was almost charming. I just had nothing in common with a group of Gen Z that, as I wrote, clutched NÜTRL and Bud Light while lots of weed wafted around. Both this party and the one at 1015 felt, ahem, quite heterosexual. I think of San Francisco as the queer heart of the planet, so I get a strong vibe mismatch attending parties like these.
“We’re seeing a common thread,” my lesbian friend told me. “The problem is straight guys.”
She and I had just come from the Tinzo + Jojo party, where a man almost punched me after he had been hogging a small space in front of the DJs. Behind us, another man was drunk to the point of falling over on everyone, happily, until my partner turned around and said, “Do you mind?”
“Yes we do mind!” one of the women with him said before carting him off. Later when we passed the group upstairs, the man was dry humping the same women against a railing. “He’s going to fuck them right off the balcony,” my friend said.
The gay/straight dichotomy
My friend’s read was specific to that night, but the dynamic she described isn’t new.
A few years ago, Vice published a piece about queerbaiting nightlife, describing venues and promoters who borrow the aesthetics of queerness to draw crowds that end up being overwhelmingly straight. A DJ named Meduusa put it plainly: in the past, straight people didn’t really want to party with queer people. Now they do, or at least they want the vibe.
“Our visibility has brought us to a place where people see we’re cool and influencing the culture,” she said, “and they want to be cool and in the know, too.”
Katherine Conrad, a local DJ in San Francisco, offered a more hopeful read.
“There’s definitely a movement toward events that are really queer, sapphic, that everyone can go to,” she told me. “You can tell that they are spaces that invite people to express themselves freely.”
Conrad is co-president of FLUX SF, which hosts events for the trans and nonbinary community, and she goes to a lot of music festivals. On raving, she noted that if the performer is too mainstream, you get a crowd that’s not even that into the music, and they don’t know how to behave.
“They don’t maintain space or know how to be polite,” she said. “They barge through people.”
The substance use question
I struggle in other ways. I quit drinking seven years ago, and now I notice when the DJ is fine but not transcendent. I notice that the room is too hot and that someone near me smells like a distillery. I notice that nobody is having the same experience, because the chemical that would synchronize them is doing different things to different nervous systems, and without it, we’re just a bunch of strangers standing in the dark.
I don’t miss drinking at parties; what I miss is the permission that drinking gave me to not care whether a party was good. And for those around me, it isn’t alcohol that motivates them anyway; the chemistry of the room is literally changing.
Cocaine use nearly doubled and ketamine nearly tripled in the U.S. from 2016 to 2019, while MDMA held flat. The pattern continued through 2023: ketamine kept climbing, molly didn’t. The rave drugs of the moment aren’t the ones that make you love everyone; they’re the ones that numb you out or wire you up.
“And how the fuck are you partying until 5 a.m. and just drinking?” one friend told me. They noted that most people appear to do some kind of drug at parties, but in SF it’s never one specific thing.
“It’s just common. It enhances the experience,” they said. “Would I go to a rave completely sober? Probably not.”
Sober sisters
Not true for Connie Chen, a new influencer I found in San Francisco through her Instagram, Curious Connie. She’s amassed nearly 11,000 followers in just three months from promoting day raves and other sober-leaning events.
“In the past, I think a fun night for people meant getting really drunk and going to a show,” she told me. “So I thought I should like it too, but then I didn’t.”
Chen stopped drinking about two years ago after noticing that every drink cost her roughly an hour of sleep. But quitting didn’t mean staying home. Through San Francisco’s Burning Man scene, she discovered a network of house parties, day raves, and creative gatherings that run on Partiful invites rather than bottle service.
The day events, she told me, share a quality that my friend and I noticed was missing:
“There’s no aggression. People are sober, it’s during the day, everyone is really friendly,” Chen said.
And the big venues? “Nobody knows me. It feels kind of hetero. Kind of aggro. It’s already late and I don’t like that.”
The bigger picture, and the rise of the third space
Conrad described a queer scene that’s thriving in its own rooms. Chen found a sober world that was invisible to her for eight years. My anonymous friend can’t imagine raving without drugs. All of this is true at the same time, on the same weekends, in the same seven-by-seven miles.
San Francisco has always run on parallel tracks. The tourist San Francisco and the local San Francisco. The tech San Francisco and the artist San Francisco. The sober San Francisco and the one where someone you just met is offering you a bump in a bathroom at midnight. These aren’t contradictions. They’re just the city.
Dance parties here are the same way. The experience you have depends entirely on which door you walk through. What stays with me, though, is something Chen said about her first eight years in the city. She was here the whole time along with the house parties, day raves and creative gatherings. She just didn’t know.
Partiful added 2 million new users in the first quarter of 2025 alone, with monthly active users up 400 percent year over year. The majority of users are under 30, and its pitch is literally helping people plan “intimate dinner parties, weekend house parties, or warehouse raves” to cultivate real-world relationships.
For San Francisco, this is a puzzle piece wedged between ambition and economics. A report from the National Independent Venue Association released this year found that the city’s independent stages generate $152 million annually in off-site economic impact, but only 36 percent of them were profitable in 2024. The rooms are producing enormous value for the city while struggling to survive inside it.
Meanwhile, the parties that people actually want to go to are increasingly the ones that don’t need a room at all.
“As you get older, it’s not as easy to make friends,” said Stuart Schuffman, the San Francisco writer known as Broke-Ass Stuart, who this month is launching an algorithmically-matched dinner club. “This takes the pressure off of having to walk into a club or join a class to meet people.”
Dinner clubs are having a moment, much the same we’ve seen a proliferation of outdoor dance parties. Daybreaker, for example, is a sober morning dance series that began in Brooklyn in 2013. It now operates in San Francisco out of venues like the Ferry Building and Thrive City at Chase Center—on the premise of no booze, no VIP or bottle service.
For its part, the city itself has been loosening the screws. In 2024, Mayor Breed waived entertainment permit fees for outdoor music. San Francisco also became the first city in California to create “entertainment zones”, allowing bars to sell drinks for outdoor consumption during events. And that gave us ongoing moments like Castro Night Market (and a spate of others), and Downtown First Thursdays.
I’m not making friends at these parties, but I’m not sure I was supposed to. The dance party scene in San Francisco in 2026 is fractured and alive, and probably happening somewhere you haven’t been invited yet.
Under all the bass, and in between the ketamine and the Partiful links and the faux fur, is the same question the SF dance scene has always asked: Do you want to be in this room with these people? If the answer is no, that’s okay—there’s always another room to dance in.
Saul Sugarman is editor-in-chief and owner of The Bold Italic.
The Bold Italic is a not-for-profit media organization, and we publish first-person perspectives about San Francisco and the Bay Area. We operate under a fiscal sponsorship of a 501(c)(3).
You can become a paid subscriber. Or donate. Or learn more about us.
Many of these photos in this story were proudly commissioned and paid for in prior stories for The Bold Italic. The cover photo of The Stud reopening was taken by Gooch.
This month we are sponsoring LGBT Center Soirée 2026. This isn’t a paid gig; but they promised to sing The Bold Italic‘s praises on their party brochures and messaging, so long as we did the same. I have gone to this party twice before. It’s not as fancy as, say, Art Bash or SF Ballet’s opening gala, but—much like Hunky Jesus earlier this month—it is a great time to see many notable faces in the LGBTQ+ community. And a good time to reuse yester-year’s Pride dress. Sister Roma and Honey Mahogany aggressively went for those fundraising dollars at the 2024 dinner. And I loved the drag performances that year.
LGBT Center Soiree party details: Soirée 2026 – SF LGBT Center
As we celebrate the SF LGBT Center’s 24 incredible years of service to our community, please join us for an evening filled with reunion and community brilliance. SF LGBT Center’s annual gala radiates resilience
The soirée on 4/20 raised $360,000; Hosted by Sister Roma and Honey Mahogany with an after party setlist by Juanita More.
📅 Saturday, April 18, 2026
🕑 5:30 PM
📍City View at Metreon
🏠 135 4th St, San Francisco, CA 94103
Want even more events?
I’ve got a new events page at events.thebolditalic.com – and I’ve set aside all my picks for April at the top of the list.
What’s Happening in SF — The Bold Italic
The Bold Italic’s guide to the greatest events in San Francisco and the Bay Area.
And in full disclosure
Not to totally dismiss an untrue narrative, lol: I did go to an occasional dance party in the 2010s. At small venues. For example, I loved Lindsay Slowhands’ Hell’a Tight.
Nightlife party ‘Hell’a Tight’ enters new era at SF Oasis The long-running LGBTQ+ drag show and dance party by Lindsay Slowhands begins a new chapter after officially winding down at Underground SF.
I also made an occasional appearance at Bootie. (And its organizer, Adriana Roberts, is a freelance writer for The Bold Italic.)
20 years in, ‘Bootie’ is still mixing tracks for ‘girls, gays, and theys’
But straight men are welcome, too. Their April 6th party at Cat Club will celebrate “the best mashups in the world ever.”
Photos from Bootie’s 20th Anniversary
I loved that people came for good music and laughs, not to stand and pose, cruise, or get blackout drunk. The vibe was pure happiness.
I never wrote about D’Arcy Drollinger’s Sexitude, but I should do so eventually. In this dance group, I’ve performed onstage with her at Pride. We’ve shared moments at galas. SF Oasis was, in many ways, my introduction to San Francisco LGBTQ+ nightlife.
High noon at the Oasis D’Arcy Drollinger’s busy at the helm of the SoMa drag club and other ventures, too
The legacy of SF Oasis will live on, following its successful gala
More than $200,000 flooded in support of the SoMa drag club and its quest to pay artists fair wages.
For sale in San Francisco: A 45-foot-tall metal sculpture of a naked woman.
Her name is R-Evolution. Her hair is pulled back and her facial expression is serene. Her mechanized chest expands and contracts, as if she’s breathing. And she tips the scales at 13,000 pounds (not that it’s anyone’s business what a lady weighs).
She will stand in Embarcadero Plaza across from the historic Ferry Building until October. Then she goes on sale. The artist says “she can go anywhere in the world,” but whoever buys or leases her will need a crane and a 60- to 80-foot bucket lift to resurrect her.
Since she was first unveiled as a temporary installation in April 2025, the giant statue, created by artist Marco Cochrane and modeled after California dancer and singer Deja Solis, has spurred debate about whether privately funded works are really public art. It also questions whether R-Evolution is a celebration of femininity in a free-spirited city that has long embraced public nudity or a hypersexualized shock piece from a male artist.
But debate, per the public and private entities who brought her to the plaza, is kind of the point. Art, they say, is supposed to be controversial.
An attempt to revitalize public space
R-Evolution is part of Big Art Loop, a privately funded initiative that aims to bring up to 100 temporarily installed large-scale sculptures — a minimum of 10 feet high or wide preferred — to public spaces along a 34-mile walking and biking trail over the next few years.
R-Evolution in Embarcadero Plaza in April 2025.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Big Art Loop is funded by the Sijbrandij Foundation, a nonprofit established by billionaire Sid Sijbrandij, co-founder of the software company GitLab. It is curated by the art production agency Building 180, in partnership with the city’s Recreation and Parks Department and other public agencies.
“We’re going to continue to lean in to our arts and culture because that is driving our comeback here in San Francisco,” Mayor Daniel Lurie said in a September video promoting the Big Art Loop.
A city news release last year said R-Evolution’s arrival “aligns with San Francisco’s broader efforts to revitalize downtown” by increasing foot traffic to the battered business district, where office vacancy rates soared to record-high rates of more than 30% amid the pandemic-era pivot to remote work.
Controversial lady and Burning Man
Like a few of the Big Art Loop pieces, R-Evolution originally debuted at Burning Man, towering above the sweaty and stoned desert masses in 2015.
Critics of R-Evolution say the statue and other massive pieces along the billionaire-backed Big Art Loop did not get as much community input and were not subject to the same intense scrutiny by the San Francisco Arts Commission as other public artworks.
“I think what a lot of people, myself included, are frustrated by is the fact that these private entities are able to remake the public landscape in their own image,” Max Blue, a San Francisco Examiner art critic, told Gazetteer San Francisco in October, adding: “I don’t like these sculptures. I think a lot of them are just left over from Burning Man.”
Visual artist DJ Meisner told the Gazetteer: “It’s just so clear when you see the art that it’s like, ‘Oh, I’m supposed to be unbelievably wealthy and high looking at this.’ I’m neither of those things, so I’m just annoyed to be looking at it.”
Female representation or inappropriate?
Before R-Evolution was installed, an art vendor with a booth in Embarcadero Plaza wrote in a letter to the Arts Commission, saying she thought the statue, whose bare butt faces the Ferry Building, “might be very inappropriate for children.”
Another vendor wrote: “A naked woman statue designed by a man feels out of step with the times.”
The creator of the piece, Cochrane, said in a statement: “Women’s presence in public art is rare. When they are depicted, it is often through outdated or passive narratives. R-Evolution challenges that. She stands strong, aware, and grounded — calling for a world where all people can walk freely and without fear.”
Love her or hate her, she gets eyeballs
Julie Richter, a spokeswoman for Big Art Loop, told me in an email Thursday that R-Evolution, which had been slated for removal in April, got “very positive” feedback that led to her Arts Commission-approved extended stay through October. That feedback included positive reviews from most tourists, art vendors and nearby local businesses, according to a pitch to extend the statue’s stay by Big Art Loop and Building 180.
Near R-Evolution’s current perch, Vaillancourt Fountain — a colossal, crumbling Brutalist concrete sculpture that was unveiled in Embarcadero Plaza in 1971 and became a skateboarding mecca — was equally reviled and revered. Despite fans’ efforts to save it, the city removed it this spring.
Today’s top stories
The Visalia sign seen from Highway 99.
(Tomas Ovalle / For The Times)
These are California’s most affordable and least affordable cities
What we know about the boat accident near Alcatraz
- A memorial cruise turned tragic when a boat sank near Alcatraz Island, leaving one passenger dead, three missing and 17 rescued.
- The search for the missing was challenged not only by high winds and rough seas, but because the incident took place in a particularly deep channel of the bay dredged for cargo ships.
Scientists fear when the San Andreas fault finally snaps
- Scientists warn the region’s long earthquake drought is building dangerous strain on the San Andreas and San Jacinto faults, raising the odds of a devastating multi-county “Big One” in coming decades.
- With scenarios forecasting violent shaking from downtown L.A. to the Inland Empire, experts say the fault’s growing stress is a stark reminder to strengthen preparedness before nature resets the clock.
What else is going on
Commentary and opinions
This morning’s must-read
Other must-reads
For your downtime
The dining room at Baldi in Beverly Hills.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Going out
Staying in
A question for you: As temperatures rise in SoCal, how do you stay cool?
Email us at essentialcalifornia@latimes.com, and your response might appear in the newsletter this week.
And finally … your photo of the day
The trunk of a flooded car is seen in an underground garage along Palm Avenue in West Hollywood after a water main break sent thousands of gallons of water rushing down Sunset Boulevard and the surrounding area on Thursday morning.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
Today’s photo is from Times photographer Allen J. Schaben in West Hollywood, after a water main break sent thousands of gallons of water rushing down Sunset Boulevard and the surrounding area on Thursday morning.
Have a great day, from the Essential California team
Hailey Branson-Potts, staff writer
Hugo Martín, assistant editor, fast break desk
Kevinisha Walker, multiplatform editor
Andrew Campa, weekend writer
Karim Doumar, head of newsletters
How can we make this newsletter more useful? Send comments to essentialcalifornia@latimes.com. Check our top stories, topics and the latest articles on latimes.com.
The owner and operator of the boat that capsized earlier this week near Alcatraz Island said Thursday that his brother was killed and his sister, sister-in-law and a family friend remained missing after what began as a family trip to spread a relative’s ashes.
“It’s been horrible,” John Boisa said in a brief interview.
His comments came as San Francisco police used sonar to search for the 49-foot Volare and recovered a body floating west of Treasure Island. Authorities had not identified the person as of early Thursday evening.
Police were alerted to the body shortly after 1 p.m. by a passing vessel. The agency said it was using “multiple boat-mounted sonar platforms” to search for the Volare, which sank in water roughly 130 feet deep between Alcatraz Island and San Francisco.
The search has been complicated by “strong tidal currents along with wind and weather challenges,” police said in a statement.
Twenty people were aboard the boat when a wave struck it shortly after 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, causing the vessel to list before rolling over and sending everyone into the water.
Clifford Boisa, the operator’s brother, was pulled from the water and later declared dead despite receiving CPR. Sixteen others were rescued by a flotilla of first responders and nearby boaters.
Still missing Thursday were Clifford Boisa’s wife, Jackie Boisa; John Boisa’s sister, Carol Boisa; and a family friend whom he identified only as “Tonda.”
In a text message to this news organization, John Boisa recalled Jackie Boisa as possessing “a rare combination of easy acceptance of others with a kind of elegant sophistication.”
“She was simply a Lady and conducted herself in accordance with the highest meaning of that term,” he wrote.
He remembered his sister as bringing “her own special flavor to family gatherings and the earthy, natural joy she brought was ineffable.”
“I was especially pleased to see her enjoy our boating in recent years, and her smiles in photographs were genuine and without affectation,” he added. “I wanted for her and her children happiness and ease, and now, peace.”
Boisa, a Stockton-based consultant, said he had known Tonda only a short time but recalled her as “a generous, welcoming and gracious person.”
“I wish I knew her better, and I pray for peace and healing for her family,” he wrote.
Boisa described himself as the “vessel operator” and said Tuesday’s outing was “a family gathering” that included spreading the ashes of a relative who had died “a long time ago.”
Two days after the disaster, more details emerged about the boat, its weeklong stay in San Francisco and its final hours on the water.
The Volare, a 1981 Marine Trader Pilot built in Taiwan with a fiberglass hull, was based at Village West Marina & Resort, according to Tamara Barak Aparton of the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department.
John Boisa received a guest permit to berth the boat at the city’s Marina Yacht Harbor from July 11 through Thursday, Aparton said. He had previously stayed at the harbor, though details about those visits were not available Thursday.
The vessel left the harbor around 10:15 a.m. Tuesday and traveled beneath the Golden Gate Bridge into the Pacific Ocean, according to the tracking website VesselFinder. It turned around about an hour later off Lands End and the Sutro Baths before returning to the bay at a slower speed.
The boat appeared to stop at Ayala Cove on the northwest side of Angel Island, leaving shortly after 3 p.m. and heading back toward the harbor, tracking data showed.
The Coast Guard’s search for survivors covered 950 square nautical miles before ending Wednesday evening. As police continued the recovery effort Thursday, maritime experts said they expected a lengthy investigation into how a vessel such as the Volare could capsize.
The Volare — a monohull recreation craft complete with two walled-off cabin levels and a deck top — was intended to handle waters such as San Francisco Bay, said Eric C. Jones, a retired Coast Guard rear admiral and superintendent of the Cal Poly Maritime Academy in Vallejo. Still, he said it was “unusual” for such a vessel to flip over in the bay.
Investigators are likely to examine whether the boat was properly maintained and operating correctly, and whether it could safely carry 20 people, Jones said. They also are expected to scrutinize the weather and water conditions that day and how the boat was operated in that environment.
The area where the Volare sank can be among the most challenging to navigate in the bay because of its distinctive winds and currents, said John Arndt, who has sailed the bay for more than 40 years and spent the past decade as publisher of the Northern California sailing magazine Latitude 38.
Arndt called the area “the playground of sailing” and compared portions of the bay to a ski hill, with some areas better suited to beginner and intermediate boaters. The area where the Volare sank could be compared to a black diamond ski run, he said: a more “challenging” section but one that is navigable for people experienced with those waters and conditions.
July and August are generally the windiest months on the bay, a result of hot air rising over the Central Valley and pulling cooler air from the Pacific Ocean through the bay’s narrow entrance. While winds can remain manageable in some areas, the central channel between Angel Island and San Francisco can experience strong sustained winds and gusts.
The water can become particularly choppy when westerly winds collide with an outgoing tide. Water flowing from the Sacramento and San Joaquin river valleys toward the Pacific further complicates the currents in that area.
Arndt called a disaster of this magnitude involving this type of boat “exceptionally rare.” He said Tuesday’s conditions were not outside the normal range for summer boating on the bay.
“When people analyze accidents and disasters, it’s not one thing — it’s sort of these things that tend to be a spiral of events,” Arndt said.
Jakob Rodgers is a senior breaking news reporter. Call, text or send him an encrypted message via Signal at 510-390-2351, or email him at jrodgers@bayareanewsgroup.com.
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