San Francisco, CA

Rare Performances, Rising Acts Made Noise Pop 2025 Special

Published

1 year ago

March 3, 2025

Rare Performances, Rising Acts Made Noise Pop 2025 Special

There’s nothing quite like Noise Pop to remind you that, even with all the entertainment at our fingertips, nothing can replace live music. Throughout the week, as I accumulated hand stamps and wristbands at venues from the Tenderloin to the Panhandle, it was hard not to feel alive and grateful for the many high-caliber musicians and absolutely stoked fans of different ages, backgrounds and subcultures.

Dam-Funk performs at the Noise Pop opening night party at the California Academy of Sciences on Feb. 20, 2025. (Gina Castro/KQED)

The 10-day festival kicked off with a Feb. 20 opening party with Dam-Funk at the California Academy of Sciences, and brought impressive headliners to unique settings (St. Vincent and Ben Gibbard in the gorgeous Grace Cathedral, for one) and storied nightclubs alike. True to the festival’s roots, this year’s edition was heavy on indie rock, both with nostalgic acts like American Football and new-gen stars like Soccer Mommy. It also brought out left-field pop and cult hip-hop acts with passionate, niche followings. (My only complaint was a lack of local hip-hop artists during this vibrant time in the Bay Area scene.)

Below you’ll find a scene report from Noise Pop’s most exciting sets, plus lots more photos.

Rapper Earl Sweatshirt performs at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco on Feb. 25, 2025, as part of the Noise Pop festival. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)

Earl Sweatshirt brought out the introverts

Earl Sweatshirt doesn’t really write songs with hooks. He says things that most people in the music industry aren’t willing to say (like “free Gaza”). And the beats he chooses are jarring and jagged, made from asymmetrical loops that don’t really work for dancing. Not that his fans care. The dense crowd at his two back-to-back shows at Great American Music Hall rapped along to his deep cuts, spitting each bar with their chests. On Tuesday night, it felt like 400 introverts found their tribe after years of passionately, privately listening to Sweatshirt in their bedrooms.

Rapper Navy Blue performs at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco on Feb. 25, 2025, as part of the Noise Pop festival. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)

Sweatshirt arrived on stage to the guitar loop from his 2018 instrumental song “Riot!” “I feel like a Pop Tart right now,” he told the crowd. He probably wasn’t the only one having a psychedelic experience. When he delivered the dense, poetic bars of “E. Coli,” with its old-school-sounding choral beat produced by The Alchemist, phones went up and dozens of joints sparked throughout the crowd. During the set he brought back opening acts Navy Blue and Zelooperz, who had delivered heartfelt and moshpit-worthy performances, respectively, earlier in the night.

Glixen performs at Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco on Feb. 25, 2025, as part of the Noise Pop festival. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)

A chance to catch Glixen before they blow up

Glixen’s Tuesday-night show at Bottom of the Hill might have been the last chance to see them in the lovably ramshackle dive before they blow up. The young four-piece shoegaze band from Phoenix is currently on a tour of small clubs before they land in front of 125,000 festival-goers at Coachella in April. At Bottom of the Hill Tuesday, they exuded quiet confidence, mostly letting screechy distortion speak for them instead of bantering with the crowd. An audience aged 18 to 60 — the latter camp probably drawn to the show because of Glixen’s similarities to My Bloody Valentine — bobbed along in a trance as Aislinn Ritchie’s thin vocals floated along in frothy spumes of sludgy instrumentation.

The band Cymande plays at August Hall in San Francisco on Feb. 26, 2025. The group was originally formed in the early 1970s by Caribbean born, London based musicians.

Cymande returned in top form

“We’re gonna play you a song that put us on the map before we took a short break for 50 years,” joked Patrick Patterson, Cymande’s guitarist, as a funky bassline kicked off their 1972 hit “Bra.” With each shake of the shaker, trilling guitar riff and sunny burst of trumpet, the audience ascended into ecstatic, full-body dance moves. Folks with grey hair, who probably first heard the Caribbean-British band five decades ago, moved their hips, clearly getting their groove back — if they ever even lost it in the first place.

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San Francisco, CA

1 dead in house fire in San Francisco’s Portola neighborhood

Published

6 hours ago

March 25, 2026

Press Room

1 dead in house fire in San Francisco’s Portola neighborhood

One person was found dead Tuesday night in a house fire in San Francisco’s Portola neighborhood.

The one-alarm fire occurred in the 500 block of Dwight Street and caused major damage to the interior of the home, the Fire Department said.

Firefighters extinguished the fire and remained on the scene checking for hidden fire in the walls and roof.

One person was declared deceased at the scene. The exact manner and cause of the person’s death will be determined by a medical examiner. The cause of the fire remains under investigation.

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San Francisco, CA

Barricaded suspect in standoff with police in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood

Published

19 hours ago

March 25, 2026

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Barricaded suspect in standoff with police in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood

Updated on: March 24, 2026 / 6:04 PM PDT
/ CBS San Francisco

A person was barricaded inside a residence in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood on Tuesday afternoon in a standoff with officers, police said.

The San Francisco Police Department said the situation was happening at the Cadillac Hotel, a historic single-room occupancy building on Eddy Street between Jones and Leavenworth streets. Officers responded to a report of an assault at the hotel at about 2 p.m. and determined that the suspect was barricaded in one of the units, police said.

Crisis negotiators and other specialists also responded and were developing a plan for a peaceful resolution to the standoff, police said. An ambulance and paramedics were also standing by at the hotel.

************AVOID THE AREA****************
Barricaded subject at 380 Eddy. SFPD and SFFD on scene including our TEMS (Tactical Emergency Medical Services). Eddy St. between Leavenworth St. and Jones St. is closed to traffic. #SFFD pic.twitter.com/cQqsqGL3Tx
— SAN FRANCISCO FIRE DEPARTMENT MEDIA (@SFFDPIO) March 24, 2026

Members of the public were asked to avoid the area. The San Francisco Fire Department said Eddy Street between Leavenworth and Jones was closed to traffic.

The Cadillac Hotel was built in 1907 and has been listed as a San Francisco Designated Landmark since 1985, becoming the first nonprofit single-room occupancy hotel west of the Mississippi. For decades, it also housed Newman’s Gym, one of the oldest boxing facilities in the U.S., where boxers such as Muhammad Ali, George Foreman, Sugar Ray Robinson, and Joe Louis trained.

Today, the hotel provides supportive housing for approximately 160 low-income residents.

In 2015, the hotel became the site for The Tenderloin Museum.

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San Francisco, CA

Pain at the pump: One gas station in S. San Francisco near $7 a gallon

Published

1 day ago

March 24, 2026

Press Room

Pain at the pump: One gas station in S. San Francisco near a gallon

SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. – You’re not dreaming. Gas prices really are that high.

National average $4 a gallon, California $6

In fact, at the Shell station at 248 S. Airport Boulevard in South San Francisco, regular gas was going for $6.89 a gallon on Tuesday, about four weeks after the United States and Israel started a war in Iran.

Most people didn’t even stop to fill up; instead, drivers seemed to just pass the station by.

Juan Buenrostro did stop, though, and said it costs him about $300 to fill up his truck. He lives in Santa Cruz and had to drive to the Marina in San Francisco.

“It’s been crazy, man,” he said. “I have to work extra hours to make extra income. We’ve been struggling.”

That price is roughly double what the national average is. AAA said the average price of gas was $3.97 a gallon as of Tuesday, and the average price in California was $5.82.

Prices are so high that the state’s petroleum watchdog, the Division of Petroleum Market Oversight, has launched an investigation into possible price gouging, specifically at gas stations charging $7 or $8 a gallon.

A Chevron in downtown Los Angeles was selling gas for $8.71 a gallon this week.

Gas was selling for $8.71 a gallon at a downtown Los Angeles Chevron station. Photo: Fox11. March 23, 2026

Kate Gordon, CEO of California Forward and a former senior adviser to the U.S. Secretary of Energy, said $10 gas is not out of the question under certain conditions.

“Can you imagine a world where we’re paying $10 a gallon? … Yes, I can,” Gordon said.

Gas prices on March 24, 2026. Source: AAA

Last year, prices lower

A year ago, the average price in the United States was $3.13 a gallon, and the average price in California was $4.64 a gallon, according to AAA.

The highest average price for gas in California ever recorded was $6.44 on June 14, 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine.

War in Iran

Regular gas was selling for $6.89 a gallon at a Shell gas station in S. San Francisco. March 24, 2026

Oil and gas prices have been soaring since the war in Iran began a month ago, and when Iran began retaliating against the United States by choking off the Strait of Hormuz – a critical oil passageway.

Gas prices are likely to remain elevated for some time, even if the war ends soon, because shipping and production have been disrupted and will take time to recover. Economists now expect slower growth this spring and for the year as a whole, as dollars that are spent on gas are less likely to be used for restaurant meals, new clothes, or entertainment.

Lower income households bearing the brunt

Lower and middle-income households are likely to be hit particularly hard, because they receive lower refunds, while spending a greater proportion of their earnings on gas.

Neale Mahoney, director of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, calculates that gas prices nationwide could peak in May at $4.36 a gallon, based on oil price forecasts by Goldman Sachs, followed by slow declines for the rest of the year. The notion that gas prices decline much more slowly than they rise is so ingrained among economists that they refer to it as the “rocket and feathers” phenomenon.

In that scenario, the average household would pay $740 more in gas this year, nearly equal to the $748 increase in refunds that the Tax Foundation has estimated the average household will receive.

And it’s only worse in California.

The impact will likely worsen the “K-shaped” narrative around the U.S. economy, analysts said, in which higher income households have fared better than lower-income households. The bottom 10% of earners spend nearly 4% of their incomes on gasoline, Pantheon Macroeconomics estimates, while the top 10% spend just 1.5%.

Gas PricesCalifornia

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