- 375 Eleventh Street
- San Francisco, CA 94103
DNA Lounge has been here for a long time, but the building has been
here for even longer, and there were other buildings on this site
before that.
I've been trying to dig up as much history about DNA Lounge and its predecessors as I can; it's been slow going, but here's what I know so far. If you have any details to add, please let me know!
I'm especially interested in any details about the the late 1970s, which is when this building was first used as a bar/nightclub. I haven't been able to find much information about that period.
The oldest prehistoric sites discovered in the Bay Area are about 5,000 years old. Thirteen sites are known in the South of Market area of San Francisco dating to around 2,000 years ago, the most intensely-used being near Islais and Precita Creeks, which originally ran from Twin Peaks through the Mission and Potrero, and down to the bay through Hunters Point. At this time, the site of DNA Lounge was on the marshy banks of Mission Creek, which ran from Twin Peaks down to the bay via what is now Townsend Street. It is unclear how the indigenous population's nightclubbing needs were served.
 Mission Creek, pre-1890 |
Islais and Mission Creeks were covered over and filled in some time after 1850, when the city granted a franchise for a toll road down Folsom Street from First to Sixteenth.
Apparently this was very difficult, as the pilings they drove into the ground just disappeared. Eventually they piled planks over most of the waterways and poured dirt and sand on top.
Before 1906, the entire half block from Slim's to Harrison Street was residential flats: hastily-constructed ``kit houses'' used as low income family housing for the growing Gold Rush population. As early as 1893, the lot that today contains DNA Lounge was occupied by two residential row houses, of the style found in the Mission District today. Each one had a pair of 2-bedroom flats. These were probably built between 1875 and 1880.
Nearby structures included:
It's not clear what was on our lot before 1875 or so, but the street existed, at least: in 1861, ``Wood Street'' was renamed to ``Eleventh Street.''
 11th and Harrison, 1899/1900 |
It's unlikely there was any construction in this area prior to 1850 or so. In 1840, only a few hundred people lived in San Francisco, but with the discovery of gold, the population boomed: by 1849, the city was averaging 30 new houses and two murders a day. By 1870, the population was almost 150,000, making it the tenth largest city in the United States. From 1850 through the turn of the century, San Francisco's primary industries were gambling and prostitution: ``it has been said that by the end of 1852, there was no country in the world that was not represented in San Francisco by at least one prostitute.''
Jan 9, 1880: "Norton the First, by the grace of God, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico, departed this life."
By 1890, the city housed 3,117 licensed bars and taverns (one for every 96 inhabitants!), plus at least 2,000 more unlicensed speakeasies.
The 1900 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map shows that the close neighbors of our site then included a plumber, a piano finishing shop, a brewery, a pair of pork-packing and lard-rendering operations, a blacksmith, and the Cleveland Grammar School.
In 1906, there was a magnitude 7.8 earthquake that you may have heard of.
 11th at Folsom, Apr 1906
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The buildings on this site (and, in fact, most of the city) burned down in the aftermath of the quake. While we were remodeling the club in 2000, we did some excavation in order to repair the sewer lines, and we got to see what's underneath the DNA. It's landfill, of course, like most of San Francisco, but I didn't know what ``landfill'' really meant: around here it means, ``two or three feet of sand, and below that, the wreckage of whatever was standing here before the quake knocked it down.'' So the DNA building is built on top of the burned out rubble of whatever building was here before: the next four or more feet underneath the sand is full of old bricks and burned wood. When we dug the holes, it made the whole building smell like fire for days, from the cinders that had been stirred up. It was kind of amazing that this stuff still smelled like a fresh fire after being underground for ninety-four years!
After the quake, the building was razed and reconstructed. We used to have a very old piece of paper that shows the original building plans: it was a simple line drawing, that was basically a rectangle, plus the annotation ``single story building with mezzanine.'' Things were so simple back then... (Sadly, I seem to have lost this wonderful artifact!)
In 1917, some architectural change or other was made. We know this because this is the first time a city building permit was issued for this site (or at least, the first evidence we've found of it).
We believe that at this time, the building was used as a warehouse for bottle storage. (What kind of bottles, I have no idea!)
Some time during the mid-Twentieth century, the DNA building was a foundry. That's why, until we took it out in 2000, there was a rather large steel I-beam running the length of the roof. The building was used to make manhole covers for the city; it was also, at some point, a lead smelter plant. The beam supported the big bucket that moved overhead, carrying hundreds of gallons of molten metal. The plant was closed in the early 1950s when all of the industrial stuff relocated to Dog Patch down by 3rd Street and the old shipyards. (These days, most of those kinds of businesses are on Oakland's waterfront.)
The building had big windows at the time, and a giant double-door like a fire house, so that trucks could back in. There were also train tracks up 11th Street, and going down towards the Bay to the shipyards. These tracks were mostly torn out in the late 1940s, but you still see old segments of track around SOMA and the bottom of Potrero Hill that go nowhere.
 Harrison School, Feb 1920
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While searching through the SF Public Libary's photo archive, I happened across a few pictures of the former ``Harrison Elementary School,'' which I immediately recognized as the Department of Human Services building, around the corner from DNA. If you've ever been upstairs in the lounge at DNA, you've seen this building: those bricks that you see a few inches outside the lounge's windows are part of it. However, that building grew over time: in 1920, only the central part of that building existed. The photos show that the annex that abuts our building (and blocks the windows) didn't exist yet.
The 1900 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map describes that building as the Cleveland Grammar School, and I'm told that earlier maps show a school there as early as 1883, but the current building was built in 1920. (The detective work leading to this conclusion was the observation that the keystone above the door has ``1920'' carved into it.)
There are old photos showing the Harrison School with annex, but they are undated. They do, however, have cars in them, leading me to guess that they were taken some time in the 1940s. So, the lounge windows were walled up some time between 1920 and 1950.
Those early pictures, as well as later pictures dated 1964, refer to the building as being a warehouse for the Board of Education, so I guess it didn't stay a school for too long...
Records indicate that in 1953, the building just to the south of the DNA Lounge building was constructed (the building that is the Glass Block shop today). The plans call this an ``addition'' to our building: the two buildings were both numbered ``375.'' This is when the windows on the south side of the DNA building were bricked over.
At this time, the DNA building seems to have been an auto repair shop, owned by "D. M. Lerer". There was a single truck-width double door in the front, and there were front windows on both the ground floor and upstairs. The balcony was in place, but the stairs were elsewhere: there were two thin stairways going up to it, one in the middle of the south (right) wall, and one near the northeast (left front) corner. There were also two external doors on the north (left) wall.
Amusingly, the employee toilet seems to have been in the same place then as it is today.
The oldest blueprints we currently have are of the building's configuration as of 1953.
A leather bar called Chaps opened at 375 Eleventh Street, owned by Chuck Slaton and Ron Morrison. (The building had housed an auto repair shop immediately before that.) The center auto-door was filled in, and smaller doors were added on the left and right sides, roughly where they are today. They were single doors, made of glass and aluminum.
They added a new railing around the balcony, and added the support posts under the balcony. Prior to this, the balcony had been supported by hanging struts attached to the ceiling.
From reading our 1982 blueprints, it looks like the balcony went all the way into the back area of the building, which I guess means that one could look down onto what is now the backstage/office area. Though, on the plans, this is marked as ``storage, no occupancy.'' So I can only assume that to be a lie, and that area was actually open to the public, just not legally.
The bar was a four-sided bar in the middle of the main room, in roughly the same place as the late-90s bar, though it was thinner and longer. It extended most of the way to where the stage would have been. Except that there was no stage: most of the space where the stage is today was taken up with a a large X-shaped crossing staircase, with entrances on the left and right, upstairs and downstairs. The dance floor, such as it was, was the area under the balcony on the left (north) side.
James English says: "It was a pretty dark and intense space; jet black paint everywhere, with black leather curtains, chains, and huge screens around the balcony to catch bottles and shot glasses tossed by the boys when things got a little too rough."
It's possible that the name of the bar changed a few times in the late 70s and early 80s, but I'm not sure.
There used to be a lot of fascinating history of the various other San Francisco nightspots in the 1970s over at the (now-defunct) Planet SOMA web site, but unfortunately, nothing on DNA or its predecessors.
Jim English, Jeff Mason, and Brian Raffi bought Chaps, and the DNA Lounge was born. It opened on November 22, 1985.
Jim English had previously run a dance space called Sub Club at 9th and Folsom, which closed some time in the early eighties due to trouble with the landlords. Most of the staff of Sub Club were involved in the early DNA, so DNA was largely a descendant of Sub Club: the owners wanted to keep the staff together, and have a legal underground-style club.
 Club Nine, 1985 (later, The Stud)
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In 1984, Mark Rennie and Ari Ghanbarian (who later started SoMa Magazine) opened Club Nine, located where The Stud is now. (The Stud existed at the time, but it was where Holy Cow is today: it had been in that location since it opened in 1966.) Club Nine was similar to a New York club called Area. It was a performance art space, with dancing secondary. The club also used the motel rooms next door as art spaces, and you could go up on the motel balcony and look into the exhibits. At the time, Area in NY was redecorating completely every six weeks, with a one-week shutdown and a new theme each time. Club Nine tried to out-do this, redecorating every week. This ran the staff ragged, and didn't work.
Some say that DNA was created partially as a reaction to Club Nine. "DNA" never really stood for anything, though a number of people have told me that "Dance, Not Art" was a slogan that was used at the time. (Jim English says that's not true, however.) One version of the story goes that the "Dance, Not Art" thing was meant in contrast to Club Nine, which had a lousy dance floor with columns in inconvenient places and lots of bad performance art; whereas, DNA was intended primarily as a dance space.
DNA opened in 1985, with the doorman from Area and very strict door control; you had to look very cool to get in. It was the hottest club in the city for quite some time. Some nights there'd be more people outside trying to get in than there were inside.
DNA's first regular DJs were Ted Cousens, Adam Fisher, and Brian Raffi. Spencer Coppins was the first manager. One of the early doormen was Doc Martin, who went on to be a famous house DJ.
In the beginning there were very sophisticated visuals and strange art events going on all the time. Ermanno de Febo (sp?), an Italian guy with a background in design and architecture, was behind a lot of this. Some of it was simple sheeting behind which people would make motions in silhouette, or a filmstrip/super 8 projected onto fabric. Ermanno later threw the very big Glashaus parties.
One of the first things to happen at DNA was the evolution of ``nights,'' which is so common now: the idea that particular genres of music occur on certain days of the week.
According to blueprints from 1989, the DJ booth was where the men's bathroom is today. It had a split door. They pushed a beer refrigerator up to the door and put two turntables on it, and that was the DJ booth! Some time later, they added a plexiglas window to prevent the customers from bumping the records. The DJ booth kept this same somewhat-hidden, enclosed configuration until the 2001 remodel.
The layout of the upstairs lounge area was completely different: instead of an L-shaped seating area bracketing a slightly raised dance floor, as it is today, the dance floor area was taken up by two separate storage rooms, and the L-shaped area was two separate square lounges, connected by a thin hallway. The hallway went past what is marked as a "conference room" that takes up most of the middle portion of the L. So there were three tiny lounges, when you count the green room on the south wall (which was shaped then as it is today).
It looks like the balcony bar was in place at this time.
The building to the north (where Bowzer's Pizza is today) became an art gallery, The Bruce Velick Gallery. It's unclear when that building was constructed, but some evidence suggests that it was at one time a matress factory.
 DNA Lounge floor plan, 1989 |
In 1989, the X-shaped staircase was removed, and the stage was added, with the modern configuration of stage stairs. The downstairs four-sided bar was cut back: it was made shorter and wider, enlarging the dance area in front of the stage. (Or possibly this happened in 1991, and planning for it began in 1989. It's hard to tell.) Coat check and the lounge dance floor were constructed at the same time.
The gallery next door became Za Spot, a pizza restaurant. (Za Spot was there until mid 2002, when it became Dulcinea Cafe; a year later, it became Bowzer's Pizza).
 DNA Lounge floor plan, 1996
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DNA Lounge was sold to Tim Dale and John and Rob Schneider (of Saturday Night Live fame). Some time later, the Schneiders bought out Tim Dale. They had a very popular disco cover band every Friday night for several years, but the place pretty much fell into disrepair and off of the radar.
 DNA Lounge floor plan, 2000
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Jamie Zawinski (that's me) started negotiating to buy DNA Lounge from the Schneiders in July, 1998. After several false starts, escrow was entered in April 1999, and the battle with the police department over transfer of the after-hours permits began. All of this is documented in excruciating detail in my online journal. We finally re-opened for business on July 13, 2001 (Friday the 13th!)
Our major architectural changes at the time were: replacing the front wall of the building and sealing up the windows for soundproofing purposes; replacing the four-sided bar in the center of the main room with a straight bar against the front wall, making the dance floor much larger; re-building the balcony and its railing, supporting it with fewer (larger) girders, thus improving sight lines; and moving the sound booth and DJ booth up to a new catwalk below the balcony. Oh, and brand new sound, lighting and ventilation systems. Not counting the legal battles, the remodeling effort took an entire year!
In early 2007, we replaced the bathroom on the south balcony with a kitchen and began serving full meals, in anticipation of converting our liquor license from one that restricted us to being 21+ at all times to one that would allow us to do all-ages or 18+ events as well. That required another ridiculously-extended legal battle, but on August 18, 2008 we successfully negotiated that license conversion, and the first-ever all ages show at DNA Lounge took place on September 7, 2008!
San Francisco has a quite fascinating history, starting with its settlement by dictatorial naval mercenaries, and proceeding through two centuries of explosive greed, mob rule, vigilantism, assassinations, hedonism, plus a healthy dose of natural disasters just to keep it interesting. I highly recommend two sites in particular that have had me reading and clicking for days and days:
And I can't recommend highly enough Herbert Asbury's book, The Gangs of San Francisco, originally published in 1933 as "The Barbary Coast: An Informal History of the San Francisco Underworld".
Huge thanks to Electra (DNA's sound guy through most of the '80s and '90s), John Nagle, Michael Wharton (door man and night manager in the '80s), Ted Cousens (one of DNA's first DJs), Jim English, and Mark Rennie for providing me with many of the details about the mid-to-late 20th century, and to Darren Mckeeman for researching the contents of 11th street in the late 19th century! Again, if you have anything to add, please let me know...
