Mac Rating: 5.00 | Votes: 1 | Date: 03/07/2026 00:33:00

Three million clubbers have passed through this SoMa doorway. 1015 Folsom, at the corner of Folsom and 6th Street in San Francisco's South of Market, is one of the longest continuously operating dance clubs in the United States: a 20,000-square-foot maze of five rooms across three levels, main floor capacity 800 and the whole building around 1,500, that has hosted Madonna, Tiesto, Fatboy Slim, Giorgio Moroder, LCD Soundsystem and Dave Chappelle across four decades. The building's history is pure San Francisco: a bathhouse until a 1984 city order closed it, briefly the live venue Major Ponds, then Ira Sandler's Das Klub from 1986 - the city's biggest over-18 after-hours - before reopening under its street address a few days ahead of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. Through the 1990s it was one of the only clubs outside New York and Chicago committed to electronic music; the legendary weeklies Spundae and Release helped launch Tiesto, Paul van Dyk and Carl Cox on American floors, while the Gus Presents massives gathered the city's creative and queer communities. The inaugural DanceStar USA Awards named it Best Club in 2002. The programming still runs the spectrum - techno, house, bass, hip-hop and live acts - under a strict 21-plus door with government ID, no presale entry after 1:30am, and refunds only for cancellations. Proximity to downtown and Moscone Center keeps the corporate bookings flowing between club nights, and the mission statement has not moved since the rave years: inclusion, expression, celebration, at volume. The club's place in rave history is documented territory - it features heavily in Between the Beats, the documentary on San Francisco's 1990s scene - and its 2007 pivot to adding live rock under general manager Peter Glikshtern, opening with The Donnas, broadened a booking book that has never really narrowed since. Under the flat modern lighting of SoMa's tech corridor, the doorway at 6th and Folsom remains the neighbourhood's oldest continuous promise of a long night.