The marquee one-liners were sometimes funnier than the headliners, and the neighbourhood knew both were leaving together. The Red Devil Lounge at 1695 Polk Street at Clay, in San Francisco's Polk Gulch, closed on 1 January 2014 after a roughly 18-year run as one of the last live music rooms on a street that had once been full of them. Opened in the mid-1990s, the narrow two-storey club with its devil-red interior and wrought-iron balcony rail occupied an odd, well-loved niche: cover bands and tribute nights shared the calendar with lesser-known touring acts and occasional startling bookings - KRS-One and Nikka Costa both squeezed onto its small stage. Owner Jay Siegan announced the closure in September 2013, saying he would shift to promoting shows at larger rooms like the DNA Lounge and Cafe du Nord; the final calendar wrapped on New Year's Eve 2013. The wake was widely read as a marker for the street: with Kimo's already gone, the Red Devil's exit continued Polk Gulch's turn from scrappy live-music and queer nightlife corridor toward upscale drinking - the space itself was taken over by Tipsy Pig bar manager Jamal Blake-Williams and reopened in 2014 as the craft cocktail bar Harper and Rye, with a pool table where the stage had been. The two-storey bones survived the conversion - the mezzanine remains - but the windows were uncovered and the black box brightened, completing the transformation from club to neighbourhood bar. For San Francisco musicians of a certain generation the room keeps outsized memory: a 400-capacity-class stage in a walkable district, the kind of mid-size stepping stone the city has struggled to replace since. Siegan's post-closure career kept the room's spirit in circulation: his booking and entertainment company went on to program stages across the city, and Red Devil alumni acts still cite the balcony-wrapped room as the best small stage Polk Street ever had.

Type: Bar / Pub

Address: 1695 Polk Street, San Francisco, CA, United States, 94109

Cover Charge: 1

Closing Date: 01/01/2014