No drinking or late nights: How 20-year-olds are changing S.F.'s nightlife scene

San Francisco Chronicle​

6 days ago

When the San Francisco Entertainment Commission held its annual nightlife summit in May, the room at the city permit center on South Van Ness Avenue was packed with the folks who make the city hum after the sun sets — nightclub owners and impresarios, party promoters and publicans.
On the agenda was a panel exploring a pressing post-pandemic question: 'Where did our customers go and how do we get them back?'
In a city that is rapidly aging, it was the youngest panelist, 22-year-old party promoter Caden Velasquez, who was the center of attention. The recent UC Davis graduate was bombarded with questions about Gen Zers in their 20s: Why are they mostly missing from the city's struggling bars and nightlife scene? When they do show up, why don't they drink alcohol like the generations before them? What would it take to get them back to San Francisco and out in the bars and clubs?
'There was a three-year period during COVID that people my age didn't learn how to party,' Velasquez said. 'People my age are just realizing things — like going to trivia night on a Tuesday night is a fun thing to do. Because it is! Everyone here is welcome to tell Gen Z how to party.'
The discussion underscored parallel demographic threats that have sent the city's entertainment industry into a tailspin: The city is aging faster than other metro areas in the nation, creating a bar and nightlife economy increasingly dependent on people in their 40s and 50s and 60s for revenue – groups often too busy raising families, paying mortgages or caring for aging parents to spend much time catching live bands or happy hour with colleagues after work.
Meanwhile, unlike with previous generations, the city's twenty-somethings aren't filling the gap. About 20% of residents in their 20s left town during the pandemic and many of those who stayed have not embraced the drinking culture that has long supported the city's nocturnal economy. That confluence of aging customers, pandemic population shifts and the fact that the people of partying age are no longer partying has led to waves of bar and restaurant closures, while many establishments are barely holding on.
'The fact that we are breaking even is a miracle,' said Ben Bleiman, the president of the Entertainment Commission, who recently reopened downtown tavern Harrington's, which had gone out of business during the pandemic.
San Francisco County now has the second-lowest share of people under the age of 30 among the 150 largest counties in the United States, at about 30%. From 2013 to 2023, the share of San Franciscans between the ages of 22 and 29 decreased from 16% to 13% — about 25,000 residents.
The city's dwindling pool of young people, and its growing share of Gen Xers and boomers, is reshaping health care, education and housing. And it could have a crippling effect on San Francisco's hospitality sector, the bars and clubs that have always relied on the trade of young professionals — often people in their 20s with disposable income and no kids to pick up from school.
As the city fights to bring people back to downtown neighborhoods and restore the vitality that vanished during the pandemic, it has become clear that nightlife must be a big part of the solution, said Sarah Dennis Phillips, director of the Office of Economic and Workforce Development. The hospitality industry generates $6 billion a year in direct economic impact in San Francisco while employing 54,000 workers.
'We started to realize that entertainment and nightlife was going to be one of the fundamental remaining reasons to live in a city or come to a city,' Phillips told the audience at the entertainment summit.
But beyond the decrease in Gen Z population is the puzzle of catering to a generation detached from the alcohol-centric culture that has kept everything from jazz venues to sports bars to rock clubs afloat.
Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows a massive drop in drinking between millennials and Gen Z.Members of the latter group spend $3.1 billion annually on alcohol, a massive drop from the $25 billion in booze sales to Boomers. Millennials, meanwhile, spend $23.4 billion, with Gen X shelling out $23.1 billion, according to the government report.
'They drink hop water and Red Bulls. They drink tap water,' Lynn Schwartz, co-owner of Bottom of the Hill, a rock venue in Potrero Hill, said about Gen Z. 'It's really good that they are healthier than we were coming up, but it's bad for the business model.'
'Gen Z has been wiped off the map from COVID,' said Bleiman. 'I haven't given up on them as a generation, but in terms of hospitality, we need to write them off.'
The fallout from these parallel demographic shifts can be seen at places like the century-old Great American Music Hall, where manager Fred Barnes said he's been forced to completely shift his strategy since the COVID shutdowns.
'We basically had to change the way we are doing everything,' he said. 'If you were to book bands now based on what would have been a safe strategy before the pandemic, it would be an epic failure.'
Some of the shows that would have been 'instant sellouts' before COVID — like the Bay Area's rich network of Grateful Dead 'adjacent' bands — are no longer sure bets. That makes sense, he said. It's natural that older people retire elsewhere or go out less as they age.
But like other club owners, Barnes has been focusing on understanding the tastes of the Gen Z audience. They tend to be broader and more eclectic than earlier generations, he said, and less based on genre.
A metal band that is trending on TikTok might pack the place, while a seemingly similar group might play to a mostly-empty house. The allure of jam bands may be fading, but there is a growing audience for Cumbia, the high-energy Latino genre rooted in Columbia. All-night raves have been replaced by daytime DJs and coffee-shop pop-ups.
Which has forced Barnes to become more creative in finding talent that will appeal to a fickle and unpredictable audience. On a Monday night in April, he booked 70-year-old ambient Japanese saxophonist Yasuaki Shimizu's first U.S. tour. The show sold out.
'You think, 'This is going to be a really old crowd — the guy is in his 70s,'' Barnes said. 'It was the complete opposite.'
But even shows featuring bands that attract a young fan base may not turn a profit given the decrease in alcohol consumption, said Schwartz, co-owner of Bottom of the Hill. The club works hard to book bands with younger followings, and to keep ticket prices low, even if it means not making much money. That was the case with a recent bill featuring the Nashville 'egg punk' band Snooper, an act whose live shows include papier-mache puppets and animatics.
She said, 'Snooper killed it and the kids showed up for them.'
'We consider some of the all-ages shows to be a loss leader,' Schwartz said. 'It's how you introduce young people to the club — show them such a good time they will keep coming back. Eventually they will be able to afford higher ticket prices and a Shirley Temple — maybe even a real cocktail.'
Still, she said, there are too many nights when the crowd is a sea of gray hair and bald heads.
'Some shows are like, 'Whoa,'' Schwartz said. 'You get 20 calls for reserved seating — people who can't stand for a long period of time, who have a bum hip, who use a cane.'
The decade prior to the pandemic, San Francisco became an epicenter of the artisan cocktail movement, with patrons drawn to increasingly bespoke, and expensive, drinks. One group at the forefront of that trend was Future Bars, which today owns 13 establishments in San Francisco, including Bourbon & Branch, Local Edition and Rickhouse.
Future Bars CEO Brian Sheehy said the cost of living in San Francisco, combined with the sluggish pandemic recovery, has slowly driven away many young people who worked and drank in his bars. In the last 15 years, the average age of his patrons has increased from late 20s to the mid 30s, while the average age of employees is even older.
Sheehy said his company is 'running to break even for the fifth year in a row.'
'We are spinning our wheels, doing the work, holding on and holding out for things to get better,' he said. 'At some point we might have to make some tough decisions.'
In order to bring in more patrons, especially younger ones, Future Bars is pivoting from an experience focused mostly on ambience and cocktails to one that also includes art and music. Today, the two most successful Future Bars establishments — the Dawn Club and Local Edition — both feature live jazz.
Sheehy is opening a Cuban bar in North Beach that will feature music as well as an art gallery, and he's reconfiguring other places to include rotating exhibits. In a way, the company has come full circle: 23 years ago, Sheehy and a friend, the late Dahi Donnelly, both immigrants from Ireland, put on packed art openings at their first bar, Anu at Sixth and Market.
'Up until the shutdown, we didn't have to worry about putting art in our bars,' Sheehy said. 'We are going back to our roots.'
Nightlife entrepreneurs say the crisis stems not just from the flight of young customers, but also workers. About 70% of leisure and hospitality workers were laid off during the pandemic when hotels and restaurants shut down. Many left town. 'People can't wait around to go back to work, and they didn't,' said city economist Ted Egan.
Compounding the problem, those workers, many of them young, tended to be among their industry's most reliable customers. A $20 tip left on the bar at Ocean Ale House near City College may end up at the Royal Cuckoo on Mission Street or Specs in North Beach.
'A huge portion of the business was the service industry. They are gone,' said Blieman of the Entertainment Commission. 'They used to go out, they used to party, they used to spend the tips they just made at your bar after their shift.'
Even after the pandemic ended and bars and restaurants reopened, servers in a depressed San Francisco were making a lot less than they had been, which in turn prompted a flight of talent to other markets, Sheehy said. A whole group of Future Bars servers and managers relocated to New York, lured by tales of tips exceeding $400 a night.
'They have created their own ex-pat community of San Francisco hospitality folks in New York,' Sheehy said. 'They have a great lifestyle and make more money. It's hard to blame them.'
Despite the unsettling sales and migration data, Gen Z members believe there's hope for the city's nightlife scene — even if they have to look to the daylight hours for inspiration.
Recent San Francisco transplants say the statistics don't reflect the vitality of the arts and entertainment scene taking root at places like the Faight Collective in the Lower Haight or Casements in the Mission, or at parties put on by Cave Rave, which recently threw a dance party in the tunnels by Sutro Baths.
Velasquez, the party planner, said 'there has been this weird stain' on San Francisco since the pandemic, 'but a new narrative is forming that San Francisco is alive.'
Day parties are popular, Velasquez said, explaining that Gen Zers value 'community' and tend to be loyal to particular venues or collectives they feel part of. His generation may be drinking less, he said, but more importantly is 'partying differently.' He has been contacting coffeehouses, asking to put on events at 10 a.m. — and seeing hundreds of people show up.
One of the venues that has figured out how to attract Gen Zers, the Faight Collective, is part art gallery, nightclub, retail space, theater, yoga studio, live music venue and recording studio.
'It's the era of community organizers. It's the era of coffee pop-ups and day parties,' said Daniel Bondi, 30, who founded the venue with Andrew Wasilewski in 2023. 'We did a techno brunch where everyone wore black and sunglasses. It was a Berlin club but at 11 o'clock in the morning.'
Casements, an LGBTQ-friendly Irish bar in the Mission with a festive beer garden, has cultivated a loyal customer base through a combination of old-school hospitality and curated events. There might be a chicken schnitzel party on a Wednesday and a 'Seanchoíche' — a night of Irish storytelling — the next night.
On a recent Saturday, Casements hosted an 11 a.m. Virgo Supperclub Pop-Up followed by a 3 p.m. lesbian and queer friendly wine pop-up hosted by Somebody's Sister followed by a drag bingo. The establishment serves four types of non-alcoholic beers and an extensive list of low-alcohol cocktails.
'We have immersive interactive events because folks are looking for experiences-driven things,' said co-owner Jillian Fitzgerald. She said she has seen more 20-somethings moving to San Francisco primarily for community or culture, rather than just for a high-paying tech job.
'Before the pandemic there were a lot of people here who didn't want to be in San Francisco — they would have much preferred to be in Houston with a big backyard,' she said. 'San Francisco has always been a city of unexpected things and that died for a while. Now it's starting to come back.'
Leah Woods, a 28-year-old composer who lives in the Haight, runs the Tuesday night open mic at the Faight. She said the city needs to do a better job promoting itself as a place for artists and musicians.
'S.F. is so casual about the art that comes out of it. It doesn't really care,' she said. 'You drive into the city and every billboard is about AI and you have no idea what any of it means. How about a billboard promoting a frickin show or an artist's new single or a performance in the park?'
While the Faight still generates revenue selling drinks and tickets, Wasilewski and Bondi emphasized that the Gen Z audience responds well to 'layering,' an array of activities like crocheting or watercolor painting that 'calm the nerves' and can appeal to people not used to socializing with strangers.
One recent Faight open mic participant was Elijah Milak, a 24-year-old guitarist and singer who moved to San Francisco in 2021 after graduating from Howard University. 'When I got here nightlife was pretty dead,' he said. 'Now it feels like the city has come out of its shell. You can come to a community like the Faight and there is a genuine energy. '
At the entertainment commission summit, Faight co-founder Wasilewski said that venues, instead of guessing what customers in their 20s are looking for, should empower the next generation by bringing in young promoters or collectives who know what their contemporaries want.
'Give them the freedom to come in and take over the space to do their thing,' Wasilewski said. 'Get creative. Don't be cheap. Don't be lazy. Give people good non-alcoholic options. People want to enjoy having a good-looking drink in their hands. It doesn't have to be alcohol.'