Families with strollers, tech bros on Onewheels, bike-riding DoorDashers, and a jazz band on a streetcar scrolled back and forth Thursday evening across Market Street like some kind of migratory flyway for itinerant bird species. It was a rare busy night on the downtown stretch that typically feels more like a ghost town.
Bands played, acrobats swung from buildings, B-boys and -girls breakdanced, and music filled the corridors of Mid-Market, courtesy of the inaugural Unstaged block party put on by Market Street Arts.
The event — organized with the help of city officials, private donors, and community activists — is one of the projects attempting to revitalize a downtrodden area that has seen a rise in empty storefronts.
The area might get another boost as Mayor London Breeds pushes to turn Market Street between 5th and 6th into one of four “entertainment zones” in the city where public drinking will be allowed at outdoor events.
That portion of Market has all the fixings of a vibrant neighborhood: a newly opened IKEA (built with a restaurant but no parking lot), Blick Art Materials, a smattering of eateries, and the Jonathan Carver Moore art gallery, which this month features a selection of photos taken in the Tenderloin.
As the block party took off Thursday, a scrum of commuters and teenagers gathered around a breakdance crew on a false stage in front of 995 Market St. That 16-story building sold this year for $6.5 million, 90% less than its price in 2016, showing that despite the neighborhood’s potential, there is skepticism about its future.
Mission resident Athena Murphy said that despite the fallen state of downtown, she and her husband make an effort to visit the area at least once a month, usually to eat at the Saluhall food court.
“It’s part of being in the city,” she said. “Saluhall is amazing, but you have to be coming to that specifically, because there’s not much else around these days. We do ourselves a disservice in this city. Maybe [they should] clean the sidewalk.”
In an empty storefront, the Living Earth Show — a two-man band of ambient-chamber music aficionados — played a set across from a drag lip-sync contest in front of the Crazy Horse strip club, while Bandaloop acrobats descended from a nearby building facade.
John Knox White stood smiling as he watched the breakdancers. He has been commuting downtown to his job as a planner for the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency for 11 years. He told The Standard he hadn’t seen Mid-Market this vibrant since before the pandemic, when a block party ran from the ferry building to the Castro.
“I’m out here with friends and family because I really like things that can bring vibrancy to the sidewalk and the city,” he said.
To learn about upcoming Unstaged block parties, go to https://www.marketstreetarts.org/unstaged.