“San Francisco, how the fuck we feeling, baby?” John Summit shouted from his elevated, 360-degree DJ setup at the Cow Palace.
It was three minutes until midnight on a Friday. Just before the bass drop, a dozen jets of flame shot up all around him, sending the 12,000 fans in the audience into near-ecstasy. The rush of heat on my eyeballs matched the bass thuds vibrating my sternum. Hundreds of phones were held aloft to record the moment. It was, in the words of the awestruck guy behind me, dope as hell.
Summit, a house and techno artist from Chicago, was headlining a quadruple bill over back-to-back nights with support from fellow electronic musicians AMPRS&ND, VNSSA, and Walker & Royce. In spite of the cavernous interior of the 83-year-old venue, the sound quality was superb, and the sheer abundance of lasers was impressive. Such multisensory maximalism is part and parcel for the 30-year-old Chicagoan who Rolling Stone called “the hottest name in dance music” this spring.
Electronic dance music, long the province of megaclubs and festivals, appears to be entering its arena phase. And the Cow Palace — whose homespun name speaks to its original purpose as an exhibition hall for Holsteins — is helping to midwife this transition, booking EDM acts with massive followings like Summit, Jamie xx, Lane 8, Charlotte de Witte, and Rezz.
This, of course, is the same Cow Palace that’s also home to lower-tech events like the Dickens Fair and the Grand National Rodeo, along with tattoo expos, boat shows, lumpia festivals, and the occasional evangelical revival with Joe Montana. It still does all that, but seemingly overnight, a hangar-shaped, concrete-floored dinosaur has turned into the Bay Area’s hottest venue, flames and all.
‘Every fan feels like they’re part of the show’
It’s not as though the Cow Palace is a stranger to live music: Before Chase Center, Oracle Park, and Levi’s Stadium ever existed, it was the Bay Area’s largest venue. Elvis Presley, Elton John, Paul McCartney, and Prince all played there. But by the 2000s, newer arenas like San Jose’s SAP Center eroded the Cow Palace’s primacy, while long-vacant venues like Oakland’s Fox Theater returned.
The programming took a sharp turn earlier this year through the efforts of the venue’s deputy director, 35-year industry veteran Eric Blockie. A Bay Area native who worked for promoter Bill Graham Presents and its eventual parent company, Live Nation, Blockie was also Santana’s production manager and an assistant tour manager for Huey Lewis & the News. He joined the Cow Palace team two years ago, he says, because they weren’t doing as many shows, and they could only go up. But nostalgia was a factor too.
“It was the house that held it all,” he said. “The Beatles played a couple times. Liberace in 1955. I remember AC/DC, Def Leppard, and the Nirvana-Red Hot Chili Peppers-Pearl Jam show on New Year’s Eve [1991]. That’s how I remember the Cow Palace.”
The Cow Palace still books occasional rock and punk shows, but guitars have largely given way to DJ decks. In Blockie’s estimation, the venue’s biggest advantage from an EDM artist’s point of view is its sheer size — specifically, the size of the floor. “What you saw with John Summit, they had the ability to bring in this very large production — stuff they couldn’t do anywhere else except Madison Square Garden,” he said. “It took four days to load in.”
Touring acts that play eight or 10 U.S. dates usually stop at the same few venues in the same handful of cities, and Blockie wants the Cow Palace to become the destination for Bay Area stops, the equivalent of L.A.’s Kia Forum or Austin’s Concourse Project. DJs like the venue because it’s a single level, with no nosebleeds. Unlike many indoor arenas, there are no suites — and the persistent grumbling about the flashy upstart Chase Center’s crappy acoustics seems to be growing louder by the day.
As proof of concept, Blockie cited three big names who’ve performed at the Cow Palace in the last 12 months and, as it happens, also appeared at this year’s Outside Lands Music Festival. “Four Tet, Kaytranada, and Fisher, they like the feeling that every fan feels like they’re part of the show,” he said. “That’s the environment that this particular music calls for.”
The Cow Palace doesn’t book these DJs; promoters do. Blockie has cultivated relationships with Another Planet Entertainment, Hotbox, and Insomniac, but the strongest partner to date has been Goldenvoice, the local affiliate of the entertainment conglomerate AEG. “I run four walls and a flat floor,” Blockie said. “Danny Bell at Goldenvoice has this fantastic vision, and these artists and agents are buying into it.”
Bell paid that compliment forward, assigning credit to the artists themselves. “With John Summit, that production was his team’s idea, and the building was able to host it,” Bell said. “The Cow Palace is unique, a very attractive option for these dance artists who have large production shows.”
Unlike Chase Center or Oracle Park, the Cow Palace also has parking — acres and acres of asphalt, enough for 3,400 vehicles. It’s enough to draw the attention of lawmakers looking to solve San Francisco’s entrenched homelessness crisis. Last year, Supervisor and mayoral candidate Ahsha Safai, whose district includes the city’s portion of the Cow Palace parking lots, proposed building tiny homes and an RV village there. The idea drew pushback from San Mateo County officials, who saw it as San Francisco shipping its problems to their doorstep.
In the meantime, the Cow Palace continues to announce one high-profile DJ and remixer after another. In the past few weeks, Goldenvoice trumpeted forthcoming shows by Jamie XX, Lane 8, and Rezz, who’s set to debut the most ambitious immersive multimedia experience, “Portal,” at the venue next March. Bell connected this resurgence to the live shows and raves that have extended San Francisco’s comeback summer deep into the fall.
“Everyone in the city wants to win and have great entertainment right now,” Bell said. “It’s stunning.”