On a recent Friday night in the Marina, flocks of fashionable Zoomers marched bar to bar in uniforms of flat-brimmed hats and black miniskirts. Most of them walked right past 3200 Fillmore St., where a more eccentric, age-diverse crowd rocking tiaras and animal print was too busy forming a spontaneous kickline to worry about looking cool.
Popular kids, meet the theater kids.
This is the Broadway Sing-Along Bar, a pop-up at the Rockwell events space that runs every weekend through Aug. 21 and has been drawing crowds of theater geeks since opening in late June. The bar’s aesthetic — velvet curtains, framed Playbills, blinking yellow bulbs — is that of a sweet 16 party for a drama-club president. It’s over-the-top, extra, and, to quote “Hello, Dolly,” “full of shine and full of sparkle.”
A $16.75 cover grants entry and a welcome cocktail that is tasty but low-alcohol enough that one could stand backstage at the Gershwin and operate Glinda’s flying bubble if needed. In any case, denizens of the Broadway Sing-Along Bar do not need liquid courage to unleash their vocal prowess or jazz hands.
Amy Kuan came up for the evening from the South Bay because, she said, she wanted to be “surrounded by like-minded people who love Broadway music.” Then she skipped to the center of the floor, grabbed the mic, and led the room in a rousing rendition of “My Shot” from “Hamilton.” People cheered, high-fived, and rapped in unison about the American Revolution.
Evenings at the bar, sponsored by the events company Bucket Listers, are hosted by either local drag queen Curveball or L.A.-based queen Hummingbird Meadows. The night begins with a singalong, with lyrics from musicals projected on a screen. Bar-goers pass around a plastic microphone, often rising from their booths to dance. A quasi-singing competition follows, and the evening wraps up with Broadway karaoke.
On the night The Standard visited, a group of middle school teachers performed a number from “Grease.” A group of friends sang a spirited deep cut from “Guys and Dolls” about betting on a horse race. And a trauma surgeon in cat ears gave a stirring rendition of “Memory” from “Cats.”
“I’ve been singing since I could talk,” said Natashia Lewis Schiff, the surgeon, who came to the bar with nine friends. “I wish there was something like this once a month, cause it’s just such a nice atmosphere.”
Her husband, Jeremy Schiff, said he likes theater but doesn’t identify as a theater person. “I’m in software,” he said. “The tech scene … has less musicals.” But he loved the energy in the room. When “Do You Hear the People Sing?” came on, “I was on the floor actually singing my heart out,” he said.
Overseen by Meadows, the crowd segued easily from song to song. They became Greek partygoers (“Mamma Mia”), then Eastern European shtetl dwellers (“Fiddler on the Roof”). They waved flags as French peasants (“Les Misérables”), then reached their final form as Depression-era orphans (“Annie.”) The Standard’s correspondent did not take the mic, but she did belt along with the crowd to “It’s the Hard-Knock Life,” overwhelmed by memories of playing the mean orphan in seventh grade.
Meadows, in a spangled, high-slit evening gown, skipped the dirty jokes, riffing instead on Broadway lore. “Stephen Schwartz and Fosse didn’t get along,” she mused into the microphone, and many in the crowd nodded knowingly. When she quizzed the crowd on Tony Award trivia — who beat “Wicked” in 2004? — the room shouted back the answer: “Avenue Q!”
“Theater people are always having a good time,” said Sarai Gallegos. “It’s infectious.”
“It’s like a safe space,” said her friend Thayvi Ganeshalingam. “No one’s judging.”
Of course, the night is not for everyone. If you don’t know how many minutes there are in a year — and you do not care to ask, earnestly, how to measure a year in a life — you may not have a good time. There is no room for cynics, snobs, or Sondheim purists at the Broadway Sing-Along Bar.
The bar is, perhaps, an attempt to export the magic of Marie’s Crisis, the iconic singalong piano joint in Manhattan’s West Village. San Francisco’s best take on this is still Martuni’s on Market Street, where a skilled pianist accompanies a crowd of both music professionals and enthusiasts. The Broadway Sing-Along Bar exchanges the piano at Martuni’s for Spotify, its stiff drinks for a “Greatest Showman Spritz,” and Sinatra covers for the chance to turn to the person in the next booth and say, “Audra got so robbed at the Tonys this year.”
Late on Friday night, outside the bar, a passing group of partiers, none of whom were alive when “The Phantom of the Opera” premiered on Broadway in 1988, stopped and peered in. They clutched their beers and belted out the lyrics to the title track.
In the final number of “Les Misérables,” the performers trill, “To love another person is to see the face of God.” A popular kid at the Broadway Sing-Along Bar may see a bunch of people they intentionally avoided in high school. A show-tunes lover may see the face of God.