The Endup Building on Sale for $5.2M

By Peter Lawrence Kane

The gentrification monster, not nearly satisfied by devouring long-term residents with rent control, is now whetting its appetite for SF nightlife icons. The Sound Factory is going condo, Café Cocomo is dunzo, the future of Yoshi’s SF is always in jeopardy, and a new development next to the Independent seems destined for a collision course with future NIMBY neighbors. And now, the three-story building housing the EndUp is on the market, for $5.2 million, according to Curbed SF.

To be clear, the EndUp is not closing, the club is not for sale and it’s not insolvent. Whoever buys the building will have the club as lessees. Were it not for the pattern swirling all around it, it might not even be news. But if you drove by it recently and thought, “Oh yeah, I haven’t been there in ages,” now might be a good time to go — just in case. The EndUp is, of course, a huge after-hours destination and maybe SF’s nearest approximation it has to a German megaclub that never closes. (It’s one of those venues with a huge, hardcore fan base which also spurs other people to say, “OMG, never again.”) One huge weekly party that gets a lot of attention now is Sundaze, an afternoon of Top 40, hip-hop, and EDM that feels slightly out-of-joint in an increasingly luxe and buttoned-down Central SoMa.

Curiously, Curbed lists the EndUp’s “gross-looking vinyl banquettes” as a con for anyone contemplating purchasing the building. Here I must protest; lots of fun things happen on gross-looking vinyl, and this city needs to treat it like an endangered species. However, the MLS listing also has some amazingly surreal shots of the EndUp looking rather weird in broad daylight. Weird not because it’s lit by the sun, but because there aren’t also people in it at that hour, out of their gourds with a good time.