I returned to City Nights, the nightclub people love to hate — it’s still thriving after 34 years

The massive crowds at City Nights can be seen at 715 Harrison Street in San Francisco. The long-running club is applying for Legacy Business status after 34 years in business. The massive crowds at City Nights can be seen at 715 Harrison Street in San Francisco. The long-running club is applying for Legacy Business status after 34 years in business. Photo: Courtesy City Nights Photo: Courtesy City Nights Image 1 of / 15 Caption Close I returned to City Nights, the nightclub people love to hate — it’s still thriving after 34 years 1 / 15 Back to Gallery

City Nights is the dance club you forget when you turn 21. I know I did.

But walking up to the front doors of this 18-and-over club in SoMa awakens memories you’ve long forgotten. Stepping out of a Lyft onto the corner of 3rd and Harrison streets, there’s the familiar crunch of street grit and broken glass as you stroll toward the lines of 18-, 19-, and 20-year-olds. They’re excitedly chatting together in a mishmash of bridge-and-tunnel cities, teenaged hormones colliding together.

I should know. I stood in line with them just 19 years earlier, arriving in a car filled with fellow teenagers making the trek from our East Bay town of Hercules, everyone shouting and being uproariously loud in that way teens are when they’re with friends.

It’s a November night and I’m strolling down memory lane, in the name of this story. Each memory makes me smirk.

There’s the corner parking lot, where we sipped my friend’s alcohol stash before ditching the evidence and rounding the corner to join the line.

I remember palming my ID nervously despite the fact that I was legally 18 — I was too uncool and cash poor to procure a fake ID, so I was there almost exactly on my 18th birthday.

The girls I see scantily dressed in tight black dresses and high heels remind me of my own poor wardrobe choices that fall, refusing to bring a jacket — I wasn’t about to pay to place it in coat check.

Despite the fact that City Nights has welcomed waves of overeager 18-year-old teens every Saturday night, it’s an easy target for grown ups willing (and wanting) to forget their teen years, myself included. But despite how post-21 you feels now, City Nights is forever.

First taste of the night life

Music escapes the club each time the door swings open and in 2019 it is unfamiliar to me, the loud bass thumping in a pleasant way, but at the same time reminding me: This isn’t my club anymore. It certainly wasn’t the same music (no Montell Jordan, Jagged Edge or Sisqo). Aside from the Gen Zers in the Tight Black Dress Club, most others dress casually in crop tops and pants, a definite sign of how things have changed from the overdressed days of the early 2000s.

Inside, things look very much how I remember it: the row of double doors behind security that let into the club, the smaller room where the crowd gathers, the strobe lights that move and flash to the beat. Nostalgia hits hard when I stroll into the second room, the walls lined with dancing stages for the teens with an exhibitionist streak who loved to put their dance moves in front of the crowds. While I was never the type to show off, I looked to the dance floor where the majority of my dancing took place — mostly within the safe space of a circle of girlfriends — and was surprised to see things very much play out in the same way, but with today’s teens.

This 18+ club has outlasted many of the dance clubs in San Francisco’s nightclub scene, still drawing long lines of partiers despite the city’s high turnover rate of entertainment venues. The club hopes to cement its status as a fixture of San Francisco by applying for Legacy Business status after turning 34 years old, nearly twice the average age of its clientele.

But however you remember City Nights from your own teenage days, many consider it part of one’s Bay Area initiation.

Take a look at this 2017 tweet from rapper and singer Kamaiyah: “City Nights before age 21 is a Bay Area right of passage don't skip that step take yo a— to city nights my young tenders (sobbing emoji).”

At the time I read the tweet, my own reaction was a more mixed one, agreeing with the sentiment but taking into account my own negative reactions toward the big nightclub experience: the equivalent of the woozy face emoji, but IRL. The tweet was liked by thousands of locals and the replies turned into a mess of tags as people forced their fellow 18-year-old party partners to join their City Nights reminiscences; each tweet was a mix of silly teenaged adventures from admittances of getting kicked out (or arrested!), those who admitted to meeting their fiances there, and pregaming.

I wasn’t exactly sure what I would find when I returned to the roots of my burgeoning clubbing days; I had long since decided that the scene wasn’t for me, but I was curious to see if my memories held up, sticky nightclub floors and misbehaving boys included. And so it was that I found myself returning to the hallowed dancing grounds of my teenaged self on a recent night, unsure of what to expect.

“When you go Saturday night, it really hasn't changed that much other than the fact that you're gonna feel really old,” warned owner Brit Hahn.

He wasn’t wrong.

The beginnings

City Nights for the uninitiated is an intimidating practice in nightlife; the only experience that could closely mirror it was the darkened gym dances held at my small private high school. This was easily those dances x 1,000, amplified by the unfamiliar faces and rituals of a night out in “the city” as we called it.

Those dances always seemed an exercise in awkwardness, at least in my eyes, but now was the chance to step away from my shy, straight-edge high school self and embrace my now-worldly views, having finally graduated from high school to the wider world of nightclubs and people (insert eyeroll here). In the aughts when I was there, City Nights was just a decade and a half into its run at the time, and there weren’t many other local places welcoming 18-year-olds like myself at a club, at least willingly. (And no scene as exciting as San Francisco to wild out, at least in my teenaged eyes.)

City Nights opened under Hahn’s steed in 1985, when Hahn was just 25. Before he leased the building at Harrison and 3rd streets, the club was known as Dreamland, a gay club that dated to the late 70s. Then it became a second club called Echo Beach and eventually converted into the Harrison Street Theater. At the time, Hahn said he was running a few small businesses in the city — namely karate studios — but he also enjoyed the huge nightclub and dancehall scene that was prevalent at the time.

“I remember going to the Oasis and thinking, ‘This looks like something I could do.’ There were people lined up around the corner paying the hefty sum of five dollars to get into this place,” Hahn recalled. “The entrepreneur in me was saying, ‘I can do this.’”

Along with a group of investors, Hahn opened City Nights in 1985. It began as a typical 21+ club, but transitioned into a mostly 18-and-over venue around ‘87 or ‘88.

Recalling hanging out in San Francisco as a teenager in the ‘70s, “We didn’t have a place to go,” Hahn said. “We never had an opportunity to go out and be properly supervised and socialize with our peers from all over the Bay Area.”

Hahn’s partner Ray Bobbitt started as a bouncer at night in 1989 at the age of 19, just barely over the typical age of the club’s patrons. For Bobbitt, it was the youth that really kept the club going, he said.

“They want to see what it's like to be in the big nightclub and to interface with a lot of different people from different areas,” he says. “It's a really unique thing to watch.”

What City Nights served for me was two-fold. I found a place where I could dance my heart out, far (enough) away from the glances of my high school classmates. And I was finally able to meet people from outside my hometown enclave, a place I was desperate to get away from, but stuck in for my foreseeable, post-high school future. City Nights, however, didn’t really become my place of dancing solace; instead, it was a training ground for how to handle myself when others misbehave, from disarming handsy boys to avoiding exchanging phone numbers (or AIM addresses).

City Nights isn’t without its issues, as both Hahn and Bobbitt admit, but mitigating trouble is part of any nightclub business, even those that cater to a younger clientele.

“I really felt strongly about the fact that young people are blamed for being problematic,” Hahn said. “But give them something to do, give them a place to go, give them a place where it's safe, where they're supervised and where they can just be free, and they'll take care of themselves.”

Despite being known mostly for music played by DJs, City Nights has a surprising history of booking huge bands. The club’s opening night featured a performance by Tower of Power, and since then the club has hosted the Ramones, Grace Jones, MC Hammer, Lady Gaga, Jason Derulo and even a young Justin Bieber. (Scroll through the photos above to see some of the artists they've hosted over the years.)

"What it really was about for us more than the music, it was just being able to get together in a place that lets you get away from your day-to-day living and be a star for the night. That was always our motto," Hahn said. "We want these young people to feel like they're all grown up and we want them to feel special. It didn't matter who you were, where you came from or how much money you made or didn't make. In a nightclub, really, everyone was equal. It may sound like a cliche, but it was really true."

The club today — the kids are alright

Despite my efforts to put on a brave face and wait in line for a club amidst a sea of 18-year-olds, Bobbitt spotted me almost immediately. I am dressed in an all-black uniform, this time in motorcycle boots and leather jacket, rather than the too-casual (or, alternately, too-dressy) outfits on display — a step out of line from the obviously young crowd. At the front doors I see him handle everything, from welcoming a friend’s newly-18 daughter into the club, greeting those joining the line and monitoring the crowd from the front doors.

Bobbitt’s seen generations of teens go through those doors, and he has become a recognizable fixture for many of the club’s current customers — including their parents.

“Me being [at City Nights] for over 30 years, I'm seeing generations of people now,” Bobbitt said. “People send their kids and they come up and say, 'Oh yeah, my mom told me to tell you hello.’”

Returning to Harrison Street filled me with a strange sense of nostalgia. There's something eternal about 18-ness that struck me while standing outside the club. Despite being quite removed from that age, I recognized that many of the same large groups of friends looking for a good time were like my own. Those times have since evolved: these days my friends are more preoccupied with their jobs and children, and rightly so, and a night out at the bar these days doesn’t quite replicate that same excitement I saw in this line for City Nights.

Still, there were funny bits I noted when I stepped inside the club. I was never one to drink inside — I couldn’t, given I was under-21, and was not nearly up for the task of trying to purchase an alcoholic beverage, let alone knowing what to order — but when I walked up to the bar for a drink now, it was one of the easiest experiences ordering a drink that I could remember. There weren’t enough 21-year-olds to pack the bar area, making for an easy getaway, drink in hand.

It's not all good nostalgia, however; as I wandered the two rooms of dancing patrons, some handsy teen starts dancing with me without quite asking. I chalk it up to typical rude club behavior, but I now have the wherewithal to know how to deal with it. Outside, a party bus pulled up and a security guard quickly boarded to assess the situation — drunk kids are a bad mix for the club, so the group is told to go elsewhere. A few try to sneak into the club later, but are immediately spotted and kicked out. It’s a testament to Bobbitt's commitment to a safe environment.

Bobbitt’s seen all manners of teens while working at the club, but he admires this youngest generation most, saying in the past most friend groups and types wouldn't mix, but these teens seem more tolerant than ever before.

“This young generation gets a bad rap, but they really are more tolerant and accepting of each other than I've ever seen,” Bobbitt said. “They've grown up together, all different demographics, races, sexual orientation, you name it, they're all friends. It's just like, ‘Wow, how cool is this?’ You can't tell a skater and a hip-hop kid apart. They dress almost identical [these days]."

Legacy status

It's just this year that Bobbitt and Hahn became convinced to seek out the city's Legacy Business designation, which requires businesses to have operated in the city for 30 years with no significant changes in ownership. They expect it to be approved any day now.

"When you really think about how long we've been doing this for, it's pretty overwhelming,” Bobbitt said. “I think the fact that we've been visited, and served virtually every segment of our incredibly diverse society, we feel really good about that and we feel that that's something that is notable.”

At the conclusion of my tour, Bobbitt ushers me into the larger dance room before the crowd rushes in. It’s the “opening of the room” as Bobbitt calls it, and the DJ and security guards gear up for the rush of teens onto the dance floor. I’m led to a perch on the second story of the club as the burnt-caramel smell of fake smoke fills the room, lasers and lights defusing in the air.

The DJ queues up a song — one I’m unfamiliar with, yet again, another notch added to my feeling of oldness — and the doors open as the first tentative teens flood inside.

I’m watching the scene below, and even thinking about it weeks later, it’s incredible how despite the time that’s passed, this club is still a familiar scene. Sure, I didn’t know the music or the synchronized dance moves, but there’s a timelessness in the youthful energy, the boundless excitement of being in line outside, and the limitless possibilities of meeting a stranger — and perhaps having it turn into more.

That magical feeling was wasted on me then; I was more preoccupied with learning how to navigate all the social pitfalls that come with being very 18. Now, rather than feeling the uncertainty of my teenaged self, I had a finer appreciation for those feelings of adultness and freedom, sticky nightclub floor and all.

In a moment of truth outside of the club, I confess to Bobbitt I expected to hate the experience. When he asks how I'm feeling now, I say it's not as bad as I was imagining and that I was ultimately feeling nostalgic.

He nodded, understanding. Bobbitt tells me people like to bash the club after they turn 21 — a graduation to the older echelons of nightlife — but there is a point when the nostalgia of being a teen returns ... and they warm up to that time and place once again. I know I did.

Dianne de Guzman is a Digital Editor at SFGATE. Email: dianne.deguzman@sfgate.com