The EndUp at 401 6th Street

With plans for the development of an eight-story building on the parcel across the street having already been submitted to Planning, the three-story building which has long been home to the EndUp at 6th and Harrison is now on the market for $5,200,000, including the parcel in red next door.

401 6th Street Site

While the listing for the 401 6th Street site touts “a long term, financially sound tenant” which “has been a San Francisco staple for over 40 years and possesses one of the city’s most rare liquor license, a Type 48 with after hour permits,” it does not specially note how much time the EndUp currently has left on its lease.

The marketing materials for the building do note, however, an “upper level development opportunity.”  A request to convert the upper two floors of the building which is zoned for “service, arts and light industrial use” into a restaurant was rejected 30 years ago due to a lack of off-street parking.

401 6th Street Upper Floor

Offers for the building are due next month.

40 thoughts on “Could It Be End Of Days For The Iconic EndUp Nightclub?”
  1. Oh man, I hope the Endup stays. A lot of late nights (well, early mornings) there. I’m a little (okay, a lot) too old for the place now, but I’d hate to lose another great place for the younger crowd. It can’t all just be staring at laptops on tech buses and eating dinner at the latest overpriced eatery in the Mission, can it?

  2. No way this pencils at $5.2M without a major redevelopment effort. Hard to believe the existing club will survive if the building sells, no matter what the buyer or broker says.

  3. Tear it down. Build some new housing at this location. The Endup can always move to a new location, if the patrons will follow.

    It’s a new day. Cities change. And yes, btw, I spent many weekends there til the late morning hours with friends dancing and carrying on, including the Jockey shorts dance contest; which I never actually won.

  4. “The End Up can always move to a new location.” Really? Where? The End Up has just the freeway behind it. Few places in the City have no neighbors behind them, and it’s very unlikely any neighborhood would allow a new, large, indoor/outdoor, all-night venue.

    1. Oh I have no idea. I’m not a magician. Clubs move around and survive in NY, London, LA and Paris. Why not here?

      1. Because live music is vilified in San Francisco and cabaret licenses are difficult to get in 99.9% of San Fran neighborhoods.

        1. The Chapel is a new venue and a very good one too. Mighty is new and I have not been there, but hear that it is good. I am sure that there are others.

  5. I hope that the End Up gets some protection so it can continue at the current location , plus approvals for the upper floors to be improved

  6. It can move out to Bayshore, plenty of large warehouse spaces to accommodate a night club, and the area is up and coming with the younger crowd.

    1. Not really, the younger crowd has mostly decided to head east instead of south. Young people from SF move to Temescal / Portland / LA in that order now

      1. Silver Lake, Venice and the south end of Santa Monica are home to a huge number of my friends who left San Francisco. The people who left tended to not be in Tech, are younger than 35, and were more involved in the Arts or Education. Most of the people I know that are still in the city are much older, were able to buy here back in the 90s and who no longer go out to clubs. A recent trip to West Hollywood reminded me of how crowded streets can be at 2am when bars and clubs close. 2am here in this city is a ghost town by comparison. We were actually stuck in a traffic jam on Sunset Blvd at 2:30am heading back to our hotel near Westwood.

        1. I can’t imagine people move to Silver Lake now, more like Echo Park but really they move to Highland Park. San Francisco isn’t dead yet, the Mission is still fairly interesting. I’ll say in 5 years the Mission will be devoid of the bars that defined it for me, Docs, Makeout Room, Latin American Club, Pops (arguably gone), Phone Booth, Benders (yea it’s newer). The people who would have moved to the Mission when I did, will move to Oakland / Portland / LA. Probably Portland though, next up on the hipster train is likely to be Detroit and Pittsburgh (laugh now, you’ll see in 5 years).

        2. Funny you say that, I’m actually leaving the Bay Area for Santa Monica, Venice area. Looks like I’ll be in good company down there!

          1. Take a stroll down Abbot Kinney by all the cafes, galleries, and stores (which are not chain stores btw) and you will think you are in San Francisco, but with better weather. No district in SF, including Hayes Valley, has a more interesting collection of shops, bars and restaurants. Good Luck Jacko!

          2. Santa Monica has its charms, but it’s now just as expensive as SF and much of it is anything but funky and/or hip. I’m thinking about the McMansions that predominantly fill the lots north of Montana or the 3rd St promenade, which has the typical upscale chains. Ocean Park and Sunset Park got very expensive in the run-up after the crash. It’s not for the artsy or for educators these days unless they have some other source of income.

          3. heh. take a stroll down abbott kinney between Venice and Santa Monica and encounter lots and lots of post war construction-created dead space

  7. Yea…why does everything have to be a closure? I can’t speak to London or Paris (the latter of which seems to be as NIMBY as SF), but NY and a few other American cities do keep the nightlife going by allowing it to move around (whether the same business relocates, or a new “area” of similar businesses pop up). I just don’t see that happening in SF. The cost of doing business here is too great, and the politics (NIMBYism) is too much of a headwind. Some of the residents in SF are the most selfish deluded assh*les of any city residents, and they have rigged the entire system against us. 😉

  8. Hate to see the EndUp go, and it does seem like a lot of dance & music venues will be closing in the next couple years. But cities do change and evolve – half the places where I went out in Boston in the 1990s are gone now, but new ones sprang up in other areas, there’s no dearth of places to go out. So the same will happen here; new dance clubs and bars will spring up in the next ‘transitional’ neighborhood – Dogpatch, Bayshore, etc., and then in 10 years “artists” will start moving in, then gays, and in 20 or 25 years the neighborhood will be gentrified and becoming residential, and people will wring their hands over the closure of the EndUp II.

      1. Fine, whatever – all I know is, you take Caltrain south, and after 22nd Street you pass block after block of junkyards and warehouses. You can’t tell me that (i) those are viable long-term uses in this city, and hence (ii) those aren’t perfect transitional places for nightclub and similar uses. Call it Dogpatch, call it Bayview – regardless, there’s still plenty (startlingly a lot) of underused and poorly used land in this city.

        1. The warehouses of Dogpatch are being transformed into large residential complexes, as Socketsite has documented. Several years ago, a successful nightclub owner proposed opening a large dance club in Dogpatch and met much resistance from neighbors. My guess is that there would be more resistance now.

  9. I’ve never understood why the City, why any city, would encourage housing development right near a freeway. They’re noisy and smelly and unhealthy. It’s a perfect place to put uses that make noise. Buffer it with light commercial, then transition to residential a block or two away. It also makes sense to zone for uses that can be moved relatively easily, like clubs, storage, etc., for when the inevitable rebuild has to happen.

    We’re just stupid.

    1. don’t forget the city was here before the freeways were. when they were built they went through light industrial/working class areas (who cares about them I guess!)

    2. Or put some really tall towers along them. Residents/office workers won’t be close to the traffic/polution and the buildings act as a wall to contain the noise.

  10. that comments about bayshore was intended to reply to jacko. bayshore is a good place for clubs.

    regarding Bob’s post, this is actually a great place for condos for people who commute to silicon valley. right next to the freeway is good for housing development for 150K+ people who commute out of the city.

    not advocating killing EndUp, just making a point. I can go either way. i would personally like to forget the whole period of my life when i was a pseudo regular there. too much partying and soulless living

    1. Of course it makes sense for commuters to live near freeways, but that doesn’t mean they need to have their windows fifteen feet away from them.

    2. I live right off of old Bayshore. Transportation should be a lot better before they develop this area. At night it’s not horribly unsafe but it is sketchy. Plus side there are two 24 hour restaurants out there! 🙂

  11. This place brings back memories, not that kind. My car stalled in the middle of the road near this place in the middle of the day. A few of the club workers saw me and pushed my car to the curb and invited me inside for a drink while I waited for AAA for a tow. Are you in a safe area? Asked the AAA operator. I looked around and said, what’s the worst that can happen? I get a makeover and fawned over by hunky men? On second thoughts, I am going to stay. Forget the tow truck.

  12. What’s this Bayshore neighborhood everyone is talking about gentrifying? Zoning won’t allow for new housing and offices in industrial spaces, otherwise I’m sure they would be gone by now. I don’t see the Excelsior or Portola becoming a new Mission, but more a new Bernal Heights (fixed up houses, cuter commercial strips, but no vibrant bars/nightlife)

    1. Yea agreed. Also, vibrant night life in this town largely means either Marina-esque fun, or cocktail bars. One only has to look at previously interesting 16th street to see that night life now caters to the early 30s crowd. Plenty of $12 cocktails to go around.

  13. thousands of jockey shorts contestants danced their azz’s off for fifteen minutes of fame, and if lucky an invitation to the baths around the corner on Folsom Street.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *