Back on Haight. Walk west one block to Cole. The Goodwill on the corner sits on the site of one of the most consequential music venues in San Francisco history.
The building opened on March 8, 1910 as the Haight Theater, a 1,310-seat movie palace built for the streetcar-suburb crowd. It ran as a movie house for decades. In 1964 new owners briefly tried to relaunch it as an experimental gay theater, the first of its kind in the city. That experiment ended quickly.
In August 1967, a group of five young local artists took over the lease and reopened the venue as the Straight Theater, a joke aimed at the previous incarnation. The Straight became the Haight’s homegrown music venue, run by the scene for the scene. The Grateful Dead used it as their official rehearsal hall in the weeks before the opening. Quicksilver, Big Brother, Country Joe and the Fish, and the Charlatans all played the opening week shows. For two summers it was the place to see local bands without crossing town to the Fillmore or the Avalon.
The Straight never got a full dance-hall license. The owners filed paperwork describing the shows as “dance lessons” to keep operating. By the summer of 1969 the lease was up, the money was gone, and the venue closed after a final show by Bessie Jones and the Georgia Sea Islanders. The building was demolished in 1981. A movie palace became a hippie venue became a thrift store. That’s the Haight in one address.