Across the street and one storefront west. 1727 Haight has had two distinct lives, both of them institutions in their own right.
From 1991 to 2011 it was the second home of the Red Vic Movie House, an employee-owned collective theater founded in 1980 by six cinema people inside the Red Victorian Hotel a block away. The Red Vic was famous for its couches instead of theater seats, for its homemade snack fare, and for screening films you couldn’t see anywhere else: documentaries, foreign cinema, midnight cult movies, queer film festivals. It moved to 1727 Haight in 1991 when the operation outgrew its first space, converted a former restaurant into a 200-seat house, and kept the couches. The Red Vic closed on July 25, 2011. Streaming killed it. The collective had run for 31 years.
The building sat through several short-lived tenants. In 2021 The Booksmith moved in, the independent bookstore that has been a Haight Street fixture since 1976. Booksmith was founded by Gary Frank at 1746 Haight (below the I-Beam, our next stop) and moved to 1644 Haight in 1985. Christin Evans and Praveen Madan bought it from Frank in 2007. Allen Ginsberg gave one of his last public readings at the Booksmith on December 16, 1996, a few months before his death in April 1997.
The Booksmith is the closest the modern Haight comes to a town square. Author events, signings, neighborhood meetings, and political organizing all happen here.