A long-abandoned Fotomat kiosk, one of the last of its kind in the city, reopened this weekend as an online radio station and community gathering space.
The project comes from Program Audio, a local label and party collective, which began streaming from the booth Saturday, March 21, after quietly renovating the structure at 1800 Haight St.
“Surprise,” the group wrote on Instagram, announcing it had “been secretly transforming this vacant space into a third space for local and international artists.”
The kiosk itself dates to 1978, part of a once-ubiquitous chain of drive-through photo booths that promised 24-hour film development. At its peak in the 1980s, Fotomat operated roughly 4,000 locations across the United States. Most have since disappeared, overtaken by advances in photography and retail.
The Haight Street structure lingered as a curiosity, cycling through uses as a bike rental stand and parking booth before sitting vacant for years.
Its reinvention comes as artists and promoters warn that independent, artist-run spaces in San Francisco are increasingly difficult to sustain.
“With so few artist-owned spaces left in SF, and a growing trend of local government and corporate entities partnering to profit off dance music and its aesthetics without meaningfully investing in the existing community, we believe a space like this is essential to protecting and uplifting the scene here,” Program Audio wrote.
Founded in 2023 by Arthur Javier and Erika Martinez, the collective has hosted club nights featuring both local and international DJs. Plans to open a larger venue were put on hold because of “permitting and structural issues,” the group said.
For now, the kiosk, barely larger than a walk-in closet, offers a more modest footprint. In addition to livestreamed radio programming, program audio plans to host small, in-person events, aiming to create a rare artist-run space in a city where such venues have steadily disappeared.