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<\/p>\nMid-Market was – wait for it – magical.<\/p>\n
Bandaloop performers rappelled down the side of a UN Plaza office building and made it their dance floor, flipping over each other’s heads at the soupy speed of astronauts bouncing on the moon. A couple blocks away, Alonzo King Lines dancers took over the atrium of the IKEA store, their bodies resembling the parts of a mechanical clock, then the electron cloud of an atom, only for them to then vanish as suddenly as they arrived, flash mob-style.<\/p>\n
Connecting it all was the Hotsy Totsy Cable Car, which chugged back and forth from Fifth Street to Van Ness Avenue as drag queens D’Arcy Drollinger and Carnie Asada led passengers in karaoke.<\/p>\n
This torrent of activity, where art seemed to be bursting out of every other doorway for blocks on end, was San Francisco’s inaugural Market Street Arts & Theater Festival.<\/p>\n
“We are the Broadway of the West Coast,” Supervisor Bilal Mahmood told a UN Plaza crowd at the six-hour event’s kickoff on Saturday, Oct. 17.<\/p>\n
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Alonzo King Lines Ballet performs inside IKEA during the Market Street Arts & Theater Festival in San Francisco. (Heather Diehl\/For the S.F. Chronicle)<\/p>\n
“There’s a lot of conversation now about how do we bring back downtown,” he added, noting that the answer won’t lie in technology but in arts and theater.<\/p>\n
Mid-Market can get a bad rap. But in an interview in advance of the festival, producer Fernando Pujas, executive director of the Mid-Market Business Association & Foundation, pointed out the corridor’s rare combination of assets.<\/p>\n
“On three blocks of Market Street, you have close to 16,000 live performance seats,” he said. Counting the venues nearby on Van Ness adds 10,000 more, he continued, also noting the district’s hotels, plazas and public transit access.<\/p>\n
The goal of the festival, which brought together more than 50 acts at 35 venues, wasn’t to transform the district. “We’re trying to say, ‘This is the stuff that’s happening here. This could only work in this neighborhood,'” he explained.<\/p>\n
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Chloe Somers Walier of “Dear San Francisco” kicks off the Market Street Arts & Theater Festival on Saturday, Oct. 17. (Heather Diehl\/For the S.F. Chronicle)<\/p>\n
Some performers came from elsewhere, but not far. “Dear San Francisco” circus artists visited from Club Fugazi in North Beach, and their larger-than-life stunts made for a rare act that could plausibly follow Bandaloop. Chloe Somers Walier manipulated a growing stack of hula hoops to look like butterfly wings, a giant slinky and then a Dr. Seuss contraption. Performer Teo Le Baut sat atop the feet of partner Victor Crepin as if perched in an ergonomic desk chair, only to flip and return to the same position.<\/p>\n
Both acts were positioned right in front of City Hall, and the symbolism was clear: Art is what San Francisco is all about.<\/p>\n
The festival happened two days after the announcement of a $500,000 grant<\/a> from the San Francisco Downtown Development Corp., business leader Chris Larsen and the Proper Hotel Group to fund new venues and pop-up performances in the same area.<\/p>\n Still, artists’ desires for the neighborhood have only some overlap with city officials’. The festival got $25,000 from the city, via the Office of Economic and Workforce Development, but private funder the Svane Family Foundation supplied half the event’s $200,000 budget.<\/p>\n Violet, left, sings “Teenage Dirtbag” during karaoke on the Hotsy Totsy Cable Car with drag queens D’Arcy Drollinger and Carnie Asada on Market Street in San Francisco on Saturday, Oct. 17. (Heather Diehl\/For the S.F. Chronicle)<\/p>\n Both the city and artists benefit when a district is known for the arts, and both parties have at least some vested interest in public safety. “Safe streets make people more comfortable to go out, especially at night,” Drollinger told the Chronicle in advance of the festival.<\/p>\n But “public safety” can be a dog whistle for state-sanctioned violence against unhoused people, the mononymous Jeb, co-artistic director of festival participant the San Francisco Neo-Futurists, pointed out.<\/p>\n “I’m not going to support the quote-unquote revitalization unless there’s actual care and intention given to the housing crisis in a way that is not just policing and incarcerating folks,” they said in an interview with the Chronicle.<\/p>\n What’s more, local governments typically view the arts as a means to a policy goal and direct their funding accordingly, with reluctance to increase any ongoing commitment of taxpayer dollars. For artists, however, the art is the end.<\/p>\n “There’s a lot of high-profile, short-term, very visible things happening with city money around the arts,” said Joe Pe\u00f1a, co-artistic director of the San Francisco Neo-Futurists. “What we’re looking for as an arts organization is more long-term support.”<\/p>\n Drag queen Curveball hosts a free Broadway sing-along at the Orpheum Theatre during the Market Street Arts & Theater Festival in San Francisco. (Heather Diehl\/For the S.F. Chronicle)<\/p>\n At the festival, however, those tensions stayed below the surface in favor of the delight that can happen when those interests align.<\/p>\n An especially ecstatic moment came inside the Orpheum Theatre’s bar, whose doors were flung wide open for Broadway karaoke hosted by drag queen Curveball and accompanied on the keyboard by Eryn Allen.<\/p>\n Curveball, in white-streaked wig and platform heels, had been looking for a duet partner for “Take Me or Leave Me” from “Rent,” and Therese Simpas of Redwood City volunteered. But when she stood up, she was about as tall as Curveball’s belly button.<\/p>\n Curveball sang first, hamming it up on her part’s vocal runs. But when it was Simpas’ turn, she matched her partner belt for belt, soaring and diving. If you’d had your eyes closed, you wouldn’t have known who was taller.<\/p>\n In that moment, Simpas wasn’t just doing karaoke; it was as if one of our own had made it onto the Orpheum Theatre’s stage, a titan among touring Broadway titans.<\/p>\n Subscribe<\/p>\n There’s more to San Francisco with the Chronicle. Subscribe today for just 25\u00a2.<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Violet,](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/https:\/\/media.zenfs.com\/en\/san_francisco_chronicle_hearst_178\/cac6dbf9d7a991ef84ba3f954ef79132.jpg\"\/)
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