Badlands and Toad Hall paused their Patronscan facial-recognition kiosks effective immediately on August 7, the day Gazetteer SF reported that Tune-Yards, Deerhoof and more than 300 other artists had pledged to boycott venues using surveillance tech. In June, Badlands had said it would keep the devices. Mix, the third named bar, has not responded.

On the afternoon of August 7, the black ID kiosks near the doors of two Castro gay bars went dark. Badlands and Toad Hall, both on 18th Street, said they were pausing their Patronscan facial-recognition scanners "effective immediately" — a reversal that would have been hard to imagine in June, when Badlands' own director of operations told Gazetteer SF the bars would keep using the devices. The pause was announced the same day Gazetteer published a story naming them.

What shifted on the block between June and August was a pledge. Fight for the Future, a digital rights group, has kept a boilerplate commitment on its website since 2023: artists agree to add a clause to their tour riders barring surveillance tech like facial recognition at their shows, or to boycott venues that won't comply. It sat quietly for years. Then reporting this summer from Wired and Gazetteer SF put the Castro scanners in the spotlight, and, according to campaign director Reem Suleiman, more than half of the pledge's 342 signatures nationwide arrived in the last two months. Among them: the Oakland duo Tune-Yards and the band Deerhoof.

Brian Aranda, who runs operations at both Badlands and Toad Hall, framed the pause as a review rather than a retreat. "We have heard the concerns," he said, adding that security teams would "continue to thoroughly check IDs manually during this time." The company behind the kiosks, the Canadian firm Patronscan, collects names, addresses, gender, and biometric facial data, and shares flags across a network of venues — a system San Francisco's 2019 facial-recognition ban doesn't touch, because that law governs only government use.

The third bar named in June's reporting, Mix, at 4086 18th St., has not responded; Suleiman said none of the Castro owners have answered the group's outreach. A companion pledge for venues has drawn early Bay Area signers — DNA Lounge, the comedy club Cheaper than Therapy, Sour Cherry Comics, with El Rio on the list "for a while."

Walk past Badlands tonight and a bouncer is checking your license by hand, the way it worked before the kiosk arrived. Whether it stays that way is, for now, a review in progress.