Your Eyeliner. Your Skinny Jeans. Your Saturday Night.
Somewhere between the housing crisis discourse and the latest SFMTA debacle, San Francisco still manages to remind us it has a pulse — and sometimes that pulse sounds like early 2000s Taking Back Sunday.
Enter Sadderday, the emo/pop-punk/screamo dance party that's carved out a devoted following in the city. The concept is beautifully simple: show up on a Saturday night, hear the bangers that soundtracked your angsty adolescence, and dance like nobody from your high school is watching.
We're talking Dashboard Confessional. My Chemical Romance. Underoath. The Used. The kind of music that made you feel everything at 16 and still hits different after a couple of overpriced drinks at 32.
Here's what we appreciate about events like Sadderday: they represent the free market of nightlife doing exactly what it should. No city grant. No arts commission approval process. No twelve layers of bureaucratic permitting nonsense (well, hopefully not too many). Just organizers reading demand and filling it. People want to scream-sing "I'm Not Okay" with strangers, and someone said, "We can make that happen."
San Francisco's nightlife scene has taken real hits in recent years — venues closing, permit costs climbing, foot traffic dwindling in certain corridors. The city's own policies have made it harder, not easier, for entertainment entrepreneurs to take risks. So when something like Sadderday thrives, it's worth celebrating.
It's also a reminder that culture doesn't need a subsidy. It needs a room, a sound system, and people who give a damn.
If you're the type who still has a secret Spotify playlist titled something like "2005 feelings," do yourself a favor and check it out. Life's too short to pretend you don't still know every word to "MakeDamnSure."
Just maybe leave the swoopy bangs in the past.