Let her cook. DJ Mandy may have began as an inside joke on TikTok, but her talent for virality soon found her soaring above and beyond the confines of social media. At only age 20 she has already compiled an impressive resume, selling out shows across the country and performing at such notable festivals as Outside Lands, Head in the Clouds, Breakaway, and Shabang. Widely known for her comedic, typically unexpected mash-ups, fans have quickly found that her high energy live show makes for a truly unique experience--blending the soulful sounds of classic house and the driving energy of tech house with just a hint ofher quirky comedic sensibility. As she prepares to release her debut singles, dance music audiences are quickly realizing that behind the TikTok persona isa genuine artist.

(181 3rd St.)

Vinyl Nights a the Living Room Bar (W Hotel)

7-10PM
Hosted by DJWorks

Join us for the ultimate Bey Day Party honoring the Queen Bey herself! On Thurs, Sept 4 from 6–9 PM, DJ SNKR and DJ TASH will be spinning Beyoncé’s best so get in Formation, bring your Energy, and let’s Party! Wine Down will also be offering Happiest Hours specials all night--$9 select wines, $7 select beer, $5 off carafes, pitchers, and cheese & meat feasts.

Join KALW & 111 Minna Gallery for a live broadcast dance party with Wonway Posibul, plus a ticket giveaway, fashion, art, & fun at Downtown First Thursday.

• 5:30 - 7:30: Year of the Snake -  Explore the symbolism of renewal, mystery, and power through an exhibition of snake-inspired art works curated with Seventh Son Tattoo. (@seventhsontattoo)

• 7:30 - 10:30: Live Broadcast Dance Party - DJ Wonway Posibul transports you to the grooviest corners of the musical universe. Come shake it out for this live broadcast on 91.7 FM.

• Ticket Giveaway Win tickets to the upcoming show of your choice at The Independent when you support KALW at Downtown First Thursday! (theindependentsf)

Bay Area Then: Ovarian Trolley & Wife

Ovarian Trolley released three albums of fractured, intense noise rock in the 1990s. Comprised of sisters Laurie and Jennifer Hall and Buck Bito, the band was praised for their “scraggly electric ugliness” in Trouser Press. The band’s intertwined voices, focused structures, and visceral slashes of sound construct a momentous, transfixing funhouse of sound. Throughout their existence, Ovarian Trolley acted as the high-tension heartbeat of San Francisco’s creative underground, a hook-filled articulation of the dire, anarchic, and sublime possibilities of life in the city’s margins. The band found a kindred spirit, also concerned with the possibilities at the margins, in Margaret Kilgallen, who created the cover art for their final single, Romeo, released in 1997. Since disbanding in 1998, Ovarian Trolley has reconvened only a handful of times, each one reiterating the gleeful challenge of music, the vitality of collaboration and the force of shared outrage.

Wife is a San Francisco band formed in 2021, rooted in San Francisco’s DIY music scene. Their music—a desperate, dramatic punk jitter full of howl and laughter and breath-stealing jolts—draws on the memories built through house shows in the Sunset, volunteer shifts at Adobe Books, and the collective happenings of Outhouse. In the band’s own words, “We like to have fun, and emphasize play and weirdness!” This performance coincides with the release of Wife’s album The Importance of Daydreaming, released on vinyl by Recess Records and on cassette by Cherub Dream Records.

Galleries will be open from 5–9pm. Performance begins at 7pm in the YBCA Forum.

This event is part of the programming for the exhibition Bay Area Then. Music programming is conceived by Chris Johanson and Ethan Swan.

The Museum of the African Diaspora

MoAD celebrates our dynamic arts & culture neighborhood in conjunction with Downtown First Thursdays. Join us every First Thursday of the month for free admission to the exhibitions and programming at the museum from 4-8pm.

Museum Free Admission: First Thursday of the month, 4PM - 8PM

Register

(151 3rd St.)

Bay Area residents get free access to SFMOMA on the first Thursday of the month.

Bring your friends, coworkers, and little ones and join us for a festive community celebration featuring music, sweet treats, giveaways, and more. SFMOMA, Yerba Buena Partnership, and the W San Francisco Hotel invite you to enjoy an afternoon in Yerba Buena Gardens where you can get into the holiday spirit and snap some photos of KAWS HOLIDAY: SAN FRANCISCO (you can spot KAWS’s figure COMPANION on SFMOMA’s roof)! Tag @sfmoma and #KAWSHOLIDAY for a chance to win a gift bag*. Step inside SFMOMA to experience the KAWS: FAMILY** exhibition and explore the full collection of pop culture–inspired characters created by KAWS.
 *Giveaways are first come, first served.
**KAWS: FAMILY is a surcharged presentation that requires a timed ticket for all visitors. All tickets will be available for purchase online.

In the brief two years since the Turkish-born singer broke out off the back of her 2022 house-soaked TikTok hit “GASLIGHT,” it’s her winking tongue-in-cheek lyricism — wrapped up in a thumping dance-music bow — that, indeed, has become her calling card. Phrases like “gaslight, gatekeep,” and “Let’s roll, MADLEINE,” linger in your mind like a mouth-watering aftertaste. On her second EP, WE GOOD, a five-song rush of sticky dancefloor joints that hop from jangling funk-disco to fist-pumping 2010s recession pop, she solidifies her musical voice, touching on everything from aging to dating and riding out bad days.

(181 3rd St.)

Vinyl Nights a the Living Room Bar (W Hotel)

7-10PM
Hosted by DJWorks

Join us for the ultimate Bey Day Party honoring the Queen Bey herself! On Thurs, Sept 4 from 6–9 PM, DJ SNKR and DJ TASH will be spinning Beyoncé’s best so get in Formation, bring your Energy, and let’s Party! Wine Down will also be offering Happiest Hours specials all night--$9 select wines, $7 select beer, $5 off carafes, pitchers, and cheese & meat feasts.

Join KALW & 111 Minna Gallery for a night of art, music & liberation at DFT!

• Celebrating 50 Years of M.A.D. -  Celebrate the birthday of Bay Area art champion Michelle Delaney with a liberating night of punk rock, art, dancing, & style to benefit public media.

• 5:30 - 7:00: The Clash - Live Band Celebration. Reality is a bummer, dance to Joe Strummer. SF’s own The Hooks bring a raw, explosive surge of energy to create a state of euphoria and chaos.   

• 7:30 - 10:30: Live Broadcast Dance Party - DJ Wonway Posibul transports you to the grooviest corners of the musical universe. Come shake it out for this live broadcast on 91.7 FM.

• Mona Mohawk: Limited Edition T-Shirt: Support Public Media and get a limited edition t-shirt from art legend Winston Smith. Your donation combats the impact of government funding cuts.

• Ticket Giveaway: All KALW supporters can enter to win tickets to upcoming shows at The Independent or Bimbo’s 365 Club. Thanks for supporting the community!

On Thursday, November 6, visit YBCA at 701 Mission Street for free performances by Erica Dawn Lyle and Brontez Purnell, as well as free gallery admission to "Bay Area Then" and "Makibaka." 

Multihyphenate artist Erica Dawn Lyle plays electric guitar with a wild virtuosity. Her decades of experience playing in art-damaged punk bands include shows and records with the bands Bikini Kill and Onion Flavored Rings, and collaborations with Kim Gordon and The Linda Lindas. For her performance at YBCA, she’ll harness this energy and intention into extended improvisations for the electric guitar. 

Author, choreographer, filmmaker, and artist Brontez Purnell got his start playing in punk bands like Panty Raid and as a “go-go boy” with Gravy Train!!!!, before exploring his own tangled, relentless creative voice as a solo artist. Come enjoy his catchy, genre-fusing performance as part of the "Bay Area Then" music series. Galleries will be open 5–9pm, and music starts at 7pm. 

Ticket link - https://ybca.org/event/bay-area-then-erica-dawn-lyle-brontez-purnell/

(151 3rd St.)

Bay Area residents get free access to SFMOMA on the first Thursday of the month.

UNBOUND

Thy Navel is a Goblet That Does Not Lack for Wine: The Visual Journey

Museum Free Admission: Thursday, Nov 6, 2025 4PM - 8PM
Visual Journey: Thursday, Nov 6, 2025 6:30 PM - 7:30 PM

Join musician and visual artist Mark Montgomery French for an intimate viewing of his ambient protest film, Thy Navel is a Goblet That Does Not Lack for Wine, from his album of the same name. This evocative work employs trance-like animations and sensory immersion to explore themes of meditation, resistance, and recovery, reframing Blackness as an origin, an expansion, and a liberation. It sonically draws from across the Diaspora—Javanese gamelan, dub reggae, string quartets, and jazz noir—not just as a style, but as a way to map Blackness across geographies and time. The evening concludes with a Q&A with Mark Montgomery French, offering insights into the album’s themes and creation.

Register

FREE Karaoke + DFT Drink Specials w/ RSVP

• $5 Chips and salsa

• $6 Empanadas

• $3 Beer

• $12 DFT Cocktail

21+

Multi-disciplinary artist, DJ and producer Full Crate nourishes an in-depth catalog of sound, as today’s international force of underground music. His Dutch/Armenian background has not dismissed Full Crate’s ability to leverage priority in Anti-radio hip-hop and soulful R&B. Sonically, he’s not afraid to go against the grain; creating laid back beats, melodic vocal features and instruments that boost his sense of imagery, diversity and authenticity. Launching his debut R&B album ‘A Kid From Yerevan’ in the summer of 2023 and lauded for his long list of collaborations with acts such as BJ The Chicago Kid, D-Smoke, Kyle Dion, Gaidaa, Naomi Sharon and T3 of Slum Village to name a few, as well as his many remixes and background as a turntablist/DJ, Full Crate has built up an incredible reputation as an artist at the forefront of underground music culture with roots in R&B, hip-hop and beyond.

Raised by Armenian parents, Full Crate went back to his roots on debut album ‘A Kid From Yerevan’ as he reflects on how his journey as an immigrant kid made him the man he is today. Exploring themes of self-love, imposter syndrome and acceptance, the project is a warm and soulful offering that showcases his vast musical repertoire. It will be his first body of work since the 2020 EP ‘In All Honesty’ - a project that really ignited his personal storytelling journey.

Full Crate’s passion for the colorful roots of culture keep him ahead in the dynamic journey of rising as an authentic vocalist. In recent success, Full Crate has produced music within D Smoke’s album “War & Wonders”, has been featured twice in Rihanna’s Savage X Fenty Lingerie Show, and was placed in Emmy Award winning Netflix series “When They See Us”. His recipe for longevity breeds music from the heart, as he preserves his advantageous career by creating storytelling experiences for everyone.

(181 3rd St.)

Vinyl Nights a the Living Room Bar (W Hotel)

7-10PM
Hosted by DJWorks

Tommy Guerrero is an artist whose heavy engagement with his hometown of San Francisco has resulted in more than a dozen LPs of warm, unforgettable, human music. Guerrero’s openness and inquisitiveness leads his music, threading in the rhythms and melodies of countless genres. Each album echoes the experience of a twilight ramble through the city: the celebrations, enthusiasms, and laments drifting out of open windows and directly into your heart. Guerrero’s many collaborations reflect his commitment to the restless, creative community articulated in Bay Area Then, perhaps most clearly visible on the records themselves. His LP A Little Bit of Somethin’, released in 2000, features cover art by Margaret Kilgallen. His LP From the Soil to the Soul, released in 2006, features cover art by Barry McGee. His LP Perpetual, released in 2015, features cover art by Chris Johanson.

Space Time Solutions are Mike Morasky and Kal Spelletich. Space Time Solutions perform scored compositions mixing in improvisation of ambient sounds and Noise using custom made sound machines triggering composed movements.

The combo plays like prophets in chrome — robots swooning beauty from glitch and grit, conjuring symphonic industrial storms. The San Francisco landscape is their score, streets and waterways manifest beats and washes, every tremor and transmission a hymn to the future.

Mike Morasky was a founding member of Steel Pole Bath Tub, the noisy, lurching punk band that worked out of San Francisco from 1988 – 2002. As a soundtrack composer, Morasky has won multiple awards for his work on the video games Portal 2 and Left 4 Dead.

Kal Spelletich is an artist and pioneer of San Francisco’s machine art scene. As the founder of the machine art collective Seemen, Spelletich created some of the most notorious interactive performance installations seen in the early years of the Burning Man festival.

Galleries will be open from 5–9pm. Performance begins at 7pm in the YBCA Forum.

This event is part of the programming for the exhibition Bay Area Then. Music programming is conceived by Chris Johanson and Ethan Swan.

Wine Down will offer Happiest Hours specials all night--$9 select wines, $7 select beer, $5 off carafes, pitchers, and cheese & meat feasts--plus DJ TASH and DJ SNKR will be spinning beats from 6 - 9 PM!

Join KALW & 111 Minna Gallery for a night of art, music & liberation at DFT!

• Celebrating 50 Years of M.A.D. -  Celebrate the birthday of Bay Area art champion Michelle Delaney with a liberating night of punk rock, art, dancing, & style to benefit public media.

• 5:30 - 7:00: The Clash - Live Band Celebration. Reality is a bummer, dance to Joe Strummer. SF’s own The Hooks bring a raw, explosive surge of energy to create a state of euphoria and chaos.   

• 7:30 - 10:30: Live Broadcast Dance Party - DJ Wonway Posibul transports you to the grooviest corners of the musical universe. Come shake it out for this live broadcast on 91.7 FM.

• Mona Mohawk: Limited Edition T-Shirt: Support Public Media and get a limited edition t-shirt from art legend Winston Smith. Your donation combats the impact of government funding cuts.

• Ticket Giveaway: All KALW supporters can enter to win tickets to upcoming shows at The Independent or Bimbo’s 365 Club. Thanks for supporting the community!

(151 3rd St.)

Bay Area residents get free access to SFMOMA on the first Thursday of the month.

FREE Karaoke + DFT Drink Specials w/ RSVP

• $5 Chips and salsa

• $6 Empanadas

• $3 Beer

• $12 DFT Cocktail

21+