The Mission District will be getting its very own night market in six weeks’ time, transforming a three-block stretch of Valencia Street into a sprawling community block party complete with revelry, boozing, and entertainment after hours.
Starting at 5 p.m. on May 8, and running until 10 p.m., Valencia will be shut down to car traffic between 16th and 19th streets. Visitors will be able to roam the street, beer in hand, and visit stages lining either side featuring performances by Mission artists.
Each block will house a stage produced by Mission businesses and local groups. The cocktail bar Blondie’s will organize live music on its stage, another stage will host performances dedicated to Carnaval, and a parking lot will host an indigenous artisans’ market.
Restaurants will set up tents with extra seating to serve food to passers-by, who can grab a bite and browse offerings from local artists, games and lots of music.
It’s the latest of nearly a dozen night markets opened in San Francisco over the past year, but also a local effort: Valencia badly needs revitalization, said Manny Yekutiel, the owner of his namesake cafe Manny’s.
“Foot traffic has drastically reduced in recent years,” he said. “We need to come up with a way to bring people back.”
The night market, dubbed “Valencia LIVE,” will be funded by donations to the Civic Joy Fund, a group co-founded by Yekutiel and Mayor Daniel Lurie that has backed night markets throughout the city, namely in Chinatown, the Richmond, and the Sunset.
The Sunset market last summer drew an estimated 20,000 people to the streets, swarming booths and food vendors. During the height of the pandemic, Valencia was regularly closed off to cars during the weekends, and became a street fair that drew thousands to drink, shop and dine.
Today’s Valencia street closure is a pilot program: It will take place on the second Thursday of every month, from May until October. Organizers hope that, if successful, the market will continue for at least two years.
The push for these markets is part of an ongoing effort to revitalize San Francisco’s dwindling nightlife scene, including by Lurie, who celebrated his inauguration day with a visit to a Chinatown night market in his honor complete with an electronic music performance, fireworks, and dancing.
The Valencia Night Market will be one of five “entertainment zones” in San Francisco, which were made possible after a state law from Sen. Scott Wiener went into effect last year allowing for businesses under a music venue license to apply to be an entertainment zone.
That license lets businesses sell beer, wine and liquor to pedestrians during certain hours, as long as they don’t walk away with those beverages outside of the mandated zone.
The other four entertainment zones are “Thrive City,” outside the Chase Center arena, Front Street, Harlan Place, and Cole Valley.
Merchants in neighborhoods across the city have expressed interest in creating more entertainment zones, but argue that high fees and a harrowing permitting process have made securing a license harder than it needs to be.
Lurie, for his part, introduced legislation in February to create 20 new liquor licenses for a downtown “hospitality zone.” Liquor licenses are notoriously difficult to procure.
The Valencia market will be put on by the Civic Joy Fund, the Valencia Corridor Merchants Association, the Mission Merchants Association, and Into the Streets, a business founded by Katy Birnbaum in 2023 and dedicated to organizing events in downtown San Francisco. The mayor’s office is also helping.
Shaelyn Dalziel, who works at Valencia Street Vintage, said closing down the streets to vehicles has worked “wonders” for her business before, pointing to the once-a-year Sunday Streets, which also shuts down Valencia to traffic and brings out gobs of shoppers. Her store, alongside the rest of the neighborhood, has reaped the benefits from the event, she said.
Valencia Street appears to have fared better than other parts of the Mission, however, at least according to data from the San Francisco’s Controller’s office. That’s despite complaints by business owners of the negative impact of the center bike lane and its subsequent removal.
By May 8, construction crews moving the center bike lane to the curbside should be finished with their task, clearing the way for a continuous closure from 16th to 19th streets, and for pedestrians to pack the corridor.
Interesting that the Valencia Street Vintage person says Sunday Streets improves business. I remember when Self Edge was in that *exact same storefront*, the owner complained that it killed business.
As someone who enjoys Sunday Streets and other closures, I hope her outcome is the more typical one.
I’m surprised this makes no mention of the similar pedestrianization efforts in 2020-2023(?) under the “Shared Spaces” program during the height of COVID. The ones on Valencia were wildly successful, even after the installation of the center bike lanes! Until the more car-brained business owners started trying to kill the program and made it unpredictable for would-be customers. Restaurants stopped putting out more seating, people didn’t know which days or weeks would be car-free, and then Valencia Cyclery convinced the merchants association to kill the program early on fall because of rain and it never came back. Hopefully this set schedule will make it better for everyone, but it used to be so much more than this.
Oooh updated, thank you!
I was very excited to see the notices about it showing up on the poles around here! If it’s even half as fun as the Castro Night Market I attended to the other day, I’ll be very pleased.
Do they have their own website about it yet? Or is it only the Eventbrite one?
Imagine if this happened once a month, or once a week!
I think all districts should have a shot at revitalization . There is a need every district maybe different nights as not to compete
Curious if you know why they are tearing up and repaving the bike lane? Wouldn’t a few cans of paint have been sufficient? I believe the road was just repaved when they made the center bike lane.
cool! If Valencia was pedestrianized on the weekends, it would have more foot traffic. This is how it used to be. Let’s reverse this trend and pedestrianize it.
Wait, I bike lane will cause businesses to go belly up because only people who drive and need to park “right out front” shop/dine on Valencia, but entirely closing down three blocks of the street to motor vehicles will make business soar?
Someone’s been speaking out of their ass on this.
yes.
allow for those ‘proper’ folks to purchase and consume their drug of choice on the streets from acceptable vendors.
be assured your street vendor isn’t supplying you, their wealthy patrons, with stolen alcohol.
dpw will make sure the streets are clear while you lean against a pylon.
and the sfpd mission police won’t bother you while you intoxicate yourself.
hooray!
You interview one merchant about it being good. I guess you can’t interview the one’s that closed their business because of all the disruption. Just saying