The rooms at this San Francisco club look at the water, so the music has to work while half your guests stand at the windows watching the Golden Gate Bridge go dark. I play birthdays and weddings here as DJ and MC, and I run the sound, the microphone and the timeline so you can stand there too.
St. Francis Yacht Club is a private, members-based club on the San Francisco Bay shoreline in the Marina District, next to Crissy Field, with its own docks out front. It was founded in 1927. The Mediterranean Revival clubhouse went up on landfill left from the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition, and it has been rebuilt and expanded since, so little of the original remains.
Inside it's fireplaces, wood floors, boat models and nautical art, with windows toward the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz and the Marin Headlands. Beautiful to look at. Loud to play in, if you're not careful.
It's a sailing club first. Membership is by invitation, the club keeps its own calendar, and it has run a regatta since 1964 that grew into its Big Boat Series each September. Booking, access and house rules are the club's to set, so I ask early and plan around the answers.
Event listings call this the largest room in the clubhouse, used for seated dinners and dancing. A big room wants two speakers up on stands and the dance floor close to the DJ, so the far tables get conversation and the floor gets the energy.
One of the large event rooms. With a view pulling guests to the glass, I keep dinner music low enough to talk over and save the volume for when the floor opens.
A mid-to-large room. When dinner and dancing share one room, the turn from plates to dance floor is a moment I cue on the microphone, not something that just drifts.
Two smaller rooms for cocktail hours, rehearsal dinners, meetings or smaller receptions. Small rooms ask for a compact setup and restraint: music you feel more than hear until it's time.
An outdoor space on the event listings. Before I plan a ceremony or a drinks hour out here I ask the club about amplified music and power, and I plan for wind off the bay.
These photos are mine, from events I played at the club in 2013 and 2015.
In the photos you can see where I landed: the DJ table by the fireplace, two speakers up on stands, the dance floor straight in front of me. From a spot like that I can see the whole room, which is what an MC needs to time an entrance or a toast.
Wood underfoot, arched windows, glass facing the bay: hard surfaces throw sound back, so loud gets harsh fast in a room like this. I aim the speakers at people, keep cocktail and dinner music at a level you can talk over, and build as the plates clear.
Your ceremony might be elsewhere in the Marina, with the reception at the club. That means two setups: ceremony sound where the vows happen, with a speaker aimed at your guests and a wireless mic for the officiant, then the club. I plan the move ahead so there's music when your guests walk in.
This is a working members' club with docks and dining rooms of its own, so a loading door and an empty room aren't a given. I ask about the route, any stairs or elevator and the access time, arrive early, and carry backup equipment in with the main rig.
Before your event you fill in my planning questionnaire and we talk through the music: must-plays, do-not-plays, the exact versions of the songs you love. By the time I arrive, I already know your event inside and out. Then I'm the MC. Every announcement, entrance, toast and big moment is mine to cue, so nobody in your family or on your team spends the night watching a clock.
Music hours, sound limits and load-in aren't yours to chase. I put those questions to the club well ahead, then build your timeline back from the answers, so the dance floor gets its full stretch and the last song is the one you chose.
These rooms have columns, arches, beams and a lot of window, and they change completely once the bay goes dark. Uplighting would warm the walls and the columns. A monogram or pattern projection would sit well on a wood dance floor. Dance-floor lighting gives the night a second gear after dinner.
Lighting is an add-on you choose in the instant estimate. I'd check with the club first about what can go where.
Alongside its own calendar of regattas, lectures and musical events, the club hosts weddings and receptions, corporate events and meetings, birthday parties, socials and family gatherings. I play all of those, and more: company galas and holiday parties, milestone birthdays, fundraisers, cocktail parties, dinners, mitzvahs and quinceaneras.
The smaller rooms suit a rehearsal dinner or a welcome party, and that's where a Selector Session fits: a set of my own programming, up to four hours, for a host who wants a sound. And for something else entirely there's The Journey: a live sound bath that flows into a facilitated ecstatic dance.
Every room, from Napa Valley to the coast, is on the rooms list.
Your date, the room you have in mind and the feeling you want in it. The instant estimate takes a couple of minutes, or book a short call and I'll take it from there.
