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 company nights, 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. The club posts house rules for private events, and I plan with them in hand: your guests have the room or rooms your event is in, phones stay silent and out of sight inside the clubhouse (the patios are fine, and so is taking a photo), hats come off indoors for men, and jackets are encouraged after 6 p.m.
The club's formal dining room: its posted dress code requires jackets for men here. For dinner and dancing I put two speakers up on stands and keep the dance floor close to the DJ, so the far tables get conversation and the floor gets the energy.
Two event rooms the club lists on their own and as a pair. 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. When your event has both rooms, a toast has to reach each one, so an additional sound zone is there in the estimate if one pair of speakers won't cover it.
The club's house rules name this its least formal room by day. 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.
Patios surround the clubhouse, and under the club's posted rules they're where a phone can come out. If a drinks hour or any other part of your event is outside, it gets a separate setup from me: its own speaker, a wireless mic, and a backup mic ready for the wind off the bay.
Wood floors, arched windows and a fireplace wall: these are handsome rooms, and hard ones for sound. The photos here are mine, from events I played at the club, and they show how I set up for it.
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, at the Palace of Fine Arts, say, 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, members' dining rooms and a calendar of its own. I settle my door, the route to your room, any stairs or elevator and my arrival time with the club ahead of the day, arrive early, and carry backup equipment in with the main rig. For anyone driving in: the club's official address is 700 Marina Boulevard, and the club notes that GPS often finds it as 99 Yacht Road.
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 settle those with the club well ahead, then plan your timeline to the end time you choose, so the dance floor gets its full stretch and the last song is the one you picked.
The uplighting in these photos is mine. Gold and amber run up the columns, the arches and the walls, from fixtures you can see at the base of the columns, and the white swirl across the wood dance floor is my pattern projection. By the fireplace and along the window wall the same amber carries the room while the bridge goes dark outside. The strings of lights around the windows and on the tree are the club's own decor.
These rooms change completely once the bay goes dark, and that's when light earns its place. Uplighting warms the walls and the columns, a monogram or pattern projection sits well on a wood dance floor, and dance-floor lighting gives the night a second gear after dinner. Each is an add-on you choose in the instant estimate, and the color is your call. I settle with the club where the fixtures go and where I plug in.
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.
Clubs, festival stages and every venue from Napa Valley to the coast are on one page: Places I've played.
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.
