For 46 years, this soulful oddity has been San Francisco s best-kept musical secret
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Jazz piano melodies and San Francisco street recordings bounce around the room like ping pong balls from speaker to speaker.Mariah Tiffany/ Special to SFGATE
In the Audium’s pitch-dark concert space, sound is the only color. Since 1975, this theater hidden off Bush Street in Polk Gulch has quietly and sometimes loudly tried to redefine how San Francisco thinks about music.
The humble performance space feels like a college lecture hall crossed with a mid-century modern rec room. Speakers are everywhere; at last official count, there were 176. Speakers of various shapes and sizes dangle from the ceiling like stalactites. They re also tucked underneath grates in the floor and hidden in the walls. Audium has used the same chairs for 46 years, zig-zag metal frames with plush red cushions. For COVID-19 purposes, there’s only 11 chairs, spread far apart. I sit down, the light
Earlier this month, ANC 7E passed a resolution of support for the full streetcar extension to the Benning Road Metro, and requested that the Mayor and DC Council ensure that the extension receives full funding in the 2022 budget. The resolution argues that the extension is a transit-equity issue, stating that “public transportation is a shared public benefit but can only function as such when it’s shared with all neighborhoods.”
The resolution comes at the heels of an open letter that some Ward 7 leaders circulated (including one of this article’s authors) in honor of transportation equity day and in honor of Rosa Parks’ birthday on February 4 which also called for funding the streetcar to Benning Road Metro.