DNA Lounge to Close…But You Can Save It.

This fantastic photo is by Shutter Slut.

Word just broke that the legendary DNA Lounge will be closing…most likely. Founder Jamie Zawinski wrote a long and impassioned blog post on the venue’s site explaining that, while he made shit ton of money in the first dotcom boom, he’s spent almost all of it keeping the DNA Lounge running for the past 17 years. He’s spent nearly $5 million dollars doing it.

The closing of the DNA Lounge would be a major blow to weirdo culture in San Francisco. From burlesque shows to last minute Prince concerts to hosting the longest running Goth night in the country, DNA Lounge has always been a place that celebrated San Francisco’s weirdness and gave it a venue in which to strut about. Simply people watching at the DNA Lounge’s next door pizza joint during Death Guild on Monday nights, gave me hope that there was still a lot of freaky-deaky lying under the skin somewhere in San Francisco.

Jamie Zawinski’s blog post titled “Wherein DNA Lounge will be closed soon, without your help.” leads one to think that there might be a call to action to help save the joint. Unfortunately it ends with this:

So maybe you were hoping this would end with some big call to action, or some kind of hopeful note. I wish it did. I need ideas. I need suggestions. And I need your patience, too. Please, bear with me…

If you don’t have suggestions, there are always the obvious things you can do:

Attend our events.
Buy tickets.
Buy drinks.
Buy pizza.
Bring your friends.
Get them to bring their friends.
If you don’t support DNA Lounge, in a tangible way, it won’t be here any more.

Hitting “Like” isn’t enough.

So there it is. Read the whole thing and maybe you can come up with ideas on how to save it. We need to keep weird venues like the DNA Lounge alive in city that’s so quickly become stale.