Madrone Art Bar Art Gallery / Bar / Club / Live Music Venue / Lounge

The Haight, San Francisco –

With its Burberry-plaid and gold-plated AK-47 over the bar and a mirror-covered bomb standing in for a disco ball, Madrone Art Bar already eschews the typical club look. Add to this a jumbled hodgepodge of paintings, sculptures, and video displays, a few snaking wooden chandeliers, and wildly varied music, and it’s no wonder so many people love to get down at this multi-faceted medium of merrymaking.

Mismatched chairs surround the tiled dance floor, while a movie screen and a DJ booth bookend the always changing exhibits of new local art – although the mounted buck with machine gun antlers and the beat-up piano are there to stay.

Neighborhood artists, casual hipsters, and blue-collar types all drop in for daily Happy Hour specials, creating a mellow early evening scene that serves as the perfect backdrop for the inevitable college kids plinking away on their laptops and the hoodie-clad intellectuals dissecting the latest abstract display.

The need for a dance floor is obvious by 9pm, however, as live bands, DJs, jazz sessions, dance lessons, and even a piano man consistently pack the house, especially on Fridays and Saturdays when it’s normal to find a line of revelers streaming out the door.

Whether for the kooky gallery viewing, the niche musical acts, or the throwback DJ nights, folks who like to blur the line between art and life find their Mona Lisa smile at Madrone Art Bar.