San Francisco has a Half-Price Ticket Booth located right in the middle of Union Square, where tickets for most San Francisco theater performances can be purchased the day of the performance for half-price. Run by Theatre Bay Area , all service fees collected from the sale of tickets by TIX Bay Area goes right back into the theater community.
Go to a concert, a play, a jazz or a folk-song performance. There are performances most days to choose from by the San Francisco Opera, the San Francisco Symphony, in Herbst Theater (where the U.N. charter was signed) , in the Old First Church, and for musicals in the Orpheum or the Golden Gate Theaters, all located in or near the Civic Center. The museum of the Legion of Honor, located in Lincoln Park overlooking the Golden Gate (north end of 34th Ave), has organ concerts which can be heard in many of its galleries, Saturdays and Sundays at 4PM, as well as music performances in its Florence Gould Theater by the San Francisco Lyric Opera. For the fall and spring jazz festivals look into the SFJAZZ calendar . San Francisco also has many jazz clubs, best found by browsing the web (an excellent site is SFStation.com ). Contemporary bands are featured at The Fillmore Auditorium and less frequently at the large Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in the Civic Center. There is an annual blues festival in late September, at various locations , and at least two great bluegrass music festivals each year — during February around the area and late September or October in Golden Gate Park. Many, but certainly not all, events are listed by the City Box Office .
Ballet of the world class variety can be seen for only $10. San Francisco Ballet sells standing room tickets (with excellent views from the back of the orchestra) for their shows at the War Memorial Opera House in Civic Center during the afternoon of each performance as well as two hours before showtime.
Plays are performed at the Geary (by the American Conservatory Theater), Curran, and the Marines Memorial theatres , and at the small New Conservatory Theater near the Civic Center.
Musicals from Broadway and Los Angeles are shown at the traditional Golden Gate and Orpheum theaters on Market, near the Civic Center. For outrageous fun, princes and paupers go to Beach Blanket Babylon in North Beach. Teenagers are welcome at the Sunday matinees. It considers itself the longest running musical revue in theater history.
The Most Frequently Asked Travel Questions about San Francisco
Where To Stay & Best Hotels in San Francisco - updated May 2024
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San Francisco Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.
