Great American Music Hall

User Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

Most bands play more than one venue in the Bay Area, I strongly recommend you see them anywhere but the Great American Music Hall.

This is a very nice looking venue, but the staff are really bad. Went to see a show last night and we left early. Here are a few reasons why:

1. We sat down at a table upstairs. There was a group of people next to us who had eaten dinner there. The waitress picks up their dirty dishes and sets them on OUR table! She didn't say a word to us, we were just sitting there in shock. They left that sitting in front of us for 20 minutes until I finally asked the waitress when it would be moved. She explained that they are "understaffed due to the bad economy", well that doesn't explain why their crap was moved onto my table.

2. Waitresses who are walking around with trays scream at you very rudely if you happen to be walking where they are walking. I was a cocktail waitress years ago so I know how it is, there was NO reason to be rude at that time.

3. We went downstairs to see the band. Apparently they have some fire code problems so they need to keep the sides of the dance floor clear. Here's an idea folks - move those dumb little tables that are surrounding the dance floor so people can get to the dance floor - and try not to talk to people like they are 3 years old when you tell them to get on the dance floor to which you have blocked entrance with your little tables.

4. The crowd was loaded with dorks with attitudes. Not the venues fault just what the band draws, I guess, but I wonder if the staff attitude affects people and makes them behave worse than usual? For example some nerd told my husband on the dance floor that her friend was standing there in the place he was standing and that he was coming back, and he's 6 feet tall. hahha...whaaat?? I didn't know you could save a spot for someone on the dance floor. And some other doofus chick picked a fight with me because someone accidentally spilled a drink. Probably just a lot of people who don't get out much, but really strange.

Avoid this place. It's lame.

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User Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Yes, some of the Bay Area's very best local bands got their very big break right at their very stage.

What a great San Francisco institution! Don't go away anytime soon.

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User Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

Nice building, terrible place to actually watch music:

I went to see one of my all time musical heroes here last night (Peter Hammill). The building itself is lovely, very atmospheric, but the evening was completely spoiled for me for two reasons.

One is that the staff there seem to lack any form of social skills, they tend to treat all of us paying customers like naughty children - having paid $65 for two tickets, this was extremely annoying. The tone was set early on in the evening when we moved a chair out of our way and one one the (seeming tens) of staff who seem to hang around watching the audience without much to do, mumbled t us "...you only had to ask....", seems it's not allowed to move chairs. There was also a restriction on taking flash photography of the show, which I understand as it must be annoying for the performer, but one of the staff jumped right at a group of people who were taking flash photographs of each other, around an hour before the show was due to start. These guys need to 1. Learn a few more social skills so they don't treat people like children. 2. Find a few more things to do so they are not just standing around waiting for someone to chastise. I honestly felt like I was back at school, we were frightened to move out of our seats!

Worse, it was a quiet, semi acoustic show and the show was completely spoilt by this venue having no idea how to host a show like this. There is a noisy bar in the main hall and the bartenders clinked glasses and opened and shut the till throughout the performance making loads of noise and generally disrupting the show. During the support act, a waitress actually talked through in a very loud voice the drinks selection to a group of people and also disrupted the show again by wandering around with a plate of french fries trying to find out who had ordered them - do the people who run this venue actually realize it's meant to be a music venue and not a bar and restaurant? Even worse still, the bunch of staff who seem to just generally hang around and tell everyone what to do started to goof around during the performance, obviouly not enjoying the show themselves, they started disrupting it for the audience by goofing around and talking in loud voices to each other - unbelievable!

I see Nick Lowe is playing soon and I'd love to go and see him, but I never want to go anywhere near this place again. The people who run the place have no clue how to run a music venue.

Oh and also, this venue is on the borders of the Tenderloin which, if you don't know, is San Francisco's inner city ghetto, so you need to be very careful as you walk to the venue. As we walked there what sounded like a gun shot went off and we had to negotiate our way past some very scary looking characters, obviously high on drugs.

It was great to see Peter Hammill playing this side of the Atlantic, but if he plays again he needs to play somewhere that is not a glorified restaurant, staffed by an army of people who have no idea how to treat customers, and run a music venue.

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