While her bandmate takes a keyboard solo, Micah Morris lowers her microphone and sways to the music. Directly behind her, a 20-foot screen cycles through psychedelic imagery: clips of Jupiter and mandalas, all overlaid with flashes of color and fuzz. As the singer moves, she casts a small shadow, a dark mark over the swirls of color.
Down below in the theater’s seats, a small crowd listens attentively. Three friends silently pass a large bag of popcorn, and in the dark, greased paper catches the projector’s faint glow. A man across the aisle sips a Fort Point.
These days, concert venues complain that slow alcohol sales cut into their margins. From a 112-year-old building in San Francisco’s Outer Richmond arrives a novel solution: supplement beer sales with popcorn and hot dogs. And screen films on a 35mm projector.
Since reopening a few years ago, the 4 Star Theater has enjoyed a double life as one of San Francisco’s coolest concert venues. Down the street at Neck of the Woods, fans mosh to their favorite local bands, but here, they sit in their chairs, munch quietly on concessions and watch the action unfold. It’s the type of behavior you’d expect from a crowd at the symphony, if you swapped the tuxedos for T-shirts with popcorn butter grease stains…