Longshoreman's Hall
History
Longshoreman's Hall, at 400 North Point Street near Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco, was built at the end of the 1950s as the meeting hall of the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union — a distinctive hexagonal modernist design for the union, not entertainment. It earned a permanent place in music history on October 16, 1965, when the Family Dog staged "A Tribute to Dr. Strange" there — widely regarded as the first true San Francisco psychedelic dance-concert. The bill featured the nascent Jefferson Airplane, the Charlatans, the Great Society (with Grace Slick), and the Marbles, with a poster by Family Dog member Alton Kelley. Two more Family Dog dances followed at the hall in 1965.
Its Place in the Scene
Longshoreman's Hall is a birthplace venue of the San Francisco scene. The Family Dog's three 1965 "Tribes" dances there proved that the post–Acid Test counterculture could fill a hall for a participatory rock-and-light event — establishing the dance-concert template the Avalon and Fillmore would soon institutionalize. As a borrowed union hall rather than a dedicated ballroom, its October 1965 debut is the conventional starting point for the city's psychedelic ballroom era and the Family Dog (FD) poster lineage.