In 1996 Metallica played a parking lot show in San Jose. On June 4, 1996, Metallica played a surprise show in the parking lot of the San Jose Tower Records at 871 Blossom Hill Road across from Oakridge Mall. After a morning announcement on local radio, news of the free show spread across the Bay Area, and once MTV News picked it up, it went worldwide. About ten thousand people showed up. The band planned to perform three flatbed truck shows that day to celebrate the release of their sixth album Load. One in San Jose, one in San Francisco, and one in Sacramento. Only two happened because San Francisco canceled at the last minute. Tower Records was chosen for all of the stops so fans could watch the show and then walk inside to buy the record. Tower Records manager Barbara Williamson, who has since passed away, later said that city officials told her no permit was needed. But one week after the performance, San Jose city attorney Joan Gallo held a news conference announcing that charges were being filed against Bill Graham Presents, Elektra Entertainment, and Tower Records. Offenses included disturbing the peace, failing to secure permits, and not obtaining approval for temporary street closures and amplified sound. The city also billed Tower Records seven thousand dollars for police, fire, and emergency medical services. “I think the destruction that was caused deliberately and purposefully to get publicity and take advantage of this community needs to be dealt with in a criminal form,” Gallo said at the time. Police were not happy either. Thousands of fans packed the parking lot across from Oakridge Mall, creating a traffic jam. Highway 87 backed up, and traffic at Santa Teresa and Blossom Hill was at a standstill for hours. This 1996 strip mall concert remains an indelible part of Metallica lore and Bay Area music history. source footage 🎥: MetConcerts100

Mountain View Tower Records, 1994: Pantera meets fans and signs autographs. The day Pantera released their album, Far Beyond Driven, they showed up at Tower Records in Mountain View for a meet and greet with fans and to sign autographs. My buddy Mark and I heard about it that afternoon on the radio and immediately dropped everything so we could go down there. We stood in line for a couple hours and got to meet other Pantera fans and talk all things metal with them. Their guitarist, Dimebag Darrell was one of the best and nicest guys in metal. He loved his fans, you could see it by the way he interacted with the kid getting his record signed. source footage 🎥: Pantera

90s teens film a boogeyman video at Tanforan Mall. San Bruno, 1999. Check out the cool nod to The Blair Witch Project at the end, with the guy standing in the corner just like Mike in the film’s final scene. It was a lot of fun having a camcorder back in the 1990s and making videos like this one with your buddies. It gave the whole day a sense of purpose. source footage 🎥: Mark Tambini

A 1950s Halloween Parade in San Francisco. I posted a similar edit of this footage on Instagram and got DMs saying it looked like death camp footage. In reality, it was filmed at James Lick Middle School in San Francisco in the 1950s. This was long before pop culture trends and memes took over Halloween costume inspiration. Back then, kids often chose archetype costumes. The costumes you see here represented broad, familiar roles rather than specific pop culture characters. They were based on classic personas that anyone could recognize without a brand or character tie in. By the 1960s and 1970s, as more and more TV shows took off, companies saw potential in character licensing. They started buying the rights to popular shows and mass producing inexpensive costumes. These companies focused less on quality and more on speed, getting costumes out in time for Halloween. You probably remember these: a stiff plastic mask held on by a single rubber band, and a thin plastic jumpsuit with matching branding. If you went as Casper the Friendly Ghost, for example, your jumpsuit would have an illustration of Casper printed right on it. By the late 1980s or early 1990s, those costumes had mostly disappeared. source footage 🎥: Dasin Smolt

Halloween in San Francisco, 2001. In 2001, Halloween in the Castro was still one of San Francisco’s biggest unofficial street parties, drawing tens of thousands of people. I was there with a group of friends, and we still talk about it to this day. Police made more than fifty arrests, mostly for public intoxication and disorderly conduct, and the sheer size of the crowd made it difficult to control. People remember that year for the chaos and for the sense that the Castro was becoming harder to keep safe on Halloween. source footage 🎥: Larf and Rev

In June of 1986, more than 2,000 motorcyclists rode into Santa Clara. One of their goals was to break the Guinness record for the number of motorcycles in a parade. They came for the 1986 Wing Ding, a massive annual convention of the Honda Gold Wing Road Riders Association. You can see the pure joy on their faces. These people loved what they were doing, and you can feel the real camaraderie and friendship between them. It mattered. Today, the Wing Ding and the association behind it no longer exist. The Gold Wing Road Riders Association closed in 2022 after years of declining membership, falling from more than 80,000 down to around 10,000. It’s a real loss. I don’t know what drove that kind of decline. Aging membership, changing interests, something else? source footage 🎥: KRON

Jerry Rice and the San Francisco 49ers drop bars in 1989. Today is Jerry's 64th birthday, so here’s the story behind the video. 🏈🎉🎂 Bay Area native Peter Michael Escovedo, who is the brother of Sheila E. (she’s in the video briefly), wrote and produced the music for the 49ers Rap and also shot the video. Both he and his sister Sheila were raised as 49ers fans in the Bay Area. Here’s a condensed oral history of it. PME: “The year we did that video, they kept winning, and I thought, ‘Man, they’re going to go to the Super Bowl. I would love to direct a music video for them.’ I had a meeting with Roger Craig and told him my idea. He said, ‘Man, that would be great.’ So he ended up calling Jerry Rice and Ronnie Lott.” Most participants have only foggy memories of when and where the 49ers Rap session took place, but some are adamant that it was done at a recording studio in SF, not far from the old Slim’s nightclub. Rice: “I’m not a rapper or an entertainer. It was fun but tough. Sheila E. and them were in there trying to help. The most important thing was: you didn’t want to make yourself look stupid. It just took a while. You just had to go with it.” PME: “I wrote the song, and I’m teaching them line by line. So it’s, ‘Hey, my name is Jerry Rice / Please don’t try to guard me or you’ll pay the price.’ ‘OK, stop right there! Say that same thing!’ Then I’d film it, and then I’d get the next line. So we just pieced it together.” Then there was the matter of getting them to perform for the camera. The 49ers were encouraged to ham it up on set so that Peter had some footage for the video. That meant lots of bold fashion choices and questionable dancing. PME: “I don’t think there was any time for outtakes. We used every single bit of footage we had, even the bad.” It helped that there was a genuine star on set, Sheila E. She didn’t sing on the track, but she joined her brother in coaching during the session. In the quest to liven up the footage, Peter choreographed a scene in which the 49ers players lined up on their knees as Sheila E. emerged from the crowd. But the resulting image lasts only a second, and her face is obscured by graphics. To this day nobody is sure about what happened to the master tapes. source music & footage 🎹🎥: Peter Michael Escovedo

Today is Jerry Rice's 64th Birthday. 🏈🎉🎂 This is him in 1987 when he was 25 and had a mustache. Happy Birthday @JerryRice!

George Moscone at Bimbo's 365 in 1978. Some really great detective work by @fttb4942. I posted this video earlier today. We weren’t sure if that was George Moscone sitting at the table at the beginning of the video. They looked into it and found this photo that Bimbo’s posted to their Facebook page confirming that it is George Moscone. The footage was shot only two months before Moscone was assassinated. He was there to present Bimbo with a City Proclamation in honor of his birthday.

This is Bimbo, the guy who opened Bimbo's 365 in San Francisco. His name was Agostino Giuntoli and this is footage of him from his 75th birthday party in 1978 talking about sincirity. source footage 🎥: KPIX

San Francisco optimism, civicism & patriotism in the 1980s. – at San Francisco, CA

You know that's the truth!

When John Lennon came to San Francisco in 1965, he gave this teen girl a cigarette. She said she was gonna frame it. The Beatles were in town to play a couple of shows at the Cow Palace. Also amusing, Lennon referred to the city “Frisco." source footage 🎥: KGO-TV – at San Francisco, CA

Blue Angels and San Francisco patriotism in the 1980s.

Korn at The Edge in Palo Alto, October 7, 1996. Almost exactly 30 years ago. The opener was a still-unknown Limp Bizkit and the ticket was only $15! My buddy Nick and I were at this show and we were just reminiscing about it yesterday. How were shows so cheap back then? $15 in 1996 is about $32 today. A show like this would cost a lot more than that now. – at Palo Alto, CA