The Kickass SF Halloween Parties You Need to Book ASAP

Pick your poison: Live music, house party or a chic club

October 9, 2018 9:00 am

The best nights tend to involve an element of spontaneity.

Hence why we typically forgo New Year’s Eve extravaganzas, St. Paddy’s parades and any occasion that triggers Surge Fares.

But we’ll make one exception: Halloween, the one day that acting a fool with a roomful of strangers hasn’t lost its charm.

If you feel the same, we’ve got three elegant, highbrow, devilishly fun ways to celebrate in S.F. (Plus two alternatives.)

From all-hours dancing to philanthropic costume parties to a night of Michael Jackson, act fast — tickets are sure to move quickly.

You Want Something Sleek ‘n’ Chic With Non-Stop Dancing: The W Hotel Halloween Party
Innumerable S.F. hotels throw a Halloween party, but no one does it with quite as much abandon as the W, which is going with its trademark three-room mix of “sexy European” (courtesy of DJs KBLO, Aykut, and Turker), “Persian” (with Dr. T and DJ Nitro) or an ’80s and ’90s hip-hop room (with Kevin Armstrong and D Double J). Everyone dresses up, everyone imbibes and the truly fortunate among them are the ones who planned ahead to reserve a room — especially if you’re in the party/nap/party demo, the most luxurious of all party strategies. The final round of ticket sales began yesterday, so get on it.

You’ll Feel Slightly Less Ridiculous If It’s All For a Good Cause: The 15th Annual Guardsmen Halloween Party
Do good while dressing up at the 15th Annual Guardsmen Halloween Party. If you’re not familiar with the organization, the Guardsmen sends up to 3,000 at-risk Bay Area kids to character-building wilderness programs every summer, while sponsoring another 250 at local private schools, all with the goal of breaking the cycle of poverty. (Nothing is sexier than philanthropy, BTW.) Solid cause established, grab your Halloween finery and swing by Hue, the newish North Beach dance spot.

Van Ness (3 images)

You Want Something Actually, Legitimately Sexy: Nightmare on Van Ness
If you want fun, go to Bimbo’s for the two-night Thriller Halloween Ball, featuring Michael Jackson’s greatest hits, as interpreted by the Foreverland ensemble (and buy your tix soon, since it’s a perennial sell-out). If you want easy, there are myriad Marina bar crawls to consider. But if you want to dance, dance, dance next to the imaginatively dressed, head to the Regency for Nightmare on Van Ness, with three floors, four rooms, bazillion DJs and one of the most legitimately beautiful party spaces in the city, with 35-foot ceilings and Art Deco details that have somehow already survived nearly a decade’s-worth of this party.

Main image via Archivio Cameraphoto Epoche/Getty Images

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