Laura Havlin, chronicling The Mab’s history for AnOther Magazine, writes that the club was a place for sexual exploration and experimentation, unfettered creativity and notably, “bad taste.”
“The venue in the North Beach area hosted punk nights, vaudeville-style cabaret, and, due to its location in the seedier area of town and its proximity to the stripclubs, became a hangout for off-duty strippers from nearby clubs The Galaxy, Carol Doda’s and The Roaring 20s. The club’s emcee was Dirk Dirksen – another local legend, who would welcome bands on stage with acerbic intros,” Havlin writes in “The Mabuhay Gardens: Where Punks and Strippers United Forces.”
The SFPL Digital Photo Collection – specifically, the San Francisco Historical Photograph series – has several performance photos from The Mab, including those included in this post. They depict frequent Mab performers, the Dead Kennedys, in 1982.
