It was only at the last minute I realized I was going to Hotel Utah Monday Open Mic.
Anyone who has had to ride BART from time to time has some stories to tell. My Monday evening trip into the city, however, was unremarkable.
Since my youth, BART trains have modernized (finally!). The tracks have extended farther north and south as well (finally!). Is it weird to miss the drivers' mumbling, low-fidelity station announcements punctuated by bursts of painful static? Surely the Siri-esque replacement is more reliable and much easier on the ears?
At least the station platform robot voice hasn't changed — I think that is still Martin Minnow's text-to-speech software. I like to imagine he'd be pleased to know it was still running: "BAY STAY SHUN." Is it also wrong to miss BART's wide, blue fabric seats?
The train car was relatively empty, other than a fellow behind me playing music loudly through his phone's speakers.
The memories I have of the Utah open mic in the late '90s are of full sign-up sheets and late nights waiting for one's turn. I did hear recently about this one open mic site — bayareaopenmics.com — that I totally checked to verify how sign-up is handled at The Utah.
It suggested checking the event's Facebook page, which I did before I left at 5pm, to no avail. Someone should totally update the Utah listing on the site :P
It must be said: The Utah is a handsome building — a facade from another era.
Outside The Utah, beside the sign advertising the open mic, a man with a cigarette looked up to see me walking up with my guitar and said,
"I'll bet this guy knows. Hey man — do you know if there's an open mic tonight?"
I looked from him to the sign.
"I'm hoping so," I replied.
Inside, I ducked down the stairs, past the curtain, and into the low-ceilinged area of tables in front of the stage. I spied a seat that would give me access to take photos without stepping in front of too many people and asked the two folks already seated there if I could join them.
They welcomed me and introduced themselves.
Miguel and Vanessa — my tablemates — shared that they were at last week's open mic. Miguel introduced himself as "John," but then changed to "Paul," and when we began to discuss nicknames (being a monosyllable first-namer myself, I'd never collected one), he dubbed me "No Name," before wincing and recalling that was the name of a DJ from Live 105 FM back in the day.
"So what are you going to play?" I was asked.
Checking my guitar bag for the presence of a stainless steel guitar slide — aha! There it is! — I shared that I was torn between a couple of songs I'd written about San Francisco: Steam Beer (a whimsical song lamenting the loss of the city's famous beer) or a more serious piece called "Baghdad by the Bay," which talked about the Bay's shifting demographics during the Second World War.
"What kind of tune is it?" Miguel asked about the latter.
"The song has a protagonist from the south," I said, "so it's got a delta blues feel to it — hence the slide." Miguel nodded, appreciatively.
"Definitely that one."
Thanks, Miguel — that choice worked out well.
Hotel Utah Monday Open Mic has been around a while (the stage has hosted acts since 1977), and the way the event is run shows it. There is not another open mic event that is so readily accessible: it is double-live-streamed — simultaneously on Facebook and by TinelPhaba on Twitch — and a high-fidelity recording of every performance is made available weekly on theutah.org, extending back to 2002.
The site currently boasts 42,373 performances by 7,230 different artists, though of course only the performances artists have enabled can be seen.
You can also follow host Carly Beltramo's ongoing blog posts about the Hotel Utah open mic on that site.
The first thing attendees will notice is The Utah's sign-up table has many things:
- a large beer pitcher
- several pens
- torn-up scraps of binder paper
- a clipboard
- an LED candle
- a placard listing the rules of the event
...and multiple QR codes on just about everything.
Utah's sign-up is the typical name-in-a-hat method — or, in this case, empty beer pitcher: performers do not pick their slot; they go in the order they are drawn.
8pm arrived and charming hostess Carly Beltramo emerged, pointed a tripod-mounted iPad at the stage, logged into a Facebook streaming window on the iPad, and then fetched the beer pitcher full of performers' names written on little scraps of paper.
An audience member popped up and asked, "Do you need a list-writer?" Carly nodded, and Barbie — the helpful volunteer, who would be onstage later as a performer herself — sat herself at the onstage piano to play stenographer.
"Welcome to the Utah! We're gonna draw some names and get going — I have a lovely assistant: Barbie!"
"A couple things to know: we are recording in three different ways. Get your high-quality audio on theutah.org later this week of your performance tonight. If you have played here before it should be on there from all the years — check it out, it's on there. I like to go on there and see when the features are happening and see when they first started performing here."
"We are a one-song open mic, not to exceed 6 minutes.
"Keep within your time limit. If your song is one minute, fifty-nine seconds, that's one song! If your song is four minutes fifty-nine seconds, what is that?" the crowd roared back,
"One song!"
"Original songs? Do we like those here?"
cheering
"Cover songs? How about comedy? Burlesque? We've seen tap, poetry, people reading from novels — talk about your life for 6 minutes?"
"If you play the house guitar, you are welcome to sign it. You can hang out in our Hotel Utah backstage — it's a hallway. We can play from a phone, iPad, or laptop."
"So when I say hotel, you say Utah! Hotel!"
"Utah!"
"Hotel!"
"Utah!"
"When I say open, you say mic. Open!"
"Mic!"
"Open!"
"Mic!"
"Yeah! And that's how cults get started!"
Rick Merritt from San Jose was first on the mic. He shared that it was his first time at the Hotel Utah.
"Shameless plug of the evening: I host my own open mic in San Jose on the Second Saturday at 1st Unitarian Church. It's in this big, old, beautiful building with a dome, so please come out."
"This is my song called 'Glow.'"
Rick's cheerful ballad was thematically on point for an open mic, the chorus exhorting listeners: "My life is fire, and I can let it glow."
A man in a baseball cap and volumnous clothing was next. "My name is Syler and I make music under the name 'Coast FM.' This is an original song sent off for mastering a couple of days ago called 'Wind Chimes,' it should be out at the end of the month."
His voice reminded me of the singer of the Australian band 'Something For Kate.'
The next performer, Barbie, hero of the earlier sign-up process, sat demurely like a figure in an oil painting in the multi-colored stage lights, cued up her backing track and then closed her eyes and lost herself in her ballad, “Angels Brought Me Here.”
Carly took the mic to announce the next performer, Miguel Love, whom she introduced as "AKA 'Hunky Jesus!'"
Miguel is the 2026 winner of San Francisco's annual Easter "Hunky Jesus" competition run by The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. In jeans and a black, muscle-baring tank top, shoulder-length hair
pulled back from his face, Miguel wore his black-faced Fender Acoustasonic slung
around his substantive shoulders and greeted the crowd in a resonant baritone:
"Hey everybody."
"I'll be performing an original this evening: 'Waiting.'" His song featured an impressive separation of a palm-muted lower baseline and more open rhythm on the higher strings.
Fremont's Todd Tramblie followed Miguel:
"This song is about my son. He's like a bigger, taller, faster, stronger, better-looking me." It was an earnest paternal tribute to a well-loved son.
In grey sweats and a neon yellow cap, the next performer — Cyberstar — sang over the 1980 disco hit "Funky Town," shouting over the original recording in an intense, dissonant cry:
"Won't you take me — to AI town!!"
In his red cap and blue-and-yellow color-block button-up, the performer next onstage, Breakfast, was evocative of a modern Arlecchino. His song for the evening didn't disabuse that notion:
"This is a love song, which is why it's called 'Love Love.'"
From the first line of his vaudevillian piece, the appreciative crowd roared at the relentlessly profane, alliterative comedy:
"Why is everyone such a fucking fucker? Why is everything in the world such a piece of shitty shit?"
Some lines were such glorious vulgar tongue-twisters, the crowd couldn't help but guffaw in response:
"You're a fucking fake, a fecal fickle fucker!"
Breakfast finished with a drawn-out "Aaaaaamen!" to rapturous applause.
Not to be outdone in rhetorical comedy, a man named Rob — in giant, heart-shaped glasses, a bright red shirt with a gold Wonder Woman logo, and a polka-dotted blue cape — took the stage next with a dark sunburst Uke-caster and kazoo in a harmonica holder. His stage name for the evening was commensurately deranged: Megan the Scallion Pancake.
"I was here last week for the supergroup. I would like to invite EVERY singer who thinks they can learn a very simple song. Musicians: come on up!"
The musicians in the Hotel Utah audience did not let him down, running to the stage to join him on his song, "Open Mic Superstar."
The room joined right in, clapping and singing along to lyrics like: "I'm tired of hearing that non-paying crowd roar!"
After the next performer, Rob returned briefly to the mic to share that he will be playing at the The Bazaar Cafe in the "first full-length concert of my life!" that Saturday, the 16th.
Dana June next read a poem called "Rent," that began, provocatively: "Hello Death, I am your favorite fart."
Her poem was a frantic indictment of materialism, embroidered around the image of a liver-shaped swimming pool. It finished with "Cry into the chlorine of a mansion I pay no rent on!" to great applause.
Charming hostess Carly Beltramo performed her plaintive original, "Away":
"Who is chasing who?" As she finished to applause, a shout-out to my tablemate:
"Let's hear it for Vanessa, helping me on the sound — the two of us are taking an audio engineering class at Women's Audio Mission, and she is shadowing me tonight!"
Steffy Sue was up next: "I have not been here in 13 years. I'm visiting from Chicago. This is a love song I wrote a long time ago, when I lived here."
When a dog barked halfway through her song, Steffy thanked him for singing along. The furry audience member took this as an invitation and trotted onto the stage, set himself up beside Steffy, and proceeded to continue singing along until his owner — Mama D — emerged from backstage to pull him offstage.
Mama D then took to the stage with their white acoustic and played a Breeders song called "Do You Love Me Now."
As I was up next, I took the opportunity to slip into "the green room" to tune up.
The Hotel Utah backstage corridor is impressively industrial: concrete floor, recycling bins, plumbing, wiring, the chaos of an old hotel telephone routing panel, and an in-line tuner on the ground. Just as I unsheathed the guitar and tuned down into an open D tuning for my song, there was an abrupt SNAP! — and I looked down to see my A string had mysteriously snapped at the bridge.
Frantic, I scrambled through my bag for a spare string. As Czech poetry from Half Ukrainian — the act before me — drifted through the thin door, sweat began to sting my eyes as I yanked the string out, the anchoring peg skittering onto the floor.
Crap.
Are Czech people long-winded?
I said a small prayer that this would be an extra-long Czech poem as I pulled the new A string through the tuning peg and felt along the cold concrete floor for my lost peg.
Thankfully, just as I twisted the new string's knob up to concert-pitch A, I could hear Carly announcing my name to come onstage.
I don't play slide very often, and "Baghdad by the Bay" — the song I'd chosen for the night — isn't one I perform very often. It went well. Thanks again, Miguel.
Following me onstage was the featured performer from the previous week: Queen Einstein.
By the time I'd put my guitar away and reemerged from the industrial corridor into the main room, I found Queen Einstein naked to the waist onstage, offering a bit of biography: "I'm the same age as the king of pop: 67. I love children — but not that way." The crowd laughed.
His impassioned performance was part sung, part spoken. Halfway through, he stopped mid-poem: "I kinda know these songs better in Spanish..." — and completed the piece in Spanish, reading from his phone while seated stage right on the piano bench.
"Pinche diva syndrome. Everybody flash their tits," he completed, to applause.
As for me — much as I deeply wished to linger to see what the next performers would bring to the stage, I had a BART train to catch lest I be getting back to the Tri-Valley past midnight.
If you, like me, want to know how the rest of the night went — or to watch a recording of any of what I've described above — the entire 11 May 2026 Hotel Utah open mic is available on Facebook and Twitch, courtesy of TinelPhaba.
The Hotel Utah Monday Open Mic is perfect for lovers of San Francisco's eclectic spirit who love the idea of being streamed live treading the same boards as Robin Williams and John Mayer — and would be honored by their performance becoming part of a venerable library of thousands of recordings at what is likely the oldest open mic in San Francisco.
Click on any photo in this post to see the full, uncropped version.
