The EndUp is a nightclub in San Francisco, California. Opened in 1973, the club is located at 6th Street and Harrison in the South of Market district. Known for its status as an afterhours club, the venue has hosted a variety of benefits and events during its time as part of San Francisco's nightlife community.
History
The nightclub's only location has been the site of a former 22-room hotel at the corner of 6th and Harrison. The club has gone through several periods of ownership during its time, the majority of it spent under three brothers from the Hanken family.
Al Hanken era (19731989) The EndUp opened on November 15, 1973 as a differentiated version of the RoundUp, owner Al Hanken's LGBT country western-themed venue located one block north of the EndUp at 298 6th Street and Folsom. Mister Marcus, a writer for San Francisco's monthly LGBT magazine Kalendar, described the EndUp's opening in his column Man About Town:The long-awaited EndUp opened last Thursday too and you have to see it to believe it. I was lucky to get a demonstration of their quadraphonic sound system long ago. It's a big dance bar and certainly will add to the ambiance of Harrison Street. Congratulations to Al Hanken and Greg Loughner on their latest "baby". One of the events held at the club during this era was the Jockey Short Dance Contest (19741978). Taking its name from the type of underwear, the contest was a common event in San Francisco gay clubs during the mid-1970s. Al Hanken believed strong incentives like the contest were necessary to bring patrons to the EndUp's South of Market district from the Castro district, some away, as the bars there were already featuring their own versions. Randy Johnson served as emcee of the EndUp's Sunday afternoon contest along with DJs Steve Newman, Peter D. Struve, and Rod Kimbel. Offering first and second-place winners $150 and $50 respectively, the EndUp's contest gained wider notice when it was featured in the weekly serialized newspaper column Tales of the City and later in the novels of the same name by San Francisco author Armistead Maupin.
When the EndUp's sister club the RoundUp closed in 1977, Al Hanken's focus went towards developing the EndUp's burgeoning DJ talent. DJs Steve Fabus and Patrick Cowley hosted the recurring event Church (19791982) which started at 6:00a.m. to accommodate patrons who had just left the Trocadero Transfer nightclub. Patrick Cowley also hosted an event called Menergy (19811982) until his death in 1982.
Helmut Hanken era (19891996) Al Hanken died in 1989, leaving the club to his brother, Helmut Hanken. During this era, events such as Club Uranus (19891992) created by DJs Lewis Walden and Michael Blue featured a community of artists performing as art dancers and drag queens, celebrating creative energies through go-go dancing. The show featured co-host Jerome Caja and a cast of drag performance artists such as Trauma Flintstone, Diet Popstitute, Steven Maxxine, Tina-go-go, Tony Vaguely, Kitty Litter, Pussy Tourette and Elvis Herselvis. Running concurrent to this was Klub Dekadence (19911993) on Friday nights with DJ Bugie.
Helmut Hanken died four years after inheriting the club from his brother. The last will and testament of Helmut Hanken named the EndUp's operational manager, Douglas Carl Whitmore, as executor of his estate. From the position of executorial trustee, Whitmore was able to influence operations at the club more directly and with less oversight than would normally be the case with managers. During this period of time the EndUp experienced numerous internal difficulties involving financial and employee turmoil, with the club eventually filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 1995 and its employees seeking to unionize themselves in response to what they perceived were threats to their job security. Those who attempted to join together in a union were dismissed from working, and many of these employees then began picketing the EndUp in protest. With the assistance of the Queer Victory Labor Fund the venue reached a monetary settlement to end the dispute.
Pointing to Whitmore's management of the club as the cause of its difficulties, a third Hanken brother, Carl, began legal proceedings in Marin County to have Whitmore removed as executor of Helmut Hanken's estate, whereupon a brief interregnum of court-disputed ownership for the club began. In April 1996, Marin Superior Court commissioner Mary Grove ended the dispute by terminating Whitmore's executorship, saying he had "mismanaged the estate, wasted the estate's assets (and) wrongfully neglected the estate." With a new executor in control, Helmut Hanken's estate immediately sold the club to Carl Hanken.