Train Shuts Down Haight Street for Free Homecoming Block Party

San Francisco rockers Train are shutting down a stretch of Haight and Ashbury streets tomorrow for a free block party outside the pub that inspired their 12th studio album. The event, dubbed Love on Haight — A Mad Dog in the Fog Block Party, opens at 3:30 p.m. with Train set to perform at 5 p.m. in front of the bar at 1568 Haight St.

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency has approved a partial closure of Haight Street between Clayton and Masonic streets from noon to 8 p.m. Thursday, according to the SFMTA. The closure will trigger reroutes for four Muni bus lines — the 7 Haight/Noriega, 33 Ashbury/18th Street, 37 Corbett, and 43 Masonic — so riders in the Haight-Ashbury corridor should expect detours that afternoon and evening.

Despite being free, the block party is not a walk-up affair. Entry requires a confirmed RSVP through the ticketing platform Partiful, and check-in staff will match attendees' legal photo IDs against that list on a strict first-come, first-served basis because of street capacity limits, according to the event's Partiful listing.

A Pub That Helped Launch the Band

The party centers on Mad Dog in the Fog, the sports bar frontman Pat Monahan credits with helping Train get started, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Per the Chronicle's reporting, the band says it came together at Mad Dog in the Fog, which was the first venue to ever pay Train to play — and Cyril, a figure at the bar, has been one of the band's biggest champions from the beginning.

That history is why the bar became the namesake and thematic anchor of the group's new record. Train has said of the block party: “New album. Old stomping grounds. One hell of a homecoming,” and, describing the choice of venue, “You really think we'd name our album Mad Dog in the Fog and not throw a party at the bar we named it after?”

The Chronicle's report frames Train's return to the bar as a full-circle moment, though the pub itself has moved. Mad Dog in the Fog operated for more than 30 years at 530 Haight St in the Lower Haight before closing in March 2020, just days before San Francisco's initial COVID-19 shelter-in-place order took effect — a closure Hoodline reported at the time. The bar reopened in August 2022 at 1568 Haight St near Clayton Street in the Upper Haight, moving into the space previously occupied by the Michael Collins Irish Bar, as Hoodline detailed when the pub revived in its new location, corroborated by SFGATE. This week's block party takes place at that newer Upper Haight address, three blocks from where the bar spent its original three decades.

New Album Ties Directly to the Bar

Train filmed the official music video for the title track of its new album inside the Haight Street sports bar ahead of the record's release, according to the Chronicle. Mad Dog in the Fog, the band's 12th studio album and its first since 2022's AM Gold, arrives Friday through Columbia Records and includes 12 songs, among them tracks titled The Weekend and Pennsylvania Turnpike, per the Chronicle's reporting.

Train was formed in San Francisco in 1993 by Monahan and guitarist Rob Hotchkiss, growing from an acoustic duo into a five-piece band that built its early following at local venues before landing national record deals, according to Wikipedia. The band's 2001 breakthrough single, Drops of Jupiter (Tell Me), won two Grammy Awards the following year for Best Rock Song and Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist(s) and later earned RIAA Diamond certification, according to Grammy.com.

Where the Show Fits on the Tour

Monahan is now the sole remaining founding member of Train, performing alongside producer-guitarist Butch Walker, bassist Hector Maldonado, keyboardist Jerry Becker, and drummer Matt Musty, according to Hoodline's coverage of the band's tour stop in Riverside. Thursday's free Haight Street pop-up falls between dates on the band's 39-city Drops of Jupiter: 25 Years in the Atmosphere Tour, which also features co-headliners Barenaked Ladies and Matt Nathanson, per reporting from The Source. Train is scheduled to play Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View on Wednesday, positioning the Haight Street block party as a brief detour back to San Francisco before the tour continues.

Block parties are nothing new to Haight Street. The tradition dates back to April 1978, when local merchants and activists, supported by then-District 5 Supervisor Harvey Milk, organized the inaugural Haight-Ashbury Street Fair to help revitalize the neighborhood after the decline that followed the 1960s counterculture era, according to the Haight Ashbury Street Fair. Thursday's event, tied to a single bar and a hometown band's new record, is a much smaller affair, but it follows nearly five decades of the neighborhood using its streets to celebrate its own culture.