Top things to do in San Francisco — week of March 23

Week of the 23rd. Decent week. The AI calendar is heating up because Y Combinator demo day is on the horizon and everyone is suddenly very interested in being seen at things.

I keep the live version of this on the SF this-week page — it pulls from Luma and Eventbrite so I do not have to remember which platform a thing was on.

Monday: skip it

Monday in SF is a graveyard. The one event tempting me is a $60 networking thing at a SoMa coworking space that I am almost sure is sponsored by a recruiting firm. Not it.

If you want something free, there is a small ML reading group in the Mission that meets at 7pm. Maybe a dozen people. Mostly graduate students.

Tuesday: Latent Space podcast meetup

This is the one. The Latent Space crowd does a casual drinks thing every other Tuesday, rotating between Sightglass and a place on Folsom. This week it is at Sightglass. Free, RSVP via Luma, expect a 50/50 split between actual ML engineers and people who very much want to be ML engineers.

The Anthropic and Mistral folks usually drift in around 7. By 8 it is too loud to talk shop, which is honestly a feature.

Wednesday: Brick & Mortar, doors at 8

A touring band I will not name because the show is already 80% sold and I am being selfish. Mid-week show in the Mission, $20 advance, sound at Brick is unreasonably good for the room size. Get there at 8:15 to skip the opener if you must.

Thursday: AI Tinkerers Demo Night

The headline event of the week. Five demos, eight minutes each, hard cutoff. Real pizza, free beer, the room fills up by 6:45 so put on real shoes and leave the apartment.

You will see at least two demos that are obviously incremental wrappers around an open model and at least one that is genuinely interesting. The Q&A is where the value is — the questions are sharper than the demos most weeks.

Friday: the Chapel

Mission, doors at 9, $25. The booking team at the Chapel has been on a streak this quarter. Sound is great, the bar is slow, the bathroom line is the only real flaw. Eat before, the food across the street is faster than the bar inside.

Saturday: Verve, then the Independent

Coffee at Verve in Hayes Valley at 9 if you are the kind of person who wakes up. There is a recurring founders meetup that has no name and no website — just a Telegram group somebody invited me to a year ago. Showing up alone is fine.

Saturday night, the Independent has a show that should be good. I have not seperately verified the band but the booking has been consistent.

Sunday: Oasis or recovery

The Oasis drag brunch is the move if you have visitors in town. Otherwise, do nothing. SF is at its best when you walk Bernal Hill at 4pm and refuse to check Slack.

If you absolutely need an event, there is a small founder dinner Sunday night in the Mission, BYOB, capped at 12 people. The link circulated on Luma last week. Probably full now.

Twelve things, one week, more or less in chronological order. I will be at AI Tinkerers Thursday and the Chapel Friday. Say hi if you see me, I will be the one not making eye contact.

If you want the comprehensive version with all the things I cut, the AI events in SF answer page has the full filter.