From moo to Who
In 1915, San Francisco was in many ways still a cow town. The livestock exhibit at the Pan Pacific International Exposition that year was so popular that the city fathers imagined a permanent home to host livestock trade shows. The initial idea was to build it in the Marina District, but that was eventually scrapped during the Great Depression, when critics questioned using public money to fund such a venture. One of the local editorial boards asked, “Why, when people are starving, should money be spent on a ‘palace for cows’?” And thus the name: Cow Palace.
As it turned out the huge building became a WPA project that brought in thousands of laborers. In 1941, the Cow Palace was completed, not in the Marina, but out on Geneva Avenue, along the southern edge of the city in that area known as Crocker-Amazon. It has a steel-and-concrete roof that covers six acres. During World War II, it was used as a staging site for troops heading to the Pacific campaign.
Info
Address 2600 Geneva Avenue, Daly City, CA, 94014, www.cowpalace.com, +1 415.404.4100 | Public Transport Bus: 8X, 9 (Santos St & Geneva Ave stop) | Tip Take the Philosopher’s Way trail above the Cow Palace and you’ll enjoy vast swaths of untouched open space. Start at the parking lot southwest of the intersection of Mansell Street and Visitation Avenue.
With seating for as many as 16,500, after the war, the building became a popular venue for basketball games, ice shows, livestock and boat shows, roller derbies, the U.S. Heavyweight Boxing Championship, and the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. The Beatles kicked off their first North American tour at the Palace and all the great groups of the era performed there, including Prince, Nirvana, and the Who—in that extraordinary 1973 concert when drummer Keith Moon passed out from too many horse tranquilizers and was replaced by a fan in the audience.
These days the Cow Palace features not only its regular tenants such as the circus and the Golden Gate Kennel Club Dog Show, but also the popular annual Body Art Expo, where many visitors leave with a permanent souvenir tattooed on their skin or an extra piercing purchased from one of the 300 on-site tattoo and piercing artists.
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