Long Live The Pound: The Forgotten 2000s Venue That Changed the Bay Area

At the end of the 20th century, 100 Cargo Way at Pier 96 in San Francisco was a truck stop diner. When chef and entrepreneur Tony Carracci visited Hunter’s Point to look at the building, he had dreams of being the next Bill Graham. So he took over the remote spot — which came a coveted liquor license — and invested $20,000 dollars into gutting it, building a stage and installing a professional concert sound system.

Around the same time, A.J. Cardinal was a punk who appreciated metal, and shared a desire with friend Cip Cipriano to bring Cradle of Filth to San Francisco. Cipriano also had dreams of being the next Bill Graham, and saw an opportunity (he called it “legalized gambling”) in the rocky, boom-and-bust business of promoting metal, hardcore and punk shows. They struck up a business relationship, booking shows at venues in the city, only to find that established venues didn’t want to scare the neighbors by putting names like Cradle of Filth on the marquee.

That would not be a problem at The Pound, Carracci’s 500-person capacity venue near the railroad tracks and a hauling yard, with barely any neighbors, especially at night.

At The Pound, Carracci, Cardinal and Cipriano carved out a pivotal and mostly unsung revolution in San Francisco’s legendary music scene. The Pound was born on Feb. 8, 2001 with Jerry Cantrell from Alice in Chains playing the venue’s first show. Its short-but-influential run lasted just five years; the Port Authority pulled the plug on their lease in fall 2006.

Along the way, The Pound hosted a blizzard of early 2000s bands that would go on to become household names: My Chemical Romance, Paramore, Avenged Sevenfold. It also brought in veteran acts like Thin Lizzy, Anthrax, and Danzig of the Misfits. The Pound booked bands in their formative years that have persevered and now headline shows and festivals around the world – including Lamb of God, Killswitch Engage, Glassjaw and Hatebreed.

“Back then, no one wanted to touch these bands. The powers that be did not believe that these bands had any kind of draw, staying power. They’re playing stadiums now,” Cipriano tells KQED. “I was right. My big prize for being right is all the bands eventually go on to Live Nation and suddenly there’s no room for the independent venues.”

The venue where taxis refused to go

The Pound had the aura of a horror film’s opening exterior. It was desolate, shrouded in ocean fog and surrounded by a gravel parking lot. Stacked shipping containers housed makeshift green rooms and offices; an abandoned-looking bus functioned as the smoking area; and the lighting resembled a temporary construction site. Taxi drivers would openly refuse to take metalheads there; the nearest Muni line, the 19, stopped too many blocks away for most to safely walk there at night.

Yet The Pound’s isolation was key to its winning formula. Unlike other venues, there were no nearby residences to worry about. The music could be as loud as possible, much to the delight of fans.

“We never got a sound complaint, ever,” Carracci recalled. The one time Carracci tested that notion, he erected an outdoor stage to host Danzig for a crowd of 3,000 people. The cops came and asked to see his permit, to which he replied, “Ah fuck, goddamnit man. I knew I forgot something.” To avoid inciting a riot by calling off the show, they handed Carracci a modest ticket and issued a verbal warning about the permit.

The Pound opened when the internet was starting to change music through file sharing, mailing lists, chat rooms and fan sites, with social media and streaming soon to drastically alter music and fan culture overall. While rudimentary and scrappy in person, The Pound maintained an early internet mailing list to keep fans in the know for upcoming shows.

Because it used to be a restaurant, per city code, The Pound was allowed to have all-ages shows while serving alcohol. Musician Tony Malson (now lead singer in State Line Empire and The Devil in California) worked as a bartender at The Pound, and saw firsthand how crucial it was for underage music fans to be at these shows — X’s marked on their hands so they wouldn’t be served alcohol — having a safe and controlled outlet to get rowdy.

“To be at clubs that were doing shows for that all-ages setup, 2004-5-6-ish, that was important, and when it went away, you could feel it,” said Malson, “All that shit went out to the East Bay clubs and different places. The metal scene wasn’t as prominent in San Francisco after that.”

All-ages crowds weren’t great for his tips, but The Pound offered fringe benefits like opening for Thin Lizzy, Mountain and Robby Krieger from the Doors. As a bartender but also a fan, it also meant he got to pour drinks for members of Metallica and Alice in Chains.

A proving ground for musicians

Opening for national touring acts at The Pound gave Malson’s projects the necessary credibility to claw out a living in music: “When we were doing other things, getting other gigs, touring, doing things like that, it looked really great on paper.”

Guitarist Sergio Licea also received such an opportunity at The Pound, playing for an established punk act Barbee Killed Kenn after they were booked to open for Dee Dee Ramone in 2002. However, tragedy struck: Dee Dee Ramone died the week of the show. When the show went on anyway, Licea took the stage to an audience of less than 10 people.

Nevertheless, he loved being on The Pound’s stage, even without a crowd to feed off. “That place and Slim’s were personal dream venues for me, because I caught so many cool shows there,” he says, noting he was on The Pound’s online mailing list. “It’s still a highlight. I remember it pretty vividly.”

Eric Wong, a veteran metal bassist (Metallica’s James Hetfield once produced Wong’s band Piranha), played at The Pound multiple times. When his band Unjust played a record-release show for their album Glow, “I was absolutely shocked that we packed the place,” he said.

“That was the place to be. You didn’t have to worry about anything there. You could be yourself. You could play. There wasn’t a lot of egos. It was generally a good place. Everyone took care of each other.”

When The Pound closed, “it was almost the end of fun times,” he said. “That was kind of the end of that whole wave of thrash metal too, in the Bay Area.”

Ginger Cuevas now sings in the Bay Area metal band Diablura. In the mid-aughts, she had just moved from New York and needed live music to fight off homesickness. Her ex-husband surprised her with a Remembering Never show at The Pound in 2005.

That night, Cuevas took note of The Pound’s remote location. “‘Am I gonna get killed out here? Nobody’s ever gonna find my body out here if something happens,’” Cuevas remembers thinking to herself. “It was like that, but I had the time of my life.”

The Pound’s legacy lives on

Carracci and Cipriano tried their luck with a new location for The Pound in West Oakland, but it didn’t pan out. Cipriano keeps The Pound’s spirit alive by booking shows at the DNA Lounge in San Francisco. Carracci most recently worked as a chef and co-owner of the Point Richmond restaurant and music venue Baltic Kiss, which closed in 2025.

Cardinal died in 2004. Her work booking The Pound in the final years of her life constitutes a major contribution to the Bay Area music scene, and set an example for other women in a male-dominated field. Malson remains a fixture in the San Francisco music scene, with his grunge tribute band Rusty Chains hosting a yearly fundraiser for San Francisco Suicide Prevention.

Wong still plays with Unjust, who recently recorded a new EP — in part as a tribute to their longtime roadie Erik Cordero, who died by suicide. Cuevas never got to play The Pound with Diablura, but is thankful independent venues like DNA Lounge, Kilowatt in San Francisco and Eli’s Mile High Club in Oakland continue to foster the local heavy music scene.

Licea, who now co-owns a wine shop in Portland, summed up what made The Pound special. Bands would start there and pound away until they graduated up through the bigger venues in the region. For its time and place, The Pound was a warm, loud scene in the cold quiet of San Francisco’s industrial piers.

“Picking up energy at a live show is a fucking amazing energy, but you can’t get that [same] energy sitting up in the nosebleeds. You gotta have somebody sweat on you and shit. You gotta get splashed on by the guitar player,” said Licea, “That’s the shit that I like. That’s the kind of stuff that I think we’re really missing.”