Gray Area / Grand Theater — Attraction in San Francisco

8/8/2025: I, along with my other friends, received replies from the Gray Area about the incident. However, as is clearly outlined in our reviews, it is not about the refund process or the tickets at all. Rather, it is about the ill treatment we received from the venue staff. The individuals we interacted with that night are part of your "Staff & Board" page listed on grayarea.org. This review will be kept up for your future customers as a reminder to be mindful when interacting with your staff--us receiving a refund won't "undo" the incident.

8/5/2025: We received the refund! Thank you to Vitamin1000 for helping us with this process.

8/1/2025 review: If I could give a 0 star rating, I would. Poor, immature, and unhelpful management team that does not value their customers who paid to enter the facilities. Their security team will meet you with aggression and refuse to allow you in their facilities let alone speak with the manager until they at least raised their voices once. Later, management themselves portrayed poor communication skills (and aggression) when we requested help to receive a refund for our tickets. We understand that the ticketing service is hosted through RA, however, this review conveys concerns greater than receiving our $264 back.

Friends and I (total of 8 people) had tickets to enter an event and were refused entry since the venue was “already overcapacity,” term coined arbitrarily by their manager who refused to give us a head count (individuals were going out after we had already arrived, suggesting we were not entered due to arbitrary reasons and not a true concern for Fire Safety rules.) In addition to my group, a few others (~10 ticket holders) were refused entry due to the same arbitrary protocol.

The manager himself, Andre (?), came out to dissolve the situation by offering his email address to help us receive a personal anecdotal from him to forward to RA. However, during this all happening, we asked if we could wait outside until enough people exited for it to be safe for our entrance, to which they mentioned lack of knowledge on this situation and not answering our questions, but being adamant that we cannot enter because they were “capsized.” Several people excluding us were entering the venue after we were denied entrance.

In hopes of receiving a recorded anecdotal from the management team to forward to RA, we waited to speak to someone. At this point, we were introduced a fourth character to the story, a blonde short feminine individual who was infantilizing and disrespectful to my friends who respectfully asked assistance with the refund process. They invited us inside while showing clear aggression in both tone of voice and overly expressive body language. As a result, my friends and I felt unsafe and uncomfortable to enter, to which they noticed and responded with intense disapproval of our action of not entering the facility. Andre, the manager, perhaps in an attempt to shoo us off, claimed they had called the cops (I and two of my other friends waited for them to arrive, and they never did.) We continued to respectfully ask for an anecdotal from the management team that clearly conveyed a reason for the denial of our entry, but were refused to be talked to.

I have not once in my life had to deal with such a poorly organized management team with beyond subpar communication skills. Our denial had absolutely no base to it, and we were never told why we were refused to enter. You would truly expect more from an organization that proudly represents themselves as a hub for “positive social impact.” Disappointed, hurt, and upset is how we left a venue we never entered.

I will be updating my review after we are issued a refund and Andre themselves has responded to my email regarding our concerns. Until then, I highly suggest reconsidering your night out with the Gray Area, as they arbitrarily decide who gets to go in or not, as well as sell tickets beyond their space capacity, according to the Fire Marshal, which unfairly discriminated my friends and I who paid...

I never leave reviews, even bad ones, but this time I had to. This is one of the worst venues I've ever been to by far. I've been to clubs/concerts in NYC, London, LA as well as music festivals, big and small, and NEVER have my ears been as damaged as they were by attending a show at this place. It's been two weeks and my ears are still ringing.

It's especially disappointing since I've been interested in this venue for a very long time, and was looking forward to finally going. For starters the show was supposed to start at 10, but they actually had 2 openers (which hadn't been announced back when I purchased the tickets) and so didn't actually start until midnight. The opener HITECH was so loud the floor was shaking. It was too crowded to move and so we had to stand in front of the speakers, and hope for it to end soon, since they had a No EXIT policy. If the concert hadn't been a birthday present we would have left and just forfeited our money, but we stayed and damaged our ears as a result. For reference, we are both in our late twenties and this has never happened to either one of us before. When we left we saw that they had put a jar of ear plugs by the entrance which hadn't been there when we had entered 2 hours prior. Had we known they were there we could have saved ourselves, but since we were stuck in front AND COULD NOT EXIT to give our ears a break it was useless to us. If they are going to have a show be DANGEROUSLY loud they should at least place that helpful jar somewhere where people can get to it, not when it's already too late. Do your body a favor and stay away from this place. Never has an awful dj set actually damaged...

Went with 7 other friends here with pre-purchased tickets ($33 a person) for an event on 8/1/25. We were denied entrance due to overcapacity. When we inquired about waiting until enough people left the venue, we were also told that it wasn't possible and that they would have to get the fire marshal involved.

Even though we bought tickets hours in advance, we said that we would like a full refund if they oversold tickets and couldn't let us in. We asked to speak to management about said refund. There was a "we can't do anything", "issue a refund through the app" (there was no refund button– only a resell button), and a lack of clear communication or acknowledgment. As this entire endeavor was going on, other people who just got to the location were being allowed entrance. The management raised their voice at us on multiple occasions, too, which felt extremely unprofessional on their end and made us feel unsafe and not helped. There was a lady in management screaming "do you want in or out" at us as she held the door open 30 mins before they closed. It took an hour to just get an email contact to request refunds.

TLDR: Be wary booking tix here. Some of the biggest red flags are: -oversold tickets/overbooked venue -dismissive staff who wouldn't help us issue a refund for our pre-purchased tix until an hour and some begging later -management who did not deescalate the situation, yelled passive aggressive remarks at us, and threatened us with police -failure to adhere to promised services

Very disappointed in the unprofessionalism here, especially since we only wanted answers. I sincerely hope this doesn't happen to anyone else...