New Year’s Day has replaced New Year’s Eve in the hearts and minds of many San Francisco’s disco bon vivants, thanks to the day-after rager Breakfast of Champions, which notches its 25th anniversary on January 1.
It’s hard for me to write a 25-year anniversary retrospective on the Breakfast of Champions party, because I can barely remember anything that ever happened at a Breakfast of Champions party. The legendary New Year’s Day soirée now stretches from 4 am all the way until 9 pm as a gigantic Potrero Hill block party, and celebrates its 25th anniversary at Great Northern this Wednesday, January 1.
To jar our memory, SFist spoke with Breakfast of Champions organizers the Space Cowboys about the quarter-century history of what is now SF’s longest-running New Year’s Day blowout. Breakfast of Champions has become the go-to rendezvous spot for some 10,000 sleep-deprived New Year’s ravers who refuse to face reality and just go home. But as its crowd has grown (and aged), many of the “champions” who attend will eschew the overpriced, amateur-hour, puke-and-cry fest that New Year’s Eve has become, and simply get a good night’s sleep and arrive at Breakfast of Champions showered and fresh to ring in the new year with friends.
“Since there were already so many New Year’s Eve parties happening, it was also a great way for groups of friends who might’ve gone in different directions the night before to re-group and catch up on the other side,” says DJ 8Ball, aka Josh Williams, who’s been spinning at Breakfast of Champions since its inception.
Space Cowboys is a San Francisco DJ collective (and now a full-fledged nonprofit) that grew out of their large-scale Burning Man dance camp. Their earliest New Year’s parties were not on New Year’s Day and were not called ‘Breakfast of Champions’. From 1997-2000, the Cowboys spun at the San Francisco Motorcycle Club New Year’s Eve Party, a standard NYE affair that went from 10 pm - 2 am.
But those parties did not have what we now know as that special Breakfast of Champions magic; that magic that comes from a combination of DJs and performers unwinding after New Year’s Eve gigs, and fourth-pill stragglers who just would not accept that the party might be over.
“Starting a party at 6 am New Year’s Day made sure it was only for the hardcore,” says longtime Space Cowboy DJ Sol. And at the very first Breakfast of Champions in 2001, maybe 100 people showed up.
2001: The First Breakfast of Champions (Pier 23)
That very first Breakfast of Champions was at the Pier 23 Cafe on New Year’s Day in 2001, during the first hours of the 21st Century. The name ‘Breakfast of Champions’ was not applied until just before the event.
“I was working on the flyers and the party didn’t have a name,” 8Ball told us for our 15th anniversary Breakfast of Champions article. “I just came up with ‘Breakfast of Champions’ because it sounded good. I was working on an MFA in writing at the time, so I probably was thinking about Vonnegut or something. It seemed like the appropriate name for an afterparty that was really kind of an endurance race.”
To this day, there is still an angry 1-star Breakfast of Champions review on Yelp from an out-of-towner furious that breakfast was not in fact served at something called Breakfast of Champions. Though we will note that there are now a couple food trucks at the block party outside Great Northern, and the cocktail stands might throw a nutritious vegetable or two on your Bloody Mary.
2002 - 2009: Breakfast of Champions Starts to Draw Thousands (Potrero Brewing Co. / Whisper)
In its second year, the party moved to the now-defunct Potrero Brewing Company, largely just because the Pier 23 bartender who scored the previous year’s venue now worked at Potrero Brewing Company. That venue had no idea what they were in for.
“From what I remember, we had completely sold the bar out both upstairs and downstairs,” Chip "DJ Mancub" Corwin tells SFist, remembering that bar employees kept getting sent on liquor store runs just to keep up with demand.
The Potrero Brewing Company went out of business, but Breakfast of Champions was still held at that Florida Street location when the venue became Whisper. Word of mouth was raving about this rave party, but Whisper also closed down, and Breakfast of Champions needed another new home.
2010: Shit Hits the Fan (Kelly’s Mission Rock)
What we now call ‘the Great Recession’ evolved into what we now call ‘the tech boom’ in the late 2000s. The emergence of Facebook, Twitter, and “app” startups for these newly emergent smartphones blessed many a New Year’s partyer with newfound wealth, and US unemployment was declining for the first time in three years. This meant scores more partiers at Breakfast of Champions, which very much overwhelmed the new 2010 venue, Kelly’s Mission Rock.
“I loved that spot. It brought us back to that nice view of the Bay that we had the first time,” 8Ball remembers. “But unfortunately, Kelly’s, as beautiful as the spot was, was too small. We destroyed their sewage line.”
Yes, there were so many partyers were on hand that raw sewage was flowing out of Kelly’s Mission Rock and onto Terry Francois Boulevard. Simultaneously, there were still people standing in line two hours deep on Terry Francois Boulevard, completely undeterred by the unpleasantness. ”They had to get somebody from the Sanitation Department down there on New Year’s Day, in the middle of the day, to see what we’d broke,” 8Ball laughs.
Kelly’s Mission Rock is now thoroughly refurbished as Mission Rock Resort. But the Space Cowboys realized their event had outgrown any single confined venue, and that porta-potties would have to bolster any new venue's bathroom capacity.
2011: Breakfast of Champions Becomes a Full-Fledged Block Party (Mighty)
Breakfast of Champions organizers were now on their tenth iteration of the party, and had learned a few logistical lessons. And they had the knowledge base to build a massive block party operation that to host nearly 5,000 morning-after revelers at Mighty, and on its surrounding streets of Potrero Hill.
“Having outdoor space has been super important to the party from the beginning,” 8Ball says. “When we first were at Mighty, we didn’t even have an outdoor stage, just the gated smokers area by the door. But of course that’s where people would congregate—from there, closing the street and bringing an outdoor stage was a natural evolution.”
2012 - The Party Becomes a Benefit for the SF-Marin Food Bank
It was 2012 when the Space Cowboys came up with the idea, in keeping with the theme of "breakfast", to offer discounted entry to any attendees who brought a box of cereal or other non-perishable food item to donate to the SF-Marin Food Bank. That inaugural food drive collected 100 pounds of food, though most people coming off parties brough cash rather than food, and the first year raised $5000 for the food bank.
“Over the last 13 years, our attendees' donations plus matching [donations] from the Space Cowboys, venue hosts, and partners have sent $240,000 to the SF-Marin Food Bank,” says original food drive organizer DJ sh00ey (the food drive is now organized by Cat Cabalo). “With their purchasing power, they are able to provide two meals for every dollar donated, which comes out to over 475,000 meals of champions to our local community in need.”
Breakfast of Champions expects to pass the half-million meal mark at Wednesday morning’s festivities. You can help them hit that goal by donating to their friendly volunteers you’ll see upon entry, and you can also donate via Venmo, cash or direct donation at the Space Cowboys’ SF-Marin fundraising page:
Monetary donations are preferred, but the Cowboys also welcome non-perishable food items that are not in glass containers.
2016 - 2018: Back to the Bayfront (Midway)
Breakfast of Champions moved several times, sometimes because of restrictions with venues, or in this case, because Mighty was sold. But in 2016, it went back to having bay views as it did in its first year at Pier 23 Cafe, moving to the Pier 80 venue of the Midway. By this time, upwards around 10,000 people were showing up for Breakfast of Champions over the course of the day.
But other venues were noticing the draw of a New Year’s Day party, and were starting their own.
“The Great Northern started up their own New Year’s Day event, called It’s a New Day,” 8Ball explains. “Kinda like kids of divorced parents, for a while, the community would split New Year’s Day between It’s a New Day and Breakfast of Champions.”
2019 - Present: The Party Becomes ‘Its New Day + Breakfast of Champions’ (Great Northern)
When Mighty closed, it soon became Great Northern under new ownership. Great Northern was hosting It’s a New Day, and the two simultaneous New Year’s Day parties decided to merge, to create more stages and entertainment than they’d ever had before.
"When a path to bring Breakfast of Champions back to Utah Street emerged, combining with It’s a New Day seemed like a great way to both keep the events running strong but also build something new,” 8Ball tells us.
In the past, the party’s managed to bring in heavy hitters like Rob Garza of Thievery Corporation, and this year’s bill includes legends like Mark Farina, Danny Tenaglia, and Doc Martin.
The operations to accommodate 10,000 guests, and all of these stages and performers, is why your Breakfast of Champions tickets would cost about $100 if you bought it today.
“When the party started, $5 tickets were easy,” 8Ball explains. “Once we started closing off streets and adding stages, though, that’s when things started to change. Permits have to be filed, vendors for sound, lighting, tent and stage infrastructure, porta potties, and more all have to be secured.”
“There’s so much that goes into planning for BoC now that the process starts as early as May, sometimes sooner,” he adds.
Yet Breakfast of Champions remains more or a “family reunion”-type event with friends you just don’t see anymore. And any big, fancy headline DJs are secondary to the scenes of the dance floors and the reconnections with distant buddies.
“Breakfast of Champions, in all of its iterations of different venues, weather, headliners, attendees, and lineups,” says sh00ey, “the one thing that has remained consistent over the last 24 years: the positive energy of seeing and being together with our dance community at the start of the new year is always invigorating and brings people back year after year.”
Breakfast of Champions is Wednesday, January 1, 4 am - 9pm at Great Northern (119 Utah Street at 15th Street) Tickets Here
Related: The 20-Year History Of Local DJ Collective The Space Cowboys [SFist]
Image: Space Cowboys via Facebook
