Best Place to See Live Music

The mother lode of all San Francisco music venues is none other than the Great American Music Hall, which was a bordello in a previous life. You can tell bands truly love to play here — it has a reputation for treating musicians well and actually feeding them. With its gilded mirrors, ornate cornices, and a pre-show "dinner" available to showgoers — wild mushroom and goat cheese tamale, anyone? — this joint is not only the best venue in a city overflowing with great venues, it's also one of the best places to see live music in the entire country. The place holds 600 people, which, by our reckoning, satisfies the Goldilocks Standard: not too big, not too small, but just right. Oh, and the sound is pretty lush, too.