Surprise, surprise: Dreamforce nightlife is awful

For San Francisco locals, it’s finally over. Dreamforce, Salesforce’s annual customer conference, has come to an end, leaving downtown streets clear of both blue lanyard-wearing tech attendees and traffic jams (or at least worse traffic than usual).

The giant three-day party draws around 40,000 Salesforce customers from all corners of the world to Moscone Center and surrounding streets. Depending on whom you ask, it’s either an eyesore or heaven. But either way, it’s a star-studded spectacle, with a stretch of Howard Street closed to make space for faux waterfalls and exclusive catering. Between events showcasing the utility of new AI-powered software and discussions of artificial intelligence’s potential doom, Dreamforce’s stages featured not just CEOs of Bay Area tech giants but also Hollywood A-listers, Grammy Award-winning artists and even Bill Nye, the Science Guy.

This event means a lot to people. For San Francisco, a city that has lost tech conferences to other cities over the past few years, Dreamforce is like the Super Bowl or a World Cup match. Salesforce says the conference injects an annual $130 million into the city’s economy. And the injection continues into the evening as the event makes an overwhelming effort to make its customers feel like royalty in CEO Marc Benioff’s kingdom with a big-time lineup and extravagant after-parties. I mean, how else do you make B2B SaaS (business-to-business software as a service) cool, let alone fun?

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The short answer? Exclusivity, big names and lots of booze.

I spent two days scouring the Dreamforce nightlife. My limited social capital in the tech world as a relatively new tech journalist was pretty obvious: I requested tickets to around seven private events and received only three invitations.

Not all events are sponsored by Salesforce, so it’d be an unfair comparison to lump them together. For example, a Tuesday night after-party for founders and revenue officers, hosted by an AI startup at swanky billiards club The Hall SF, appeared to have more locals smacking cue balls than founders talking seed funding. To see if the emptiness could be attributed to it just being early in the week, I paid a visit to one of my favorite dive bars, Bender’s Bar and Grill, just a few blocks down the street. There, the neighborhood post-work after-party was on full display. Drinks were flowing, music was blaring, and cigarettes were burning. From my point of view, it being only Tuesday night had nothing to do with the first event’s lackluster attendance.

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That much was obvious when I went to The Grand Nightclub in SoMa that same night for the Salesforce Ben After Party. The event isn’t sponsored by Salesforce, but it’s adjacent. Salesforce Ben is an independent media site that covers the “Salesforce ecosystem.” Its founder, Ben McCarthy, also performs as a DJ.

The nightclub was packed for it being only around 9 p.m. Not everyone came out to dance, a theme I found at music-based Dreamforce events as the week progressed. Out of what seemed to be more than 100 attendees in the two-floor club, fewer than a dozen were doing more than just bopping their heads and clutching their drinks on the dance floor.

Drinks were not free for the masses. A gin and tonic was $16 and change. Yet that didn’t seem to deter the attendees looking to blow off steam after the first day of Dreamforce, as the bars were kept bustling with orders. A few club staffers occasionally walked around the balconies with small bites, which included shrimp tempura and mini stuffed baked potatoes. A small corner of the upstairs balconies was taped off for VIP guests, but it didn’t appear different from the commoners’ side that I checked out, except for a private bar vending ice buckets and some more standing room.

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The next night, however, Salesforce really tried to make everyone feel like VIPs. The company’s annual Dreamfest charity concert, with headliners Gwen Stefani and Usher, took over Oracle Park. It was a weird fever dream for me, as someone who lives in San Francisco and loves a Giants game. But this was wildly different. Vending booths pushed unlimited ballpark food and full pints of beer and glasses of wine to wash it down — all for free.

It felt like that would be enough to make just about anyone dance out on the concert floor covering the baseball green, but it wasn’t. As Gwen Stefani danced the catwalk, belting some classics like “Hollaback Girl” and “Rich Girl,” the crowd struggled to match the energy. Dreamforce’s signature dance move this year appeared to be the two-foot planted sway. It didn’t seem to be Stefani’s fault, as she tried multiple times to hype up the room, emphatically calling the crowd “outrageous.” But it seems the best truth she could muster was a pitiful compliment: that it was one of the “top Dreamfests” she’s played.

When Usher came on later, making his way from the crowd floor to the stage with his hit “Yeah,” hardly anyone shouted the “yeah” back to him.

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I can’t tell for sure if that dead crowd can define the night for everyone; after all, I wasn’t let onto the concert floor. Security stopped letting people down there by at least 7 p.m., despite what appeared to be tons of wide-open space, marked by large areas of visible white dance floor across the baseball field.

Several individuals got into heated spats with security when they were told off. Some attendees, appearing to be Salesforce employees, tried to plead with the gate guards for entrance by showing the company badge, which I recognized from prior visits to the downtown office. The real party seemed to be up in the stadium’s stands, from small pockets of friends just dancing with each other to some event workers getting their groove on when drink lines subsided.

In the middle of Usher’s set, I went to give another private after-party a chance, this time at the Hawthorne in downtown near Market Street. It was another event featuring Salesforce Ben. The party was pretty empty, which I chalked up to the fact that most folks were probably still swaying to Usher. The two-room club had fewer than two dozen people scattered around just the main lounge area. When I cashed in my ticket for one free drink with the bartender, I asked about how the week had been going so far. He said that night seemed to be more chill, but Tuesday was slammed with around 800 flowing through the underground club over the course of the night. I couldn't help but ask how the crowd was.

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“They were f—king assholes,” he replied.

Dreamforce itself tries to maximize exclusivity. It’s a good marketing strategy for a software company that’s had to fight off fears of an AI-powered obsolescence this past year, by making all 150,000 customers feel like they’re part of a select club. Some companies attempt to do the same but at a smaller scale. To future Dreamforce attendees, however, fun is not guaranteed by a private stadium concert, your name on a nightclub clipboard or a limited Apple Wallet QR ticket. Go explore San Francisco. Hit the local dive bars and grab some signature San Francisco bites.

Just remember to take off your lanyard, tip your bartender and, most importantly, don’t be an asshole.

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Work at a Bay Area tech company and want to talk? Contact tech reporter Matthew Brown securely at matthew.brown@sfgate.com or matthewbrownsfgate.11 on Signal.