“The community is driving this restoration into reality. As a local musician and longtime Haight resident, it’s an incredible honor to do something this important to so many, to bring it back to daily life.” — Christian Beaulieu, co-owner, The Deluxe.
[Excerpted from Christian’s hang at Haight Street Voice Radio, September 2025]
Haight Street Voice: Christian Beaulieu. Welcome!
Christian Beaulieu: Thank you for having me! It’s an honor to be on your program, it’s an honor to be in this building, and to be part of this community. It’s insane.
I had worked at The Deluxe before and saw firsthand the positive aspect of it being the breathing thing that it was, and then had to go through the crushing defeat of all of that. Then I had to bartend around town and hear people still talking about it years later. I thought, “Wow, this is not just a hole in the Haight-Ashbury, it’s a hole in the heart of the City.”
HSV: Is the music going to be pretty much jazz mostly, or are you going to broaden it out?
CB: The history of the room is … it’s an iconic room. We’re definitely going to honor the swing era, jazz, blues. But yeah, we definitely want to add to it. The calendar is going to feel familiar, but we’re also in the Haight-Ashbury and there’s a lot of pull, a lot of artistic desire, that the room has never addressed yet. I’m friends with a large amount of the old guard of musicians and they’re another reason that this is even happening in the first place.
Shoutout to any musicians who have the Deluxe in their heart over the years and built the place altogether, thank you! Because without you, it wouldn’t be iconic. It’s the music that brought the people together.
HSV: You’re a musician. You said that guitar case over there has a sticker on it that’s your band?
CB: Yeah! That was fun: you walk into a historic building in the Haight-Ashbury that you’ve never been in and the first thing you see is your band sticker on a guitar case! That was psychedelic! That was a head spinner! The band was Triclops, an active band from 2006 to around 2010. Very loud, crazy, psychedelic punk rock, prog-rock hybrid.
HSV: No Means No kind of stuff? Or Jesus Lizard?
CB: We played with both those bands!
HSV: Do you have an idea when The Deluxe might open?
CB: I’ve been saying that it’s either a Christmas miracle or a New Year’s resolution.
HSV: What would you like to say to the Haight community and communities all over the world?
CB: To the Haight-Ashbury: I love you. I’ve been lucky to be a part of this community since I got here in the ‘90s and literally the very first place I opened my eyes to in the Haight-Ashbury was the building that I’m living in now. I saw the skyline. I walked to get a burger at Martin Mack’s. To the community (hand over heart) on a personal level, thank you for helping me create myself as an artist and giving me an open mind and influencing me with — to borrow your phrase — a global perspective. And to the community itself: Thank you for helping us open The Deluxe. For the smallest club, it takes an entire village. To have all of the love and all of the support and all of the energy in our corner … it’s mind-blowing.
