Pirate Cat Cafe and Studio is open 7 Days a week from 7am to 11pm.
Serving up organic fair trade drip coffee and espresso, vegan donuts (from People’s Donuts) and more.

Pirate Cat Radio Cafe is located at:
2781 21st Street
San Francisco, CA 94110

Yelp about Pirate Cat Radio Cafe

Write Up—
Pirate Cat Radio broadcasts in San Francisco on the dial at 87.9FM at the corner of 21st and Florida Streets. It also streams via the Internet (piratecatradio.com) to a pirate station in Los Angeles and one in Berlin. So you could say he’s got a worldwide empire. Or you could say that Pirate Cat Radio just opened up a quaint café in the Mission, and Monkey, along with about 30-plus DJs, is ready to take on the airwaves in a whole new way.
For one thing, PCR is broadcasting in the open, which is usually not the case for pirate radio. The café itself is in a corner storefront, with windows revealing the radio studio, which is spacious and visible from the street.

Pirate radio is typically an illegal, mostly underground operation, due to the fact that those involved are essentially hijacking the airwaves with their own transmitters without the permission or regulation of the FCC.

Pirate radio stations always face the challenge of being raided by the FCC, their equipment confiscated, and the individuals involved often face criminal charges or hefty fines. However, Monkey has found a loophole in the law that he believes gives him the ability to broadcast in the open.

According to U.S. Code of Federal Regulations title 47 section 73.3542, an application for a radio transmitter may be granted as an “emergency operation to serve the public interest. Such situations include: a national emergency proclaimed by the President or the Congress of the USA and; the continuance of any war in which the United States is engaged.”

Monkey—he nonetheless would not give his full real name—says this gives him the go ahead: “The loose liberal reading of it is that if the President declares war then it is our civic duty to keep up communications with each other.”

Monkey went so far as to fill out an informal application, of which there are only very loose guidelines, and he sent the FCC a check for $100, an amount he decided himself. The FCC cashed it, but still hasn’t responded to his application, “So I have this cashed check, and I actually applied for the permit, and they took my money. On top of that I applied for a full-on commercial FM license in San Francisco and never heard back from them about that. I never got denied from either of them. The applications are still in limbo,” said Monkey.

So far, his approach is working. Monkey filed five years ago, and he hasn’t been raided. The new location, which has been up and running now since March 1, couldn’t be more obviously a radio station, and the DJs proudly spout off the location on the air telling people to “come on down.”

The café itself has tables and chairs inside, and they offer coffee, pastries, T-shirts and stickers behind the counter. Monkey hasn’t yet gotten his deli license so they offer these items with a suggested donation. But Monkey said he hopes to get the deli license eventually.

The idea behind the café is to raise money for the station and to be a community meeting place and venue for art and music.

DJ Shelley Weil, who hosts a show called the Weil Hours said, “We’ve had a ton of locations, mostly shoved in the back of a closet somewhere, above an auto body shop, in the basement of a residency hotel in the Tenderloin, out in Hunters Point. This is the most incredible location. It’s really about creating a space for the community and making it accessible and really varying it up as far as multimedia, arts, music and film screenings. And people have started making their shows more interactive, something that people can come to and watch.”

Write up by: Maria DeLorenzo, May 29, 2008