“Now turn toward the water heater!” Joel Reske yells on a Sunday night inside a nondescript garage on a residential San Francisco street. About 50 people shuffle and spin on their toes in unison, tapping their heels and swinging their hips to his instructions. Reske walks through a routine one move at a time, stacks them together and then turns on Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” at .75 speed. Within about 10 minutes, he cranks the song up to full speed, and the people in the crowd at Lower Haight Line Dancing hop from foot to foot, circling around the room in a fully choreographed sequence.  

Every Sunday for nearly a year, Reske and his roommate, Sean Sullivan, have steered their cars out of their garage a few blocks away from the Panhandle, fired up a projector and speaker, dropped a sandwich board onto the sidewalk, and donned their hats and cowboy boots. Their three-car DIY dance floor, lit up by Christmas lights, is the venue of one of San Francisco’s biggest line dancing scenes, joining the company of local favorites like Westwood in the Marina and Stud Country at the Verdi Club. A consistent crowd of 50 joins each week — enough people to spill out onto the adjacent sidewalk — and their Instagram has climbed to over 1,000 followers. 

“It’s nice that it’s pretty close quarters. And then we’ve got the twinkly lights, and it feels like a really strong community,” Reske said. “That kind of density is nice.” 

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Reske and Sullivan hail from New England, not the South, and work in tech — their interest in line dancing started as a way to get away from their screens. Neither of them had any experience before they became some of San Francisco’s most popular line dancing instructors. But after an evening at Stud Country left them feeling out-danced, they found a projector and started casting YouTube video tutorials for their friends to learn with them. 

Friends Joel Reske, center left, and Sean Sullivan, right, lead line dancing at the Downtown Hoedown, a free Downtown First Thursdays event in San Francisco, on June 5, 2025.

Eulanna Allen poses for a portrait at the Downtown Hoedown in San Francisco, on June 5, 2025.

“We were just kind of looking over our shoulder and following along as best we could,” Sullivan said. But when........

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