16th and Mission Thursday Night, more commonly known as 16th & Mission or simply "The Corner", is a weekly underground poetry and music performance event, that takes place in the late evening to midnight, at the street corner outside the entrance to the 16th Street and Mission BART Station in San Francisco. 16th and Mission Thursday Night was conceived by a group of local poets, musicians and New College of California students known as the Collaborative Arts Insurgency (CAI) in July 2003 as the "open mic without the mic."
In lieu of an actual stage, a chalk circle is drawn on the sidewalk around which the audience sits. Performers take turns "jumping in The Circle." Unlike open mics and traditional performance venues, there are no set lists or sign up sheets so artists take the "stage" whenever they feel the inspiration to do so. If more than one performer jumps into The Circle at the same time, they sometimes determine who will go next by playing rock, paper, scissors but priority is usually given to first-timers.
The ongoing event gained international notoriety as an artistic spawning ground in literary magazines such as Evergreen Review for many acclaimed Bay Area poets, musicians, and independent press publishers some of whom include beatbox-flautist Greg Patillo and author Alan Kaufman. The 16th & Mission Review is a quarterly literary anthology published by Seven7h Tangent Press which has featured poems and short stories by such notable and award-winning writers and slam poets as Neeli Cherkovski, Ruth Weiss, Ed Bowers, Sam Sax and Sharon Doubiago. The Corner was featured in the independent film documentaries The Living Poets, Sweet Onion Salad, and Rock, Paper, Scissors. 16th & Mission journalists, bloggers, performers and artists participated as lecturers and facilitators in the inaugural Free University of San Francisco teach-ins held on February 6–8, 2011.
The event is held at 10:00 p.m. every Thursday at the 16th St. BART Station.