SF Weekly was founded locally in the late 1970s by Christopher Hildreth and Edward Bachman and originally named San Francisco Music Calendar, the Magazine or Poster Art.

[10] In December 2020, Clint Reilly Communications bought SF Weekly together with the Examiner.

[1][11] The annual SF Weekly Music Awards were based on a popular vote for nominees[12] and were announced in October at the Warfield Theatre.

[13][14] SF Weekly was the subject of ethical controversy in January 2006, when a column about the AVN Awards misidentified the event's location and honorees.

[15][16] In July 2015, after Matt Saincome wrote Counting Cards at Graton Casino,[17] the casino notified SF Weekly of its intention to pull tens of thousands of dollars in ad buys; the publisher of SF Weekly, Glenn Zuehls, reportedly demanded that SF Weekly staff remedy the advertiser with a favorable cover story, by directly assigning the story to a reporter.