Maybe as much as Nancy Pelosi thrives on the games of party politics, she also loved being on the floor for Lady Gaga’s Mayhem Ball concert at Chase Center in San Francisco Sunday night, where she danced through the “entire” two-hour show and later gushed about the singer’s music-and-dance spectacle on social media.
The former House speaker was seen arriving at her floor seats Sunday night in a video shared on X by the celebrity news outlet Pop Crave. Another clip showed Pelosi, dressed in a yellow jacket, dancing to Gaga’s “Abracadabra.” Pelosi reposted the clip on her own X account, writing: “It was a fabulous show in San Francisco! The most fun I’ve had in a long time.”
San Francisco’s longtime representative in Congress was clearly back home after House Speaker Mike Johnson shut down the chamber for the summer to block Democrats like Pelosi from calling for the release of files related to sex trafficking financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at the monthly Community Volunteer Workday event at the National AIDS Memorial Grove in San Francisco on Saturday, June 17, 2023. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
That political drama seemed to be the farthest thing from Pelosi’s mind Sunday. Another person in the floor seats revealed that she sat directly behind the Democratic power-broker, who was accompanied by her husband Paul Pelosi. That person also enjoyed posing for a selfie with Pelosi and writing: “Lady Gaga did not disappoint! Awesome show! Fun crowd… I sat directly behind Nancy Pelosi who danced the entire show.”
It was indeed a pretty incredible show, as this writer noted in a review of Gaga’s performance on July 22. It was “joyous, freaky, gothic, glorious, theatrical and even operatic,” with the singer returning to her roots as a dance-pop mega-star and creating music that people want to “Just Dance” to with joy, bravado and abandon.
During the show, Gaga performed some of her fans’ favorites — “Poker Face,” “Paparazzi,” “Love Game,” and, of course, “Bad Romance” — mixed in with new hits from “Mayhem,” her seventh studio album. The show also featured one high-energy dance number after another — “”Just Dance,” “Summerboy,” “Applause” and more. According to the witness, the 85-year-old Pelosi kept moving the entire show.
As the Daily Beast reported, Pelosi is a well-documented Gaga fan. Among other things, she visited Radio City Music Hall in 2021 to see the singer’s joint concert with the late Tony Bennett. Near the end of her show, Gaga took some time to pay tribute to Bennett, her great friend and collaborator, who made his love of San Francisco known through his signature song, “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.”
While sitting alone at the piano to belt out a solo version of “Die With a Smile,” the soft-rock ballad she recorded with Bruno Mars, Gaga also thanked the people of San Francisco for the “dignity” they showed her when she first performed at clubs in the Bay Area as a 19-year-old.
“I was touring clubs all over the world, and, you know, some places that I went, they just didn’t understand me, you know?” Gaga said. “They loved the songs, but they were like, ‘she’s interesting.’ But not here. I was accepted and I was embraced.”