You have to love a city that commemorates the removal of a hated eyesore with poetic words celebrating our collective joy. Walking out of the San Francisco Ferry Building this week, I discovered a sidewalk plaque commemorating the destruction — begun by the 1989 earthquake, finished by the mayor — of the hideous 1958 Embarcadero “freeway to nowhere.”
“The freeway that brooded over the Embarcadero with all the grace of a double decked prison wall is finally gone,”
SF Chronicle
columnist Carl Nolte wrote gleefully. “In its place is a sweep of air, fog, October sunlight, piers, ships, and the silver Bay Bridge, which is 55 years old and still looks modern.”
I was snapping a photo of the plaque when I noticed a man nearby grabbing a yellow traffic cone and making off with it. Wait a moment, I knew this guy — it was
the bike-riding Waymo Vigilante who had attacked our Waymo
driverless taxi in June, calling me “a disgrace to the human race” for riding in it. What was he up to now?
He strode across the plaza to a Waymo standing at the curb and placed the cone on its nose, angled like a unicorn’s horn. Unsure how to cope with this surprising development, the vehicle radioed headquarters and hunkered down to await further instructions. The Waymo Vigilante took a few victory laps around the plaza, admiring his handiwork, clearly thrilled that he’d won a battle in the war between humans and robots.
It was a short-lived victory.
In minutes, a worker arrived and removed the cone. The Waymo drove on, the Vigilante pedaled away glowing with self-righteousness, and the streetcar Rich and I had been waiting for came and whisked us off to the day’s activities: an afternoon in the city’s dive bars.
If you’re not familiar with the term, a “dive bar” is a well-worn, unpretentious local place that can be anything from a comfy, no-frills neighborhood pub to a seriously squalid gin joint. The name was born in the Prohibition era, when you had to dive down steps to cellars selling bootleg hooch. Today’s dive bars offer cheap drinks, funky décor, colorful characters, and often an easygoing
camaraderie
that creates a pleasant sense of community among random strangers.
I get a kick out of dive bars and have
spent years dilligently researching them all over the world on behalf of my readers
. (You’re welcome.) Very, very few have edible food, but I’d heard of one notable exception in San Francisco:
Tempest Bar and Box Kitchen
.
In the 1960s it was the writers’ hangout Page One
“just a short stumble away”
from the city’s main newsrooms. Through the years and various owners, the bar has quenched the thirst of reporters, printers, delivery drivers, bike messengers, and “general weirdos.”
After the current owners took over Tempest in 2010, a regular customer who was also a notable chef proposed adding modestly priced gourmet eats. Box Kitchen was soon dishing out such unlikely fare as mac and cheese egg rolls ($10) and potato skins with pork belly and quail eggs ($15).
Along with our short Modelo draft beers ($4), Rich and I ordered corn and clam chowder ($8) and elote riblets ($8), which turned out to be Mexican street corn slathered with miso butter, chives, and a Japanese spice-and-seaweed blend called
togarashi
. Not your average bar snacks!
A woman at a nearby table jumped up to hug a burly guy with his hair in turquoise cornrows, and they did a little impromptu dance. I called out something encouraging, and we exchanged grins. Soon I was over admiring her friend’s baby, which led to the kind of meandering, friendly chat that’s a hallmark of dive bar culture.
The food was spectacular and almost surreal, being served in the kind of place where ordinarily you’d be lucky to get a bag of peanuts. Sipping my chowder and studying the specials, I vowed never to try The Mind Eraser (vodka, Kahlua, and soda water, $11)(unless I already have and don’t remember it). I wondered idly if the Italian digestif, Fernet ($8), was anything like its Spanish counterpart,
orujo
.
“Let’s find out,” said Rich.
The first sip seared the inside of my mouth like liquid fire. If I’d been capable of vocalizing, I’d have howled.
“It grows on you,” gasped Rich. Incredibly, it did, and we finished every drop.
Our next destination was the legendary
Vesuvio Café
, where the Beat Generation gathered before City Lights opened across the alley. Eccentric artist Henri Lenoir launched it in 1948, filling it with art and drenching it with atmosphere.
“Stepping inside feels like walking into the bowels of a pirate ship adorned with decades of history and loving kitsch,” wrote
SFGate
editor Andrew Chamings. “The bohemians filled this place with surrealism, a sense of humor, whimsy and lightness, and I love them for it.” He declared it “
the best bar in America
.
”
Young Jack Kerouac found it so seductive he blew off a once-in-a-lifetime chance to meet world-famous author Henry Miller, who’d written to say he liked the younger writer’s work and could they meet up? En route to their rendezvous in Big Sur 150 miles south along the coast, Jack dropped into Vesuvio Café … and never made it out of San Francisco.
When I got to Vesuvio I found the atmosphere convivial and noisy. My nearest neighbor at the bar was a man with a paperback book and a shot of scotch at his elbow.
“Get much reading done in here?” I asked.
“Sometimes,” he said. “If I really want to concentrate, I go upstairs to my favorite table on the balcony.” Ice broken and his cred as a local established, we were soon exchanging names (his was Josh) and tidbits about our personal and professional lives. When I mentioned the dive bar pub crawl, he insisted I walk across the street to check out Specs’.
“Specs’ is the best dive bar in the city,” Josh said.
“Specs’ is not a dive bar,” said Shafagh. And he should know; he’s the bartender there.
Properly known as
Specs’ Twelve Adler Museum Café
, and eccentric even by San Francisco standards, this former speakeasy and historic lesbian bar was transformed into a left-wing, blue-collar union bar by Vesuvio-waiter-turned-construction-worker Richard “Specs” Simmons. The inside isn’t as downscale as your typical dive bar, but the dim lighting, quirky décor, and atmosphere of casual chumminess fit the profile.
Rich and I were soon chatting away with everyone. Shafagh showed me postcards sent by customers journeying in distant lands and gave me a copy of the card the bar uses to support women fending off unwanted advances.
I don’t know what time Rich and I stumbled outside into the afternoon sunlight and began weaving our way toward the Ferry Terminal. Along the way we continued the debate about whether Specs’ was a dive bar.
“It all comes down to price,” I said. “How much did we pay for those drinks?” I’d seen Rich hand over a credit card and wave away a receipt.
There was a long pause. “I have absolutely no idea.”
“I rest my case,” I said.
And then we were boarding the ferry, where we slept all the way home.
WHERE ARE THESE CLASSIC SF DIVE BARS?
South of Market
Tempest Bar and Box Kitchen
, 431 Natoma Street
North Beach
Vesuvio Café
, 255 Columbus Avenue
Specs’ Twelve Adler Museum Café
,
12 William Saroyan Place
And There Are Countless More
Google “dive bars in SF” and have fun exploring the city’s oddball drinking establishments.
I’M ON THE ROAD – NO POSTS FOR TWO WEEKS
We’re going to a wedding plus lots of side trips to visit family and friends. I’ll post again as soon as I’m back.
This post is part of my ongoing series
OUT TO LUNCH IN
CHEAP & CHEERFUL SAN FRANCISCO
My goal is to discover some of San Francisco’s most colorful neighborhoods so I can check out what’s really going on in this zany town. Are we in a doom loop? Already on the rebound? Still fabulous? And where should we eat afterwards? These and other questions will be explored in upcoming posts.
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