San Francisco: Bars
Since its lawless, boomtown days, San Francisco has been a drinking town. Even as the rest of California cleans up its act, San Franciscans continue to indulge; the city's bars vary from seedy late-night dives to rooftop piano lounges touting glittering views.Backflip Phoenix Hotel , 601 Eddy St, Tenderloin tel 415/771-3547. Fantastically retro bar adjacent to the hotel's pool patio. Black-vinyl-clad waitstaff, entirely blue decor and a menagerie of bizarre and lively patrons. To write home about.
Brainwash 1122 Folsom St, SoMa tel 415/861-FOOD. Great idea - café/bar and laundromat where you can have breakfast and beer while you do your washing. Popular with the young and novelty-conscious.
Edinburgh Castle 950 Geary St, Tenderloin tel 415/885-4074. The best place in the city for British-style pints, fish and chips (still wrapped in newspaper) and a game of darts. The bar was prominently featured in the cult film, So I Married an Axe-Murderer .
Gordon Biersch Brewery 2 Harrison St, Embarcadero tel 415/243-8246. Bayfront microbrewery in a converted coffee warehouse. Great selection of beers pulls in a downtown twenty-something crowd.
Harry Denton's Starlight Room top floor, Sir Francis Drake Hotel , 450 Powell St, downtown tel 415/395-8595. Join the dressed-up, grown-up, moneyed crowd and drink martinis to live-jazz accompaniment.
Occidental Grill 56 Belden Place, downtown tel 415/834-0484. Re-opened in a new location due to a fire, this Barbary Coast-style den is supposedly the birthplace of the martini, though that's open to more than some debate. However, they certainly do make a mean one. Their second business, the Occidental Cigar Club, is around the corner at 471 Pine St.
Red Room 827 Sutter St, Tenderloin tel 415/346-7666. Like the name implies, everything - including the walls, the furniture, the glasses and many of the drinks - is red in this popular faux-dive.
The Tonga Room basement of the Fairmont , 950 Mason St, Nob Hill tel 415/772-5278. A must for fans of the ludicrous or just the very drunk. It's decked out like a Polynesian village, complete with a pond and simulated rainstorms, and a grass-skirted band plays terrible jazz and pop covers from a raft in the middle of the water. Cover $3 after 8pm, outrageously priced cocktails, but worth every cent.
Tosca Café 242 Columbus St, North Beach tel 415/391-1244. A beautiful old bar with tiled floors, bow-tied bartenders and opera as the soundtrack. Come early as the bass from the nightclub upstairs can be bothersome.
The Up & Down Club 1151 Folsom St, SoMa tel 415/626-2388. This small, popular split-level club-cum-bar has earned a solid reputation for first-rate drinks and live music.
Vesuvio's 255 Columbus St, North Beach tel 415/362-3370. Legendary Beat haunt in the 1950s, next to City Lights Bookstore. Still draws an arty, friendly crowd who prop up the bar into the small hours.
Zeitgeist 199 Valencia, the Mission tel 415/255-7505. A biker bar largely populated with nonmotorized bicycle messengers. A large patio makes it a haven for smokers.
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