San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
North Beach bartender earned respect
The Saloon in San Francisco can get so raucous that Cathy Lemons, singer for the Lucky Losers, would start her set by announcing, “We’ve got JoAnne behind the bar.”
That was the signal for the crowd to take note of who was in charge of the old, wooden blues club in North Beach, no matter how rowdy it got.
JoAnne DeSantis took pride in that. “I have seen her tougher than tough with people,” Lemons said. “Joanne could terrify an unruly drunk. She could terrify him right out the door.”
But you don’t last 32 years behind the plank on fear alone. DeSantis was hired help, and she was warm and friendly — right until the moment she needed to be cold and stern. DeSantis worked Wednesday and Thursday nights and Saturday afternoons as the lone bartender, with only a barback to wash the glasses and keep the bottles stocked. Her arrival was usually a spectacle because she brought with her a display case of jewelry she made from sterling silver. She’d set it up at the end of the bar and sell earrings, bracelets and necklaces — at half price for musicians.
DeSantis always wore a black apron and never missed a shift, even when her knees went bad from all the standing. But just before the pandemic lockdown, Lemons came in for her regular Saturday set fronting the Dave Workman Band, and DeSantis was not there. Lemons asked bar owner Myron Mu afterward and was told that DeSantis was in the hospital with a heart condition.
Lemons was hopeful, but when the Saloon finally reopened on June 19, DeSantis was still not there. She had died a day earlier at a hospice in Daly City. The cause of death has not been released by the coroner, but DeSantis suffered from congestive heart failure, said her niece Erin Mshar. She was 78.
“She was always looking out for the bands,” Lemons said. “That’s why we loved her.”
JoAnne DeSantis was born Dec. 1, 1942, in Youngstown, Ohio, where she grew up. Her mother’s family owned a bar and an Italian restaurant. Long after she’d moved to San Francisco, she would come home to Youngstown for Christmas and always make a big Italian dinner of spaghetti and meatballs.
After graduating from Ursuline High School in 1960, she attended Youngstown State University but left to attend Lewis Weinberger and Hill School of Cosmetology. She then moved to Boston and worked as a hairdresser before moving to San Francisco in 1970. She found work dressing hair, and on a trip to Barra de Navidad, Mexico, she learned to make jewelry out of sterling silver. She became a vendor working the art fair circuit.
She was bartending at the Lost and Found, a neighborhood bar on Grant Avenue, when Mu hired her on Halloween in 1987. That immediately advanced her to the loud giveandtake of a live music joint with no cover charge most nights and cashonly bar. Capacity is 49, and they are often packed wall to wall.
When the band would take a break, DeSantis would come around from behind the bar and go onstage to take the microphone and instruct the customers, often European blues tourists, how a bar economy worked.
“She’d hold up the tip jar and say, ‘The drinks are cheap and strong, but you have to tip the band so we can keep the drinks cheap and strong,’ ” Lemons said. Among those who tipped was photographer Scott Palmer, who spent 17 years on the customer side of the bar while documenting the scene for his monograph “Saloonatics,” published in 2010.
It was touchy getting cooperation of people who don’t necessarily want their image associated with a blues bar. But when he asked permission of DeSantis, she said, “Sure, whatever,” he said. “We were friends after that.”
DeSantis is one of 13 people photographed at the Saloon by Palmer who are now deceased, perhaps an indicator of the hard living inside an old wooden blues bar.
“The thing I always enjoyed about the Saloon is it was more like a clubhouse than a
bar,” Palmer said. As evidence, DeSantis would host Thanksgiving dinner at her apartment on Telegraph Hill. All of the club members were invited, which meant anybody who didn’t have family to visit instead. It was potluck, but DeSantis cooked the turkey for 20 or 30 guests pressed into a onebedroom unit. At 8:30 p.m., they’d all walk down the hill to the Saloon, which opened at 8:30 p.m. with DeSantis behind the bar.
“She was like the Saloon host,” Lemons said. “If there was a special occasion she’d always bring a cake, and she’d cut it and hand out the slices on paper plates.”
On Saturday, July 31, a memorial will be held at the Saloon from 4 to 8 p.m., her usual shift behind the bar. Lemons will front the Lucky Losers band, with others sitting in.
“It will be lonely for me because JoAnne was a great friend,” Lemons said. “You didn’t break the rules with her. If you did, she’d yell, ‘You’re out of here buddy,’ with a thundering voice that could scare you to death.”
DeSantis is survived by nieces Krista Craft,
Erin Mshar and Anna Mshar of Youngstown, Ohio, and the Saloonatics at the corner of Grant Avenue and Fresno Street in North Beach.