Mission saloon, like the city, adapts amid constant change
and gentlemen, let us drink to history. Let us toast San Francisco as a drinking town, and let us celebrate the life and times of one of the city’s oldest saloons.
That would be the Elixir, an establishment at 16th and Guerrero streets in the heart of the Mission, the oldest neighborhood in San Francisco. The Elixir first opened its doors — under another name — in 1858, which makes it the second-oldest bar in San Francisco, after the Old Ship on Pacific Avenue, which dates to 1851.
The Elixir got a taste of recognition this weekend, when the Ancient and Honorable Order of E Clampus Vitus, the drinking man’s historical society, dedicated a bronze plaque noting its history and its role as “a centerpiece of the neighborhood.”
San Francisco was only two years removed from its vigilante days when Francis Daneal opened a barroom at what was the end of Mission Plank Road. The countryside around the crumbling Spanish-era Mission Dolores, just up the street, was mostly pasture.
Nothing is surer in San Francisco than change, and the Elixir has changed with the city. It’s been a Wild West bar, an Irish working-man’s place, a sailor bar, a shot-and-a-beer joint, a gay Latino hangout, a dingy dive, a beer bar with 63 brews on tap, and now it’s a cocktail saloon, light and airy inside with dark walls polished to a Victorianera shine.
The specialty of the house is elaborate cocktails, and there are 23 complicated concoctions on the drink menu. They range from a Friar Serra Flip (genever, sherry, Cointreau, bitters, a whole egg, cinnamon with an orange flip) to the classics such as Singapore Sling, New York Sour and Pisco Punch.
In fact, H. Joseph Ehrmann, the 11th and current proprietor of the Elixir, was at the vanguard of the liquid revolution of a couple of years ago that transformed your uncle’s old neighborhood bar into a haven for the young and hip.
Ehrmann — everybody calls him “H” — believes the young like a touch of the old classics, and has the awards to prove it. The Elixir has been listed among the best bars in America by Esquire magazine and the 25 best cocktail bars in America by GQ magazine. GQ picked the Elixir’s bloody as one of the 20 best cocktails in America, and in 2010 H himself was voted bartender of the year by Nightclub and Bar magazine.
“I knew it wasn’t because I was ‘the best bartender in America,’ ” he once wrote, “but I was quite possibly ‘the best marketed bartender in America.’ ”
That’s H for you. He has a bachelor’s degree in English and an MBA. He worked in Silicon Valley, but on the side as a bartender and a cook. He knows the business. He’s drawn to it. He likes the people-oriented aspect of running a neigh borhood establishment and the fun of the job.
“I knew nothing better,” he wrote once, “and I enjoy nothing more.”
But because we’re toasting history, you get a history lesson. After its humble beginnings and as the neighborhood changed, the bar changed with it. It was owned by a century’s worth of Irishmen, most notably Patrick McGinnis, Esq., who was a barkeep and a lawyer. At one point it sported a bootblack stand and a cigar counter.
It all went up in smoke in the fire that followed the 1906 earthquake. McGinnis rebuilt the bar on the ground floor of a three-story apartment building. During Prohibition, the place stayed open as a “soft drink parlor.” It began selling drinks legally again in 1933.
The establishment had various names. It was the Hunt-In Club from 1945 to 1965. By the 1980s, it was Swede’s, where one saloon history noted “the layers of cigarette smoke have colored the front window to the point where it is no longer transparent.”
“It was a-shot-and-abeer place when I was drinking there. An old man’s bar,” said Jim Jarvis, who has been working on a book about San Francisco bars for more than 20 years.
Ehrmann saw it some years later when it was called Jack’s Elixir, specializing in microbrews. It was a bit rundown, but it had a handsome oldfashioned back bar and a lot of potential. For H it was love at first sight. “They didn’t know what they had,” he said. “I knew it had a past.”
Ehrmann saw a future, too, and made an offer. He cleaned it up and opened the place as the Elixir on Nov. 21, 2003.
But all San Francisco history is personal. H met his future wife, Angie, at the Elixir in 2005. So the Elixir comes with both history and a love story. Can’t beat that.