Booze and belters — a night at Martuni’s
Nine o’clock on Friday is a good time to get to Martuni’s, the piano bar at Valencia and Market streets. You can still snag a table, though it may be the last one. You can still get a drink in under five minutes. The singing, for now, is background music against the high din of the bar. Nine o’clock is still amateur hour. “I’ve got sunshine … on a cloudy day…” Friends goading friends to sing. Plenty of space around the piano: That means there’s no wait.
You start with a martini ($9) or, if it’s your first drink of the night, you spring for the proprietary Martuni ($10), the only difference being the brand of gin (Seagram’s or Burnett’s) or vodka (Nikolai or Three Olives). Of all the possible martini follow-up ques-
tions, your waiter will ask only: “Lemon twist or olive?” Olive, you say — actually, make that extra dirty.
“It’s a little bit funny … this feeling inside … I’m not one of those who can easily hide …”
Martuni’s is a piano bar — a genre in decline, just short of an anachronism. Once ubiquitous in San Francisco, the piano bar in its heyday was largely a variant of the gay bar. In the ’70s and ’80s there was the White Swallow on Polk Street (now Cabin Bar & Lounge), the Galleon (its space in the Castro soon to re-open under the Horsefeather team) and Sutter’s Mill (a nomad of the Financial District, relocated five times in three decades). Like many gay bars of their era, they’re gone now.
Depending on whom you ask, Martuni’s, too, is a gay bar, though that’s not immediately obvious from a survey of the room tonight. Gay, straight or otherwise, “it’s people who like attention,” as one patron puts it. One thing is clear: The crowd seems to know every song from “Guys and Dolls.”
Your extra-dirty Martuni arrives. For a drink that’s supposed to be doused in olive juice, it barely tastes briny. Still, you have ordered more wisely than your friends, who are now confronted with goblet-size helpings of the Creamsicle martini ($10), which tastes like Tropicana with a hearty dose of Torani vanilla syrup, and the sugar-rimmed peach fuzz ($10), eerily evocative of Haribo Peaches gummy candy.
If there’s one thing to know about Martuni’s, it’s that the drinks are strong. Very, very strong.
“It’s not unusual to be loved by
anyone …” and the piano player, suddenly, produces a trumpet.
You find yourself ordering a second round — a lemon drop ($10), a cosmopolitan ($10). One friend goes big with a platinum martini, at $13.50 the priciest drink on the menu, made with Martuni’s top shelf: either Russian Standard Platinum vodka or Bombay Sapphire gin.
Are you going to sing? Your friends boomerang the question back: Are you going to sing? Eavesdropping, your waiter motions toward the gold-plated piano. “I’ll take you up there if you’re shy,” he offers. Half the fun of Martuni’s is debating whether you’re going to work up the courage to go up to the piano.
But suddenly it’s 10:30 p.m., and there’s a line of singers forming next to the accompanist, and it looks like you may have missed your chance. It’s no longer amateur hour. The back corner is now colonized by San Francisco Conservatory of Music students. A man in a red satin shirt who looks to be in his 80s captivates the room
with a lively rendition: “You’re just too good to be true … can’t take my eyes off of you …” And then a woman who looks like she just left some kind of dress rehearsal, still caked in stage makeup: “Come on babe, why don’t we paint the
town …” She turns the microphone toward the room, prompting everyone around you to belt “and all that jazz!” You’re sure it can be heard on Market Street.
When did this get so rowdy? You look away for a second and suddenly the piano player is donning a costume: a big gold crown and long red cape with Dalmatian-fur trim.
The standards of the karaoke bar — “Don’t Stop Believin’” or “Ice Ice Baby,” which you’re welcome to croon down the street at the Mint — are not the standards of the piano bar. And the performers of the karaoke bar have nothing on these people here tonight. Bereft of teleprompters, the Martuni’s singers have either brought their own sheet music or are singing from memory. They riff, in real-time exchanges, with their crowned accompanist. (Until 1993, the Mint was a piano bar, too.)
Not all of tonight’s singers are great. There’s the guy who has now gotten up to sing three times. Doesn’t he have a friend who can cut him off ? Even some of the talented singers can get a little bit carried away, too much vibrato, “American Idol”-style.
Then again, with drinks this strong, Martuni’s patrons can’t be held fully accountable for their actions. And still there are moments of rapture. When, around 11:30 p.m., one of the conservatory students takes the microphone, her classmates shush the tables around them, and the bar’s din softens. “At Last,” by Etta James. The singer launches its opening phrase with rocket power. Conversations cease. Your friend, by now two Creamsicles deep, begins to weep. You feel profound relief that you never got up to sing. And you flag down the waiter for another extra-dirty Martuni.