Walk into Martuni’s once and you own it

The lights are so dim inside Martuni’s piano bar on the edge of the Castro district that it’s nearly impossible to get a good look at Skip Ziobron zipping from one cocktail table to another. The 62-year-old owner of Martuni’s, clad in his uniform of white dress shirt and black slacks, moved nonstop Saturday night. He’s been like this — unflappable and brisk — since he opened his beloved piano bar 22 years ago. “Nothing’s changed, the paint hasn’t changed,” Ziobron said. “No one wants a change — ever.”

I certainly don’t. I first came to the piano room in the back of Martuni’s 18 years ago as a 22-year-old costume mistress at the longtime North Beach cabaret show “Beach Blanket Babylon.” Our cast members would race over to Martuni’s after a performance to drink massive martinis and belt whatever tunes they felt like singing. It was heaven for someone like me, a chubby girl who never quite fit in, and also, as the stereotype dictates, loved musical theater. A gay piano bar where I got to sit at the cool kids’ table while my friends sang “Les Miserables” was exactly where I needed to be when I was 22.

“Oh, I remember that face!” Ziobron announced. I looked around the piano bar. He was right. Nothing in Martuni’s had changed — except for me, maybe. Ziobron certainly hadn’t. His slim frame, raspy voice and dry humor were exactly the same.

The piano room is at the far end of Martuni’s main space. You’ve got to kind of push your way in, even on a slow night. It’s small and dark back there, and guests who don’t know what they’re doing find themselves shoved out of the way rather quickly.

On Saturday night, Joe Wicht served as the bar’s accompanist. He played on a keyboard that’s designed to look like a giant copper-topped grand piano. Wicht was happy to accommodate whatever songs people want to sing — and at whatever talent level they were working with. He never let the horrible singers suffer alone. Instead, he’d join them or make the crowd sing along. If Wicht was a music snob, you’d never know it.

On Monday nights especially, Wicht doesn’t have to “save” anyone. Most theaters are dark on Mondays, and that’s often when the really serious singers come to perform at Martuni’s.

The keyboard is topped with songbooks, and most singers take a moment to confer with Wicht on key choice before beginning. Back in my “Beach Blanket” days, our performers would often get word that actors from touring productions of Broadway shows would be at Martuni’s, so we’d all head down to Valencia and Market streets — a caravan of very loud people — to hang out and sing with the cast of “Wicked.”

Those early days of my adulthood served as the first times in my life I felt safe to be myself with my peers. I’d found a tribe, and the tribe led me to Martuni’s. Miraculously, it remains that way for today’s tribes of quirks and creatives, and that’s exactly the way Ziobron wants it.

“Everybody that comes here feels ownership of the place,” Ziobron said. “It’s safe here, I’m always here. They can bring their aunt from Des Moines.”

He sat me next to Andrew Ross, a 26-year-old Mississippi native who studies at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Ross, who’d been in rehearsals, claimed he might be too tired to sing, but when he eventually belted “Being Alive” from Stephen Sondheim’s “Company,” Ross quickly drew our attention.

“All the students come here,” Ross said with a shrug, sipping his martini, “and we don’t have anything like this in Mississippi.”

Ever deadpan, Skip patted Ross on the shoulder as he raced from table to table, clearing drinks and serving up new ones. Few ever realize he owns the place, and the first-timers might not understand the magical little oasis Ziobron has created. Martuni’s really is an oasis of sorts, not just for LGBTQI people or for the super-talented singers of the Bay Area, but for those of us who struggled to find our place in the world, our comfort in our own skin.

Ziobron kept saying to me, “This is a safe space,” and it didn’t need to be reiterated. I knew what he meant, because it meant so much to me.

“I do this for them,” he said, nodding in Ross’ direction. “I stopped owning Martuni’s years ago. I just pay the rent and get the carpet shampooed.”

“All the students come here, and we don’t have anything like this in Mississippi.” Andrew Ross, Conservatory of Music student