Mission District bar’s famous sign is illuminated again.
It can’t tell time, but Doc’s Clock sign back on after 2 years
It was 20 minutes after sunset and hordes of people spilled across the sidewalk outside of Doc’s Clock, colonizing the bus lane on Mission Street. They had gathered to witness what felt to many Mission bargoers like a historic moment: the re-illumination of the famous Doc’s Clock sign, which had been dimmed for over a year.
“It’s crazy,” the bar’s owner, Carey Suckow, holding her 3-yearold daughter Avalon on her hip, said on Tuesday night. “We did it. I can’t believe we did it.”
A sea of phones extended from the buzzing crowd, their cameras fixed on the Doc’s Clock facade. At 7:30 p.m. on the dot, the fire hydrant-red sign flashed back to life.
The blue cocktail glasses, the twinkling golden arrow, the letters spelling out “DOC’S CLOCK COCKTAIL TIME” — it was back, at long last, in all its neon glory.
The lighting marked a conclusion to a nearly two-year saga involving Suckow, Doc’s and a fraught relationship with a landlord. It was a saga that came to represent much more than the plight of one individual dive bar. For many San Franciscans, the displacement of Doc’s Clock and its sign signified everything that was wrong about the way the city — and especially the Mission — has changed.
“This is proof that perseverance does work,” said Al Cummings, who lives in the neighborhood and has been a regular at Doc’s since 1998. “For once, it’s a good change in the Mission.”
The original Doc’s Clock was two blocks south of its current location at Mission and 20th streets. Suckow, a former schoolteacher, has owned the business since 2005, but the bar’s history dates to 1951, when it was known as the Clock Bar. A dentist, Ralph Mancuso, bought it 10 years later and re-named it Doc’s Clock, installing the neon marquee that would come to define it as a Mission District landmark.
Suckow was able to buy Doc’s Clock at a discount because she promised its previous owners, Elizabeth Zoria and Susan Hertzfeldt, that she would keep it divey. And she did. Even as that area of the Mission became dotted with high-end restaurants like Lolinda and Californios, Doc’s Clock remained the grungy, offbeat place you could go for a PBR, a shot and a game of shuffleboard.
In 2015, Leticia Luna — who owns a number of restaurant and bar properties around the city, including Rumors — bought the old Doc’s Clock building. When Suckow’s lease was up in the summer of 2017, Luna didn’t renew it. Luckily, Suckow found a new space just two blocks away where she could reopen Doc’s, which gained Legacy Business status in 2016.
But Luna owned the building, which meant she owned the neon sign, and she would not let Suckow take it with her.
“We didn’t want to go, and we didn’t want to give up the sign,” Suckow said at the time. “But we’re staying positive.”
The battle over the sign turned bitter and bizarre. Luna wouldn’t be able to keep the sign up at her building, since she didn’t own the Doc’s Clock business name. She claimed she wanted it for sentimental reasons, having grown up in the neighborhood. When Suckow, husband Brian MacGregor and a small army of friends moved to the new location in the summer of 2017, they painted a replica of the sign, sans neon lights, on the new façade. It worked, but it wasn’t ideal.
But with help from the city, Suckow was eventually able to reclaim the sign. Supervisor Hillary Ronen, a vocal supporter of the Legacy Business program, began working with Suckow in 2016 to help her keep it. Ronen sat down with Suckow and Luna to help them negotiate, and spoke with the City Planning Department to try to understand how keeping the sign might be possible.
“Doc’s Clock and its iconic sign are part of the history of the Mission, and I’m so glad to have helped them stay,” Ronen said when reached for comment on Wednesday. “What an absolute joy to see the Doc’s Clock sign alight again.”
Although city law is strict about businesses erecting new neon signs, the Doc’s Clock marquee retained its vintage status under the vintage sign ordinance, said Gina Simi, the Planning Department’s communications manager. “Under that ordinance, you can reconstruct and place a sign that’s already been designated,” Simi explained. “Ultimately, (Suckow) removed only the skin, or front facing portion of the original sign, and reconstructed the sides at the new location, which is allowed under the ordinance.”
As a legacy business, Doc’s Clock was entitled to help with lease negotiation, relocation, loan securing and marketing from the city. A $3,000 grant from the Legacy Business Program helped subsidize the moving, construction and electric costs of the sign.
“The Legacy Business Program made this possible,” Suckow said. “Maybe this will give some hope to other business owners in our situation.”
As soon as the sign lit up on Tuesday night, the crowd moved inside, packing the narrow bar shoulder-to-shoulder. MacGregor stood on top of the bar and raised a glass to “my wife, the love of my life,” declaring, “She’s the one who fought tooth and nail to move the bar a scant 800 feet.”
He also acknowledged the folks who helped carry the bar itself and the shuffleboard table to the new location.
“Doc’s Clock is one of the staple dive bars,” said Daniel Parks, manager of the tiki bar Pagan Idol, wearing his Hawaiian shirt. “I’m just so happy for Carey. I know what it took to get here. The regulars and the community really rallied.”
In his speech, MacGregor called out the 500 Club, another Mission dive bar that recently got a new owner, Ali Razavi. Everyone booed. One man, Parker Frost, leaned over and whispered that he had just been fired as a bartender from the 500 Club. (In a recent interview with The Chronicle, Razavi said he was not planning to change much about the bar.)
“Carey has saved Doc’s Clock!” MacGregor yelled. The bar erupted in cheers that soon turned to a chant: “Carey! Car-ey!”
Asked how she felt, Suckow said she was thrilled to see the community’s response. “All our regulars came back,” she said. “Now our beacon’s back on.”