Mission District tavern is closing — or maybe not
Come 2019, the bar space looks like it may be resurrected — in some form — under the new owners’ regime. Though Ring declined to provide information on the new owners or what they had planned for the building, a pending liquor license transfer for the address shows that among the new group of owners is Steven Schefsky of Playland Bar on Polk Street. Schefsky did not reply to a request for comment sent to an email listed on Playland’s website.
The closure, which Shapiro says will happen on New Year’s Eve, will end a mercurial period for the Elbo Room. Rumors of its pending demise have been floating around for years, but were given substance in September when the Elbo Room building hit the open market for $4.2 million.
Word was that the two-story, 5,250-squarefoot building was going to be replaced by a fivestory, multiunit condo project.
“We were told it was going to happen. But since we don’t have the $4.2 million to buy (the building), there’s nothing we can do about it,” Shapiro told The Chronicle in October.
Meanwhile, Shapiro and co-owner Erik Cantu opened a new outpost of the Elbo Room earlier this year at Oakland’s Jack London Square.
Before the Elbo Room, the Valencia Street bar was called Amelia’s, a landmark lesbian bar whose heyday was in the 1970s and 1980s. In 2017, the city named Elbo Room a legacy business, a status that makes businesses eligible for city preservation funds.