Last call for West Portal tavern
Beloved neighborhood bar Portals Tavern will close Aug. 31 after 82 years in West Portal. Owners Don Gorwky and Mary King-Gorwky, who have owned the bar since 1989, said the building has been sold and the new landlord declined to extend their lease.
Portals Tavern is the sort of bar that’s becoming rarer and rarer in San Francisco.
“This is a family bar,” says Gorwky, by which he means the community of regulars functions as a family. “We used to go fishing in Canada together. Get a bus to Reno. I threw picnics for maybe five, six years. Held a golf tournament for a dozen years. People came in, they felt welcome, they came back.”
“We’re an institution without crazy people,” said Gorwky.
Gorwky began working at Portals Tavern in 1982, years before he and his wife bought the bar. Around that time, his fatherinlaw had to close his own longtime neighborhood bar, McCarthy’s, near the Orpheum Theater on Market Street, for the same reason
that Gorwky is now closing his: a new landlord.
A new tenant for the space at 179 West Portal Ave. has not been announced. Despite some vacancies that draw neighborhood complaints, West Portal had the lowest vacancy rate of 24 neighborhood retail corridors tracked by the city, according to a Chronicle analysis. Only six stores in the area, or 4%, are empty.
Portals Tavern had previously been slated to close on July 31, but Gorwky said the bar will remain open for another month with limited hours, while they clean out three decades’ worth of clutter and memories. When asked what the hours will be, he responded, “Noon until whenever I feel like closing.”
The outpouring of support he’s received since announcing the closing has been overwhelming, Gorwky said. He’s heard from regulars who moved away from San Francisco, and from people who visited the bar decades ago.
They’re sad to close down a neighborhood institution, said Gorwky, who turns 70 next month, but at the same time they’re ready for retirement.
“Running any business is really tough, especially a bar,” he said. “People think a bar’s a gold mine. Well if anybody’s ever worked in a gold mine, you’ve gotta do a lot of work to get some gold. “If I had to do it over again,” Gorwky continued, “would I be a bartender? Absolutely.” Chronicle staff writers Shwanika Narayan and Roland Li contributed to this report.