S.F.’s Club Moderne takes over space for live music
Blue Room adjacent to themed nightspot
A new bar and cabaret venue opened in San Francisco on Thursday, Feb. 8, from the owners of Stookey's Club Moderne, a Lower Nob Hill cocktail lounge with an eccentric post-Prohibition theme.
The Blue Room, located next door at 891 Bush St., will feature regular live music, spanning genres from jazz to punk. Under the light of a disco ball, bartenders will serve classic cocktails ($14-$16) like the French 75, Aviation and Sidecar, plus a menu of lowand no-alcohol options.
Co-owners Tim Stookey, Leslie Cole Stookey and Aaron Cole had been looking to expand beyond Stookey's Club Moderne, which opened in 2015. They found that when they hosted live musicians there, some customers didn't want to pay the cover charge for the band or wanted a quieter place where they could talk.
“It just seemed like it would be better to have a separate room for the music,” said Tim Stookey.
When the address directly next door became available, they went for it, transforming the 600-square-foot space into a moody room with deepblue floors and shimmering curtains. They decided to call it the Blue Room, which is also the name of a 1920s show tune and a famous jazz venue in Kansas City.
In addition to music, the partners also wanted their second bar to have less of a strict concept than Club Moderne, which is very closely modeled on the sort of bar that would have existed in San Francisco in the 1930s and 1940s.
With an art deco aesthetic, period-appropriate cocktails and bartenders dressed in old-timey white suits, Club Moderne attempts to channel the excitement of the city after Prohibition was repealed.
It has some historical bona fides: The site makes an appearance in the classic noir novel “The Maltese Falcon,” in which detective Sam Spade makes a phone call at an allnight pharmacy at the corner of Bush and Taylor streets, which the owners believe to be the space that Club Moderne now occupies.
“People love it,” said Aaron Cole of Club Moderne, “but some people are like, ‘eh, I don't quite understand what you're trying to do.' So we're
trying to expose ourselves to a different segment of the market.”
Initially, the Blue Room will just serve drinks, but there are plans to add a menu of light food items. A small selection of local beers and mostly local wines will be on offer.
In addition to the list of cocktail standards, the bar will serve a few house specialties like the Blue Room ($15), made with gin, lemon juice, the bitter aperitif Cocchi Americano and blue curaçao.
On the Blue Room’s opening night, musician Clint Baker will perform jazz music from the 1920s, with a $10 cover charge. (The cover charge will almost always be $10, the owners said.)
This week, the bar will be open Tuesday, Feb. 13, through Sunday, Feb. 18, for Mardi Gras, but after that, the regular schedule of Wednesday-Saturday will resume.
The Blue Room. Regular hours will be 6 p.m.-midnight Wednesday-Saturday. 891 Bush St., S.F.