San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
LIKE THE SONG
SOMETIMES YOU WANT TO GO WHERE EVERYBODY KNOWS YOUR DRINK ORDER.
1 “YOUR SECOND LIVING ROOM” Kerry Egan and Original Joe’s
Most afternoons on his walk home from work, Kerry Egan would drop by Original Joe’s in North Beach to see if the day barman, Michael Fraser, had anticipated his arrival by having a glass of Sauvignon Blanc waiting in front of his stool.
On Saturday, it could be a bloody Mary or a dry martini when Egan came in for lunch with his wife, Jamie, and son Jameson. On Sundays it could happen all over again because Jameson, 4, never tires of French fries.
His dad, a management consultant in the hospitality trade, never tires of the company of an attentive friend behind the plank like Fraser or Seamus Coyle or Michael McCourt.
“Those are the old classics,” says Egan, 48, “the local legends of the drinking arts.”
When Coyle died in 2015, Egan wore his lime green waistcoat with the shamrocks on it to his Irish wake, and when McCourt fell just five months later, Egan got the shamrock pattern out again. Fraser, 75, is still standing on wobbly knees, but he has not worked since he was sent home in the first wave of the lockdown in March, and Egan misses him as much as he misses Coyle and McCourt.
“I will do anything for Mike Fraser,” he says, and that includes getting his drinks at Joe’s takeout counter just to support the place in Fraser’s absence. But standing on the sidewalk with your drink is not the same as sitting in a bar that “feels like your second living room,” Egan says.
Most afternoon saloons have gone the way of the long lunch, but in normal times Fraser still upholds the traditions. He wears pressed shirts and a handtied bow. He remembers your name and he remembers your drink, and he can spin a story going back to Billings Senior High School in Montana where he was in the marching band and carried his tuba the entire 11mile length of the 1964 Rose Parade in new white cowboy boots that were too small.
“He’s one of those guys who enjoys putting on the apron,” is how Egan puts it. “You ever visit a cranky bartender? It is not much fun.”
What makes Fraser fun is that he is as good at listening as he is at talking. There are not many left like him and Egan knows it better than anyone. He’s been living a healthier lifestyle since the pandemic took the fun out of everything, but he’d give that up gladly to be back in O.J.’s on a Saturday afternoon when Fraser signals the end of his shift by putting on a Jimmy Buffett song. When that day comes, “I might shed a little tear,” Egan says. “I will be very happy.”
A few Saturdays ago, Egan was standing on the sidewalk outside Joe’s waiting for his togo order when along came Fraser to meet his regulars. Egan offered up a cheerful warning.
“I said to him, ‘Get excited about the Roaring ’20s ahead of us,’ ” he said. “I think every bar and restaurant is going to come back like a rocket ship once it opens up again.” — Sam Whiting
2 SIPPY CUPS OF ADULT BEVERAGES Chris Lebar and the Blue Light
When Chris Lebar moved to Cow
Hollow 10 years ago from Seattle, she heard the Blue Light on Union Street was a place to find Seahawks fans on game day. So she put on her blue and green Tshirt, walked right in and started the season.
“Going to any establishment, you are there for the people,” says Lebar, who trained for eight years as a ballet dancer. “That’s what brings you back. They are family.”
The patriarch of the Blue Light family is owner Johnny “Love” Metheny, so relentlessly upbeat and universally adored that even his exgirlfriends love him. One of them met Lebar at the Horseshoe, another local haunt, and the two of them came into the Blue Light together.
“He probably introduced himself first,” Lebar says. “That’s just what he does.”
Among the city’s celebrity bartenders of the 1990s, Metheny and Harry Denton were at the top of the heap. “Johnny Love’s” at Broadway and Polk became so packed that he branched out to Walnut Creek to manage the overflow.
It all came crashing down with the dotcom bust and Metheny has settled into a stalwart lounge that was once ultra cool when owned by musician Boz Scaggs.
That did not matter as much as the fact that the Blue Light has the cheapest drinks and food in the Cow Hollow/Marina corridor, says Lebar, who has compiled her own consumer report.
“You can get a burger with bacon on it, and fries for $9,” she says. Her drink, vodka soda, is $5, and the average price comes down with all the rounds that are on the house.
Lebar is in corporate management at the downtown headquarters of a major retailer, and the Blue Light is conveniently on the line of either the 45 or 41, her Muni commuters. That convenience was eliminated when her office shut down in March. But an afterwork hangout became even more crucial as a reason to close the laptop, walk out the door and “have human interaction,” she says. “The same group of people just shifted outside to the parklet.”
When the parklets closed at the start of the Christmas season, Lebar and her posse of six would still meet there. They’d get their drinks to go and walk around the neighborhood in the interest of daily exercise. “You see people with their sippy cups,” she says. “It used to be bottles of water. Now everyone walks around with their adult beverages.”
Along the way, here will come the ageless Johnny Love in his old Beemer, running errands. “He always pulls over to chat,” Lebar says. “The guy is always smiling even though his business has been wiped out.” — Sam Whiting
3 TALENT UP CLOSE John Davis and Piano Fight
Some people become barroom regulars because of a pub’s stiff drinks. Or a bartender’s skills. Or their favorite band is a regular on the stage. Or they feel a communion with the clientele. John Davis found a home at Piano Fight because he could be close to the action.
Davis has been a fan of theater since his time in kindergarten, so it makes sense that he’d gravitate to the bar and restaurant in the Tenderloin with three small stages used for music, theater and other live performances.
“It kinda goes back to about 2009. They did something called ‘Merry
Forkin’ Christmas’ in an old semideserted office building over on Mission. It was one of those plays where the audience would decide where the play was going to go. That’s how I first found out about them,” Davis said. “Then I read they were opening a place in the Tenderloin and they were going to start hosting these things called pintsized plays. They were plays designed to last no more time than it took to drink one glass of beer. That’s what really got me hooked on PianoFight.”
He’s been a familiar face in the establishment ever since, one of those guys who the bartenders know by name. The camaraderie helps, but it’s not what brings him back.
“It’s the performances. The intimacies of the performances and the fun people to meet and get to know there,” Davis said. “I think I got to know more of the performers than the other people at the bar.”
Of course, such intimacies are on pause as bars and performance spaces like PianoFight are closed due to pandemic protocols. And while PianoFight has shifted some live events online, Davis isn’t as interested in the onscreen approximation of live theater.
“They did do an interesting virtual gathering where they had somebody create a virtual environment that had the same layout as PianoFight, and you could go into various rooms and see performances, and talk to the people,” Davis said from his Menlo Park home. But, “it’s not the same.”
Once the pandemic is under control, and our lives can begin to revert to some sense of “normal,” Davis said PianoFight will be one of the first places he’ll go. He has to feel that the situation is safe, but he wants to be close to the action, close to the actors, close to the stage that was such a large part of his life before COVID19 forced us away from our favorite spots. — Robert Morast
4 THE PUNK BAR WITH HEART Sean McCourt and Lucky 13
When Sean McCourt walked into Lucky 13 for the first time he was 22, up from Santa Cruz to hang with a friend who lived around the corner from the storied punk bar and who warned him the place could get a little rough.
“He described it like the ‘Star Wars’ cantina,” said McCourt, and Lucky 13 lived up to that analogy. “I remember a fight broke out and a pint glass flying over my head and shattering against the wall. I was like, ‘I love this place.’ ”
The Misfits and Cramps posters on the walls, the layers of decaying stickers, the rock soundtrack, he loved it all. When McCourt moved to the city a year later, the cashonly Duboce Triangle dive became one of his regular hangs. Over the past two decades, even as he moved all over town, he kept coming back to Lucky.
It’s a wellworn cliche that if you hang out somewhere long enough, you will eventually be offered a job, but in McCourt’s case, that’s more or less what happened. One night a misstacked keg crashed onto the manager’s toe, and suddenly McCourt was conscripted into collecting glasses and barbacking. Until the coronavirus shutdown in March, for the past three or four years, McCourt had officially been the Lucky 13 doorman, greeting regulars and checking passports from as far away as Germany and Japan.
“It really was a community,” he said of the 26yearold bar. “You could walk in there and be intimidated, but you would have heavily tattooed punk rockers talking and doing shots together with people wearing khakis who worked for the city. It felt like a family.”
McCourt found his family under Lucky’s dim red lights. He found them in the regulars and staff who became lifelong friends, and in the cute customer he met in passing who struck up a conversation that grew into a partnership. Now they’re engaged and expecting their first child in April.
But after years on a monthtomonth lease and looming threats to tear the building down and turn it into condos, the pandemic proved the “nail in the coffin” for Lucky 13. On Dec. 6, the bar opened its parking lot for a final farewell and a parade of Lucky fans came through to raise pints and pay respects.
Sometimes at closing, McCourt said, the bartender would put on David Allan Coe’s outlaw country anthem “You Never Even Called Me by My Name” and everyone would link arms and sing along before going their separate ways.
On Lucky’s last night, they did it once more. “But you don’t have to call me darlin’, darlin’,” they crooned. “You never even called me by my name.” — Sarah Feldberg
5 COMMON GROUND OVER CABARET Alisha Ardiana and Oasis
Ask Alisha Ardiana how many times she’s been to Oasis, and the best she can do is ballpark.
“Easily 50 times,” says Ardiana, the owner of Empawthy dog training who lives in the Mission. “That’s where all my money went.”
Ardiana describes the SoMa nightclub and drag theater owned by D’Arcy Drollinger (and formerly home to drag legend Heklina’s beloved “Mother” show), as a space of joy, love and light, where strangers sharing cabaret tables collapse into laughter together over queer sendups of entertainment archetypes like “Star Trek” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”
Ardiana’s wife is a restaurant owner who often works evenings, and Oasis was a spot where Ardiana could bring a coworker, an outoftownguest or go alone. “How many places can you go where you can go by yourself and you feel safe?” she says.
At Oasis, Ardiana didn’t just feel safe, she had fun. She got to know the largerthanlife performers, the fans and Drollinger, their gracious host who always thanked Oasis guests for coming out. When Drollinger was raising money to produce a film, Ardiana and her wife donated a dinner with D’Arcy to the auction. When the movie opened, they dropped off 20 pizzas for the staff and cast.
Oasis has adapted to the pandemic nimbly, pirouetting into rooftop dining, a new streaming channel and food delivery via drag queen that comes with a song. But those digital and safely distanced services can’t capture the magic of sitting at Oasis, belly laughing over a drag rendition of “The Golden Girls,” and getting to know whoever happens to be across the table.
“What I love and what I desperately miss about San Francisco is that by us living here we make a contract that we will give up our private space in order to have access to public space,” says Ardiana. “And by having that public space … it gave us exposure to people that we may not meet otherwise.”
At Oasis, that might be a queer couple from San Francisco or a straight tourist from Texas who found the tickets online and figured, what the hell?
“I’m not saying that D’Arcy can save us from, you know, the f— Proud Boys,” Ardiana says, “but the only way that we are going to prevent radicalization is to have opportunities for dialogue in spaces that are safe and are fun . ... If you go to ‘Star Trek’ and you see a woman play Capt. Kirk and you laugh your ass off, that is how you make change. That is how you bring people together.” — Sarah Feldberg