Category: Fifty Bars

Bar#29 – 21st Amendment

this place is located perfectly for having a few drinks before a giants game. especially on a sunny day, it’s nice to chill at the outdoors area. the beers at this place were pretty damn good, except that they didnt have the watermelon beer that i had heard so much about. dammit! the food was really good as well… i had the jerk chicken sandwhich, which was the bomb. unfortunately though, the people that work at this place are kind of dicks. all three people who i interacted with at the place were really rude and unfriendly. honestly, i think that if you are a bartender, part of your job is to be warm and friendly. it’s almost (but not quite) as important as making good drinks. i understand that everyone has a bad day once in a while, but if all three people who are behind the bar are lame, then your bar just sucks, and no tasty sandwhich will ever make up for that.

21st Amendment is at 563 2nd Street in San Francisco

Bar#28 – Blur

sheez, it’s been 2 months since i’ve posted about any bars. i’ve got a bit of a backlog.

anyways, blur was an ok bar to check out. we went there because Vertigo was charging a cover. what’s up w/ that? i’m sorry, but unless you have some famous djs playing, it’s pretty much bullshit to charge a cover for a bar that hhas nothing special about it. so yeah, we didnt bother w/ vertigo, and hit up Blur across the street. this place was pretty cool… a little fancier than a lot of bars in this area, but not all stuffy and lame. our friend bob was celebrating his birthday and he did a”three wise men” shot which led to some serious vomiting later in the night. nice.

Blur is at 1121 Polk Street in San Francisco

Bar#27 RJ’s Sports Bar

This place is as divey as it gets. it’s a tiny little bar with a pool table filling most of the room. the decor suggested that there should be jocks high fiving each other while chugging shots of jagger, but instead the crowd was mostly young latino guys who looked at the 10 of us wondering what the hell posessed us to come here. we didn’t stay long… but when i think about it now, this might be exactly the kind of place where interesting stuff happens.

RJ’s Sports Bar is on 701 Geary Street in San Francisco

Bar #25 John Barleycorn Pub

wow, we made it to halfway. the goal is to hit 50 brand new bars in SF this year and we’ve now been to 25 before june is over. damn, we’re good. if only we could do this for a living….

anyways, this bar was pretty cool. the drinks are good and people can play boardgames etc. there’s this small room just big enough for 6 or 7 people in the middle of the bar. inside, we were surrounded by different games, old books, Mr.Potatohead, etc. and being in there almost felt like we were just hanging out in some kid’s room in a cabin. we just hung out, drank, and tested each other on random trivial pursuit questions. definitely a very comfortable bar to be in.

John Barleycorn Pub is on 1415 Larkin Street in San Francisco

Bar#24 O’Reilly’s Holy Grail

My friend called me up andsaid to meet him here to go drinking in the tenderloin. i came out expecting a gritty, seedy, divey bar on a dirty street that smelled like urine. hopping out of the taxi, i looked around and realized that this part of the “tender nob” was much more “nob” than “tender”. the bar was decorated extremely elaborately with fancy stained glass windows, dark polished dark wood counters, and lots of other interesting decor including the most enormous bellows i’ve seen in a long time (ok, actually, it’s the *only* bellows i’ve seen in a long time). this would be a great place to have dinner (i hear the food rocks) and then keep drinking afterwards, but since we weren’t eating, and the beer selection was a bit limited, we took off after a little while.

O’Reilly’s Holy Grail is at 1233 Polk St in San Francisco

Bar#26 Red Room

with a name like the red room, it’s fairly obvious what the theme of this bar is gonna be. the real question, is just how far they will go with the theme. just paint the walls red? have the seating be red too? well, here they really went all the way with it. everything in the whole place is red from the floor to the tables to the seating and even the small speakers that hang from the ceiling are red. the entryway to the bar has two walls made out of red translucent bottles which is a pretty cool effect. the drinks here were pretty good too and they had a bomb passionfruit mojito.

The Red Room is at 827 Sutter Street in San Francisco

Bar#23 – Lucid

Lucid is a really slick looking lounge that is divided into two floors. the main floor is all polished and nice looking, and the downstairs is all brick. when we were there, there was some really cool artwork on both levels. downstairs you could either dance to whatever dj was playing, or there was a sitting area where it was quiet enough to be able to talk and yet still hear the music really well. that was pretty cool since in most places, either the music is so quiet that it becomes background noise, or it’s at a million decibels and you couldnt carry on a conversation if you tried. given how nice this place looked, i expected drinks to cost a fortune, but they didnt. a lot of reviews for this place said that the bartenders were super rude and cold, but when i was there, they smiled a lot, served us quickly, and were overall friendly.

Lucid is at 580 Sutter Street in San Francisco

Bar#22 – Top of the Mark

At the very top of Nob Hill is the Mark Hopkins Hotel, and the at the top of the hotel is the Top of the Mark. seeing as the hotel is 19 stories tall, and Nob Hill is pretty tall to begin with, the views from up there are phenomenal. there are small tables lining the huge windows where you can sit and take it all in. you can even sit on the windowsills which makes the view even more thrilling. actually, when i first saw some woman sprawled out on the windowsill, i thought “damn dude, some people are fucking wasted!”… but it turns out that this is perfectly acceptable behavior up there.

the atmosphere is pretty upscale (as is predictable when you see limos hanging out in front) and it had it’s fair share of snooty people. some guy in a tuxedo threw a hissy fit when he wasn’t allowed to sit at a table, even though it was clearly marked reserved for someone else. our waiter also, gave me the vibe like he was a bit above serving people like our group. but, it looked like at least some of the crowd was not all stuffy. the place had a huge drink selection, 100 different martini drinks. pretty much every conceivable combination of alcohols is on the martini list. the drinks are a bit pricey at 10$ a pop, but they were pretty strong. supposedly there is a 10$ cover charge after 9pm, but we somehow didnt have to pay. phew!

this definitely isn’t the kind of place i could see myself hanging out at often, but it was really cool to try it out and enjoy the views. really, this is what the new year’s resolution is all about… trying places that i wouldn’t normally have tried.

Top of the Mark is at 1 Nob Hill in San Francisco

Bar #21 – Pig & Whistle

this is the kind of place that makes it hard to write a review. it’s a british pub, with all the usual qualities you’d imagine it to have. lots of beer. pool and darts. laid back atmosphere. there’s really not much i can say about it that really stands out. i’ve read that it has fantastic pub food, but we didnt try any when we were there. what i did try, was this beer called Old Speckled Hen. the beer, despite it’s bizarre name (which oddly enough is a reference to MG cars), was damn good. it reminded me of this other creamy ale that i had back in london. it was so good actually, that i wasn’t able to try anything else since i just kept ordering the same thing over and over and over. even if that beer was the only thing that stands out for me about Pig and Whistle, it still makes it worth going back.

Pig & Whistle is at 2801 Geary Boulevard in San Francisco

Bar#20 – Bar 821

I read a bunch of reviews about Bar 821 on yelp, and one of the things that i thought was really weird about it was their door policy. they dont let anyone in after 11pm. hmmm, sounds like kind of an interesting gimmick to stop letting people in after a certain point and have a private party inside for the rest of the night. sure, a bit odd, but i thought it could be interesting. we headed down there and showed up at the place at 10:45pm. as we walked through the door, the bartender glanced up and shook his head at us. nope, we wouldnt be getting any drinks tonight.

it turns out that we misunderstood… they dont just stop letting peole in after 11… they shut the bar down. so, it’s only 11pm and we’re outta luck with no other new bars anywhere near by. what kind of bar shuts down at 11?? is it past people’s bedtimes or something? also, it’s lame enough that they close at 11, but why not at least serve drinks right up until closing?? the reason bars usually stop serving early is because they dont want to break the law and have people still drinking at 2am… but if your bar closes at 11pm, there’s no legal reason to have a”last call”. also, they have a rule where they give “locals” preference. what does that really mean? do they check your address on your drivers license and then make non-locals give up their seats?? basically, i think these guys just wanted to have something quirky and interesting about their bar, but instead their rules are just kind of lame.

Bar 821 is at 821 Divisadero St in San Francisco