Category: Fifty Bars

Bar#9 Dog’s bollix

Dog’s Bollix is an Irish bar that we just stumbled into at the end of a night. now, this wasn’t your cheezy “hang some shamrocks on the wall” kind of Irish bar. this place was hardcore Irish with war posters on the wall, old flags, coat of arms, jerseys, etc. the bartender had an Irish accent. this was the real deal. we had come here fairly late, only half an hour till closing, so there weren’t a ton of people there or anything, but the place still had a warm friendly vibe. it totally seems like the kind of place where you could come all the time after work and chat with the bartenders. also, unlike the crappy Rockit room next door which had “last call” fairly early and jerks were yelling at me to leave as I closed out my tab, this place served us drinks practically right up until 2am. nice!!

The Dog’s Bollix is at 408 Clement St in San Francisco

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Bar#8 Rockit Room

Li suggested we try out this place called the Rockit Room in the Richmond. despite it’s lame name, we decided to give it the benefit of the doubt. I guess the place is a concert venue so the bands there “rock it” or something. from the outside, this place looked all sleek like it was going to be all fancy inside, but once you get through the door, the inside just looks like a lodge or something with everything made of wood. service was slow and not particularly friendly either. there were a bunch of flat screen TVs all over the place. now, my opinion has always been that if you want to watch TV, just stay home. TVs don’t really belong in bars. bars are places where you are meant to be social. you should be drinking, talking to your friends, and possibly playing pool… not zoning out and staring at a screen. to make things worse, TVs have a way of grabbing your attention, so even if you don’t want to watch, you end up getting sucked in.

I’ve been trying to try drink specials as much as I can at the bars I’ve been going to, so caryn and I each chose a drink (she had some key lime thingy and I picked a chocolate raspberry concoction) and I went to go order them. the bartender warns me that the specialty drinks are 14$. fourteen dollars?!?!?! for *one* drink?? that’s way too much. he goes on to say that the drinks are really really big though, and taste great. I end up agreeing, and when he makes the drinks, they come in just regular martini glasses. huh? how are these “really big”?? that’s how big *all* drinks are. at this point, I started thinking that maybe I misheard and it was actually 14$ for two.. but no. when I got my bill, it cost me $28 for two drinks. yeah, sure they ended up tasting pretty damn good, but this was the biggest rip-off of all time. even the nice drinks at Voda , which is way more fancy of a place, cost much less than that. no wonder they don’t list the prices of their drinks on their menu… it’s because no one would want to get ripped off by paying their ridiculous prices.

one of the main reasons why Li wanted to come to this place was that it had a foosball table. he is pretty damn good, and really awed the people at the bar with his skills. one guy at the table could not stop yelling about how impressed he was. well, li, caryn, and josh went on to keep massacring people at foosball for a while, but then they finally met their match and got beaten.

so, overall, I wasn’t really impressed by this place. kind of a rip off. plus, it seemed like it really wished it could be pretentious, but couldn’t really pull it off.

Rockit Room is at 406 Clement Street in San Francisco

Bar#7 International Sports Club

I don’t really have too much to say about the International Sports Club. we had decided to check it out since it was next door to Kennedy’s. well, they didn’t serve curry like Kennedy’s did, so that was a strike against them already. They also didn’t have a foosball table or air hockey. Basically, I really couldn’t see any reason to go to this place if you have Kennedy’s right next door. What they did have was a drunken frat guy who decided, instead of waiting in line for the bathroom, to piss on the kegs that were sitting in the hallway. Classy! Also, their bartenders lied to us and said that the place had run out of beer and only had liquor left. Minutes later, we saw them serve beer to someone else. Why would you lie like that to your customers?

So basically, I cant say I got a good impression of this place. Oh wait, now I remember what this place had that Kennedy’s didn’t… at Kennedy’s they served only beer/wine, but here you could get the hard stuff. In fact, we had come here specifically to get some Irish carbombs, but as I mentioned, we were told that there was no more beer. Lame! So, I guess if you’re desperate to drink hard alcohol, you could check this place out, but otherwise, definitely stick with Kennedy’s.


Tom earlier in the night

By the time we left the place, tom was pretty smashed, so I’m not sure what he remembers about this place (if anything), heh. When we dropped him off at his house, he ended up sleeping the night away on the floor in between the couch and the coffee table. The next morning, his roommates woke up to find: an umbrella in the microwave, a shoe in the fridge, a flip-flop in the freezer, condiments in the bathroom, bath products in the kitchen, a kitchen chair and George foreman grill in tom’s bed, and tom with no pants on. Now, I wont comment here on who did what, but I will say that none of us did anything to tom’s pants. We’re good friends with him, but not *that* good friends.


Tom later in the night

International Sports Club is on 1000 Columbus Ave in San Francisco

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Bar#6 Kennedy’s Irish Pub and Curry House

St. Patrick’s day gets really crazy in north beach. People will take pretty much any excuse they have to drink copious amounts of liquor, so tons of people come out to celebrate their non-Irish roots. It’s kind of comical and bizarre how popular holidays like st. Patrick’s day and cinco de mayo are in the US. Half the people celebrating them don’t even know what they mean, but hey, I guess the more holidays the better, yeah? Anyways, driving up through north beach, there were throngs of people milling about in the streets and stumbling from bar to bar. Everyone was wearing green. Green shirts, green crazy hats, and shamrocks everywhere. I’ve never seen this area get so crazy.

We decided to try out this place called Kennedy’s. this place is a very bizarre combination of an Irish bar and an Indian restaurant. I really have no clue who could have come up with that idea. I know curry is crazy popular in the UK (apparently curry beat out fish and chips as the most popular food last year), but I don’t think the Irish have ever been associated with it. Really though, if you think about it, it’s a great combo. Beer goes great with Indian food and there’s nothing like having a restaurant right there inside the bar in case you get hungry after a bunch of drinks.

If we thought that north beach was crazy outside, it was even more nuts inside the bar. The place was completely packed and there was practically no space to walk through. Li and I waited for what seemed to be ages at the bar to order our drinks. The place had run out of pitchers, and the bar tenders seemed to be getting pissed at the constant barrage of drink orders, but luckily eventually fresh pitchers were brought out and li and I got served. I stumbled and almost dropped a whole pitcher when my foot got caught in someone’s sweater on the way to my table, but luckily I kept my balance.

The staff forgot to bring our food out to us and so our food was pretty cold by the time we went back to the counter to see why our food wasn’t brought to us. Oh well, what can you expect on such a hectic night? The food was pretty good though… at least the chicken tikka masala was.

Overall, I think this place was a good place to start the night if you’re hungry. Or maybe if just some people you’re with are hungry… that way whoever wants to eat can eat, while others can start drinking. Plus, the place is right across the street from Bimbo’s so it would make a great place to have a pre-concert drink/snack. The place is also really big so (other than st Patrick’s day) there’s plenty of space for tons of people to hang out. They have a pool table, air hockey table, and a foosball table plus an outdoor smoking area too, so basically you can eat, drink, smoke, and play games all in one place. Not bad!

Kennedy’s is at 1040 Columbus Avenue in San Francisco

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Bar#5 Rogue Brewery

for most of my life, i’ve never really been a huge fan of beer. i’ve always been way more into hard alcohol, especially vodka. Beer was just something to drink as a last resort if there was nothing better available. Strangely enough though, over the last year i’ve really started liking it. I’m really not sure how it happened, but often now i find myself craving the taste of beer instead of just enduring it. Maybe it happened from being stuck in so many small villages around the world where beer was pretty much the only alcohol to be had… and in the sweltering heat, it was super refreshing.

The other day, Tom got a huge promotion at work, so we went to Rogue Brewery to celebrate. i’ve heard that the beer there is super good, and was excited to try a few of their different kinds. They had a ton of varieties to choose from, and i started with the Saint Rogue Red which was recommended to drink with their Kobe Beef Burger. the burger was awesome… there’s nothing quite like a huge burger with blue cheese all over it! the beer on the other hand… was just ok.

Next i decided to try something a little more out of the ordinary: Chipotle Ale. i *love* the flavor of Chipotle… such a good combination of sweet and spicy, but the Chipotle ale didn’t taste very good. it just tasted kinda funky. and i dont mean funky in a good way. We ended the night by having a chocolate stout float. my friends liked it, but i wasn’t a huge fan. i think the beer would have been good by itself, and the ice-cream good by itself, but together the beer just made the ice cream taste bitter and have a gnarly aftertaste.

So, in the end i have mixed feelings about the place. i really dig their designs/logos, the food was pretty damn good, and i thought it was funny that they had frozen tv dinners on the menu along with the rest of the food. but the beer itself wasn’t all that great. maybe it was just the ones i tried? i might possibly go there again one day and try a beer sampler to see what other stuff they have available. we’ll see…

Rogue Brewery is at 673 Union St in San Francisco

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Bar#4 Chaise Lounge

It was wednesday and i had a busy weekend aheda of me, so for our new bar this week we decided to just stop in quickly to a place near Natasha’s house called Chaise Lounge. We’re trying to diversify the bars that we check out and see as many different neighborhoods as we can as well as seeing as many different types of bars as we can. This was our first bar in Bernal Heights and also our first lesbian bar. after standing next to the door apprehensively for a second, we walked inside into the sea of women.

the place was packed. i quickly scanned the room to see if Tom and i were the only guys there. there were two other guys in the rom besides us, bot other than that it was all women. Tom and Natasha wanted to bolt immediately, but i said we had to stay for at least 2 drinks. i figure we should give every place a chance right? we got our drinks and went to go huddle by the wall trying to look as inconspicuous as possible.

i gotta admit, all of us felt pretty awkward… and honestly, i’m not really sure why. ok, so everyone there was a lesbian except for us, but that shouldn’t matter right? before you get any weird ideas, none of us are homophobic (lesbophobic?), but still for some reason we all just felt on the spot. were we unwelcome here? did people think it was weird that we came? the thing is… as far as i could tell, no one did anythig or said anything to make us think that this might be the case, and yet we still felt like maybe we should leave. maybe all of it was in our heads?

part of the problem was that usually when we go to bars, we like to people watch. here, people watching just somehow felt wrong. we didnt want people to think that we were there to “gawk at the lesbians”… like we somehow planned this whole thing out just so we could come here and stare. maybe it’s cause of the image of the typical douchebag guy who thinks that lesbians exist solely so they can make out in front of him and entertain him.

so there we were, standing as close to the wall as we could, staring down in to our drinks and trying to not make eye contact. so odd that even though we dont have any weird stereotypical views of lesbians, we were afraid of them thinking that we did, and so felt like we were on the spot. although, is thinking that lesbians would assume that all guys who go into a lesbian bar are there to gawk at them, a stereotype in itself? probably. so, the whole night ended up becoming more of some kind of weird social experiment than a fun night out drinking. as soon as we gupled down our second drinks, we took off.

the funny thing is that some of my closest friends have been lesbians and i’ve hung out with tons of lesbians in my life… and it’s never been a problem. i guess things would have been different if we knew someone there at the bar. then we would have been part of the group and not just spectators? i dunno. weird.

Chaise Lounge is at 309 Cortland Ave, San Francisco.

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Bar#3 Bender’s

after being disappointed that Elixir was not a new bar, we headed out to place called Bender’s. walking inside, we were relieved that we didn’t recognize anything inside… surely a good sign that we had never been there before. From the first second, we liked this place more than the last bar. i dont know what it is about dive bars but there’s just something about them that is damn appealing. is it the seriously unpretentious atmosphere? is it that you feel like you can do whatever the hell you want and it’s ok? is it that the more low-key a place is, the more it is conducive to drinking? who knows and who really cares… all i know is that it works.

Bender’s had a similar atmosphere to Zeitgeist or Kilowatt. there were 2 pool tables, a pinball machine, and a jukebox filled with 99% heavy metal stuff. i tried to find something to play and could barely find anything i even recognized. i dunno if that’s a good thing, but it definitely matched the place’s atmosphere. they had Hoegaarden on tap, which as i’ve mentioned before, is definitely bonus points in my book. tom and i played pool and despite all of his bragging i almost beat him. man, if you’re not much better than me, than you must suck at pool!

the rest of the night was consumed by Natasha’s game. you know, that game where they show two half-naked people on either side of the screen and you are supposed to find what’s different about them. sheez… that game is so damn addictive. it’s so damn basic, it never really changes, and yet for some reason it’s practically impossible to drag yourself away. it just sucks the quarters right out of your pocket somehow.

eventually, we were able to drag ourselves out of the bar. we’ll definitely be coming back. cool bar, cheap drinks, and it’s a bit off to the side of the main Mission area which keeps it close to the action but a little secluded. plus, i totally love the name. really, what can be a more perfect name for a bar than Bender’s?

Bender’s is at 806 S Van Ness Ave in San Francisco

Bar#0 Elixir

This new year’s resolution might end up being a lot harder than i thought it would be. first off, not living is SF makes it a lot more difficult to go out to bars there. second, it’s sometimes hard convincing others to go out to new bars. and third, something that i never considered before is that it might be hard to figure out which bars are new ones…


(it’s hard to keep my hands steady..)

Last week Tom, Natasha, and i went to a bar called Elixir. i read about it online and it sounded pretty cool. we get to the bar, order some drinks and only after a while do i all of a sudden think to myself “wait a minute… i’ve been here before!”. yeah, it turns out that a few years ago, we had come to this bar on NYE for 15 or 20 minutes. i had totally forgotten about that. so, now i can’t count this bar. crap… i wonder how often this is going to happen? there probably have been many other bars that i’ve gone to on random drunken nights, when everything becomes a bit blurry, and names of bars become forgotten. how many bars have i been to that i just dont know about?!

Anyways, i may as well write about the Elixir anyways. actually, i think i’ll just write about all the bars i go to from now on, regardless if they make it into the fifty new bars category.

Elixir was a pretty cool place. very small, with pretty much only bar stools to sit on either at then bar or at high tables. the vibe was pretty relaxed and the crowd was an odd mix of dive bar patrons and people dressed really nice wearing suits. the thing that i thought was pretty interesting about this place was that on Wednesday nights, anyone can be a guest bartender. basically, they sign up for a certain night, and are expected to try to get hella people to come to the bar. then, on the Wednesday you chose, you come and bartend with up to 4 of your friends. half of the tips made that night then go to a charity of your choice. i think that’s a pretty cool idea… it would be so fun to serve drinks one night at bar. the guest bartender that night was pretty crazy… spilling drinks all over the place, screaming at people, dropping the girl he worked with on the floor, and convincing me to drink some random monkey drink that i have no clue what was in it.

One thing that’s pretty crazy about Elixir is that it’s super old. i guess the place has been around for like 130 years. Other than that, i can’t really think of anything notable about the place. it was chill and seemed like a good place to hang out, but nothing crazy special. after a few drinks, we headed out to another bar…

Elixir is at 3200 16th Street in San Francisco

Bar#2 Voda

Even people that dont know anything at all about russia usually realize that the country is known for it’s vodka. people there totally love the stuff and drink tons of it. and i dont mean taking tiny little one ounce shots or mixing it in fruity drinks… they drink huge glasses full of it along with their dinner. in the russian tradition, vodka has always been my drink of choice. vodka is the ultimate versatile alcohol and can be mixed with pretty much anytihng. when i was young and was too much of a wuss to drink beer, i drank vodka cranberries since it tasted sweet and went down easy. later i started drinking vodka tonics and occasionaly (in a bar that makes them well) bloody marys.

when i found out a few years back that there was a new cool bar in SF that specialized in vodka drinks, i knew i had to go check it out. but, for whatever reason, i never got around to going there until last week. partially it’s probably because the bar, Voda, is a shwanky bar in the financial district, and i usually am more into dive-ish kind of places. Trying to find this bar was nearly impossible. it was on some street called Belden Place which turned out to be a tiny alley that cars aren’t even allowed to drive on. the alley was really cool with lots of outdoor cafe-style seating and it totally had the feel of a small quaint french backstreet.

the bar itself didn’t exactly fit in with the relaxed cafe feel of the street and was instead all lit up in neon, but it looked really cool. the whole inside was lit up all blue with bright red checkered floors, blue/red/white cubes to sit on next to the couches, and a red lit up shelf area filled with tons of different clear vodka bottles. the place looked pretty shwanky and there was also a dj playing pretty decent music. i really dug the place’s futuristic and slick look. oh, in case you’re wondering, the bar’s name “Voda” means water in russian and actually the word vodka is derived from voda.

Tom and i sat at the bar and looked over the drink menu. there were all sorts of innovative vodka drinks on there and throughout the night, we tried a whole lot of different ones. almost everything we drank was super good, except for this one drink called the Ginger bikini line. i had the feeling that pepper flavored vodka mixed with ginger and juice could be pretty disgusting, but i decided to try it anyway hoping it might surprise me. nope. it was as disgusting as i expected. just because you *can* mix vodka with pretty much anyting, doesn’t mean you should.

the rest of the drinks were hella good though. tom tried this one drink that was key-lime flavored and actually had pie crust crumbles on the rim of the glass. i tried this vodka called Hangar One which is brewed in oakland. i usually dont drink vodka straight, but the citrus version of this stuff was pretty smooth and tasty. one of the cool things this place has is a lot of different vodka infusions. this is where they leave something inside the vodka bottle and the vodka becomes infused with that flavor. i ordered a chocolate mint infusion and it was ridiculously good. it smelled and tasted just like candy… i could hardly even tell that it was vodka at all. delicious.

after a while, catherine and Li decided to head home. it was just tom and me left, so we decided to grab one more drink before heading home. i got a caramel infused vodka, which althoough not as good as the chocolate mint, was still hella good. we were just about to take off, when the bartender started talking to us. earlier on in the night, the bartender wasn’t extremely friendly.. in fact, he was rather curt. but now, near the end of the night, he was a bit drunk, and (suprise, surprise) became all chatty.

he told us he’d hook us up with something really special, and poured us this fig vodka. now, i hate figs. they are one of the nastiest things ever. not only do they taste like crap, but they even have the nerve to look gross on top of that. the bartender told us that this was special vodka imported from germany and that he is 100% sure that no other bar around carries it. he made sure we believed him by repeating this at least 8 times… maybe more. after we were told yet again that we wont be able to find this fig vodka anywhere in sf, we took our shots. shockingly, it actually tasted hella good. nice and sweet. when we told the bartender that we liked it, he decided to mention that we would probably never see this vodka anywhere in sf… just in case we missed that fact the first dozen times ;). he then proceeded to pour us a free shot of this inferno vodka out of a bottle with two huge scary looking chili peppers in it. now, i have no problem eating spicy food. actually, the hotter it is, the better. but *drinking* really spicy stuff is a whole different story. it just seems weird. you get the burn of the vodka along with the spicy burn of the peppers. this isn’t something i would normally order, but hey, i’ll try pretty much anything if it’s free.

so now we had drank 2 drinks beyond our “last drink”, but since they had been free, we felt obligated to buy a drink. we couldnt just chug his free drinks and then leave, right? so we each got a malabar infused vodka. malabar is this french bubble gum, and i was hella not down with it. tom seemed to like it though. at this point, the bartender looks around the room and decides to make “something special” for us and the other 4 people who still remained. i dont know what the something special was, but it was pretty good.

and so, after that, we finally left. all in all, it was a good night. actually, any night when you get a bunch of free drinks is a good one, but it wasn’t just that. it was the fact that the drinks at this place were all really good. some of the drinks were a bit pricey ($7), but the infused vodkas were only 5$ and other shots of quality vodka were only $5 as well. not too bad for a chi-chi place. the crowd wasn’t the usual kind of crowd that i’d hang out with, but despite that, i thought the bar was really cool… i’d definitely be down to go there again.

Voda is at 56 Belden Pl ion San Francisco.

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rules?

i think i mentioned before that Tom came up with a rule for our fiftybars thing where every time we go to a bar, if it has a speciality drink, we have to try it. does anyone out there have any suggestions of other rules that might be fun/interesting to apply?

or maybe something funny to take note of in each bar we go to?

or something funny to take a photo of at each bar we see?

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