Last call for many classic S.F. bars Rising rents 86 classic S.F. bars
Tony Antico will tell you straight up: Heâs a social orphan nowadays. He and a drinking pal sat glumly at a North Beach bar the other night, knocking back room-temperature pints of Guinness Stout.
The joint had all the character you could ask for: sociable bartenders, spacious booths and saucy regulars. Trouble was, it wasnât their corner bar, their home away from home.
Anticoâs preferred watering hole, the John Barleycorn pub -- known as âthe Cornâ to regulars -- closed recently. Last call came after the building changed hands and the new owner refused to renew the barâs lease.
Patrons tried to salvage the 40-year-old Nob Hill institution. Their âSave the John Barleycornâ drive collected 4,000 signatures, including many from area teetotalers. They campaigned at City Hall and picketed the new owner.
But last fall Antico, 49, a former Barleycorn bartender, found himself giving a farewell toast. âGet your glasses ready,â he said. âHereâs to the John Barleycorn and the great pubs of San Francisco. Community. Tradition. Barleycorn.â
This good-time city has a case of the blues. A growing number of classic corner bars are being forced to close.
Their names speak of old San Francisco: Bobbyâs Owl Tree, Mooseâs, the Washington Square Bar and Grille (better known as the Washbag). The run-down and aptly named Hole in the Wall Saloon is scheduled to close soon. The politically incorrect Dago Maryâs, a former Navy hangout near Hunterâs Point, closed last summer after 80 years.
Some were classic dives that refused to acknowledge the passage of time. They were cash only and served up Tony Bennett and Frank Sinatra standards on chrome jukeboxes. Others were upscale bars attached to restaurants but with their own distinct identities and clientele.
Many were peopled by full-service bartenders with encyclopedic memories for their regularsâ favorite poison. They stopped fistfights and ran phone interference from pesky ex-spouses and bill collectors.
San Francisco still has one of Californiaâs highest number of bars for its population, said John Carr, a spokesman for the state Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control. But many of the alcohol licenses now belong to hotels or tourist spots.
Reasons for the closures of neighborhood bars vary: Owners died or decided to relocate, buildings were sold. Rising rents play a major role, owners and city officials say.
With each passing, patrons say, San Francisco has lost a bit of its soul.
âI think itâs sad,â said Ed Moose, whose establishment is being converted into an Italian restaurant. âWhere should we go when weâre not going home? Where can we have our nerves soothed or indulge in a secret rendezvous? Itâs not just about the booze. Itâs the bonding.â
Former Mayor Willie Brown, a bachelor well-studied in the cityâs night life, says: âI still go out regularly -- almost every night -- and itâs becoming more difficult to find those old haunts where the volume is sufficient to keep it open. For most of these old places, the crowd who appreciates them has died.â
A new generation of barflies is also mourning the loss. In a posting titled âWhere the hell am I supposed to drink now?â blogger Beth Spotswood rued the January loss of the Washbag, which she called âa bastion of old-school San Francisco character.â
The North Beach bar, she wrote, was âhome to crotchety old codgers who remembered when Dianne Feinstein didnât dye her hair and brooch-clad, aging spinsters who took their burger and martini(s) at the bar alone.â
She hit the Washbag often, threw a birthday bash there. She knew the ownerâs kids.
Her affinity grew the night a friend mocked her sequined, leopard-print cardigan at the bar. Thatâs when one regular âturned around, took a swig of his Scotch and said, âThatâs one hell of an outfit, sweetheart. You look terrific.â
âAh, the Washbag . . . â she wrote, âmy only home away from home.â
At Bobbyâs Owl Tree, a peculiar Nob Hill dive one patron likened on a website to âyour crazy auntâs basement,â owner Robert âBobbyâ Cook adorned his place with hundreds of stuffed owls, owl paintings and sculptures, and owl-themed bowls, posters and menus.
Until he died of a heart attack last fall, the mercurial Cook greeted customers with a scowl, along with a sometimes stale bowl of Gardettoâs mix and a moist towelette.
Cook was a real hoot, regulars say. He closed at will, herding patrons onto the street. Drinkers who didnât hold up their end of the conversation were often eighty-sixed or banished to the end of the bar.
âBobby was nervous that way,â said a regular named Larry, who wouldnât give his last name. âBut you didnât appreciate his place until you walked into a bar full of strangers. It ainât the same.â
Regulars often hold their breath when they get wind of a new bar owner. Sometimes the switch works out, as it did with Gingerâs, a gay and lesbian bar in the cityâs financial district. The new management took down the gay pride flag outside and lowered the lighting, but kept the rest the same. So the old clientele stayed put.
Not so at the nearby House of Shields, says ex-patron Sam Singer. âEverybody used to come there,â said the local public relations man, âjudges and lawyers, guys just indicted or about to be convicted. Weâd say, âMeet you at the House.â â
Then the bar changed hands five years ago. The bartenders left, as did regulars like Singer, who missed seeing the familiar old faces behind the bar. The defections snowballed. âI still pass there and look in the windows longingly,â he said. âBut yesterdayâs gone.â
Thor Ivar Elke found San Francisco rather aloof -- until the Norwegian transplant walked into the John Barleycorn and met owner Larry Ayre. âHe served us the first pint in a series of many,â Elke said. âI never left again.â
The pub was a city museum, with its cheery hearth built from old city cobblestones, its cable-car benches and re-purposed church pews, its bleacher seats from the San Francisco Seals -- the minor league baseball team that skipped town for Phoenix in 1957 when the Giants arrived.
After the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, the pub was the place locals went to check in on one another. It was the neighborhoodâs living room.
âYou came in and you just listened at first,â Ayre said. âThen the regulars let you talk. They welcomed you. From that point on, the people around you were your people.â
Antico became known as Baseball Tony, to distinguish from Rock ânâ Roll Tony and Country and Western Tony. Regulars included the Professor, Taxi Bob and Blind Mike. All of them had stories. Then, in 2006, the lease wasnât renewed.
Regulars boarded a cable-car-themed tour bus to picket the buildingâs new owner, chef Luisa Hanson, at her Italian restaurant nearby. She wasnât pleased to see them.
âItâs over,â she said, wiping her hands. âThatâs it.â
Thatâs when Ayre knew the John Barleycorn must die. âIt was a pit-of-the-stomach feeling,â he said.
In an interview, Hanson said she offered a fair price to buy the bar outright. When that didnât work, she didnât renew the lease. âWe didnât want to throw him out,â she said of Ayre. âI like tradition. But just because youâre in a place so long doesnât give you the right to stay there forever.â Hanson plans to open a new Irish pub in the space.
Ayre moved all the barâs furniture to his house in Santa Rosa.
Not long ago, Antico and Elke visited him there. They sat at the 25-foot-long bar in Ayreâs great room, perched on their customary stools. Ayre poured them pints of Guinness, for old timesâ sake.
Said Antico: âIt was bittersweet.â
Added Ayre: âThey almost teared.â
Ex-patrons now call themselves Barleycorn Survivors. The last posting on www.savethebarleycorn.org, the website they once used to organize protests, shows a photo of the stripped-down property under the caption âItâs over: The Barleycorn is gone.â
Antico says there will never be another Barleycorn. There are other bars out there, of course: the Philosopherâs Club, Mr. Bingâs, the Buddha. But pubs, he says, are a lot like love affairs.
âIt takes a while to break into a new bar,â he sighed between sips of Guinness. âIt takes a commitment.â
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