L.A./S.F. : The Icy Truth of the North//South Riddle

For some foggy reason, a drink tastes better in a San Francisco saloon than in any Los Angeles bar--save, perhaps, Peter Monahan’s Pasadena pub and the claustrophobic Chez Jay in Santa Monica. Scholars and world- class tipplers have debated this North-South riddle for decades. But the icy truth is that salooning is live theater in the Bay Area, whereas L.A. thirst parlors are too often tax-dodging, limited partnerships hustling for the buck.

Actually, it goes deeper than that. San Francisco is a necklace of neighborhoods strung across a city of hills. There is a European street life here. Stroll into a favored haunt and you’re reasonably assured of drinking, jawing and laughing with a familiar cast of characters--chums, bartenders and the owner, who is almost always on the premises. In Los Angeles, cross-town friends often fight an hour of traffic to meet, then drum their fingers on the bar while an aspiring Robert Redford tries to master a simple Manhattan.

San Francisco drinking establishments have another leg up--history. That town was settled by brawling seamen and gold-crazed prospectors. They’d head for Robert Ridley’s Billiard Room and Saloon, the El Dorado or the Bells Union Theater, which promised “fiery fun, a tumultuous time and really girly girls with buxom forms.”

Today, San Francisco’s best saloons are run--or staffed by--Runyonesque rogues who still believe that Prohibition has just ended. They’ve had the shot glass passed down to them by such masters of hospitality as Morty Miller, a former AP rewrite man with a voice so abrasive that it made Louis Armstrong sound like an operatic tenor. There was Cookie Picetti, a barkeeper emeritus whose seedy establishment on Kearney Street was patronized by governors, chief executives, barristers, bail bondsmen and police officers.

Before the poker-faced Picetti broke his hip and retired at 80, he liked to tell of the time that San Francisco disc jockey Don Sherwood raced his motorcycle across the top of the bar--toward the mirror--but jumped off when he saw another biker coming straight at him.

Another legendary barman moving a bit slower these days is Sean Mooney. Mooney’s pub is gone now, but plenty of others are preserving the heritage. Some of my favorites are not the city’s flashiest, but they have a personality--who’s usually mixing it up behind the bar or schmoozing out front with the crowd.

Perry’s at 1944 Union St. may be the best daytime saloon in the city when the chatty regulars convene. But steer clear at night when it’s chockablock with singles and conventioneers--unless, of course, you are one of those. The star attraction here is not the owner, Perry Butler, who rarely mingles with the drinkers, but one Michael McCourt, the head bartender-in-residence, who has been prowling the planks since day one--16 years ago. A silver-maned Irishman from Limerick, McCourt has been mentor and minister to some of the town’s better barkeepers, sermonizing on the importance of husky drinks and saloon etiquette.

Working under a weathered sign hawking “Temperance,” McCourt once opined to San Francisco Chronicle columnist Charles McCabe that most drinkers learned their manners from Bogart, Cagney and Edward G. Robinson. McCabe often wrote his column seated at the bar in Gino & Carlo’s saloon in North Beach.

Perry’s, a fairly faithful replica of a New York City saloon sans the grit, is warm and woodsy and outfitted with brass railings perfect for leaning and gabbing. Scuffed, white drugstore tiles are underfoot, and an ersatz stamped-tin ceiling is overhead. The bar itself is piled high with bottles of good California wines packed in ice and with platters of crackers and cheeses, and it’s stocked with every spirit imaginable, 18 beers (native-brewed Anchor Steam is on tap) and lined with bottled mixers and waters. Purists such as McCourt and his sidekick, Michael English, wouldn’t tolerate a modern “soda gun.” Old photos and vintage clippings cover the walls. Order a Bloody Mary, spike it with horseradish and spend half an hour walking, reading and soaking up history.

If you’re lucky, you’ll never have to buy a drink at Perry’s. McCourt, like most San Francisco bartenders, will take on all comers for a fast game of bar dice. But rookies beware: He rarely loses. He and his waiters, in fact, recently won a showdown with the boss over a computerized ordering system. Waiters toted terminals and punched in codes for food and drink. But the gadgetry was plagued with so many glitches and Butler was besieged with so many gripes that he finally threw in the bar towel. Once again, drinks are ordered at Perry’s the old-fashioned way--yelled out. Grins a jubilant McCourt: “ ‘Tis one large step backward for mankind.”

East on Union Street, over Russian Hill in North Beach, is the Washington Square Bar & Grill, known to locals as the Washbag. On an average news day, W S B & G, at 1707 Powell St., gets just slightly less local press than Mayor Dianne Feinstein, the Giants and the 49ers combined. The bar itself is nothing to look at; yet the rush-hour traffic there is so thick that you can’t find a bar stool after 4 p.m. or a spot to stand after 5. Some regulars carp about the food, but there’s almost never an empty table.

The reason for the Washbag’s popularity can be summed up in two words --Ed Moose. Co-owner (along with Sam Dietsch) Moose is a big Irish lug with a grin that could charm a hangman; he’s an ex-newspaperman who knows how to pamper an ego. It’s no real surprise, then, that the Washbag is the city’s power bar. The media and the literati come to gulp and gossip, the politicians hang out to lobby the press, and bankers, brokers, business chieftains and other mogul-sized merchants come in to see and be seen with both groups. The Washbag is the Elaine’s of San Francisco, says Examiner scrivener Warren Hinckle, who was elevated to celebrity status not long ago when the San Francisco police arrested him in the Chronicle city room on a warrant involving an expired dog license.

No surprise, then, that the W S B & G is the town’s best perch for people watching and stargazing. During last year’s Democratic convention, Moose recalls, David Brinkley, Tom Brokaw and Walter Cronkite were lunching at one table; Mike Royko, Jimmy Breslin, Herb Caen and Studs Terkel were at another, and Art Buchwald was noshing solo--all on the same day. Moose manages a globe-trotting slow-pitch softball team. The hard-partying troupe of customers has played in Paris, in New York, in a sheep field in Ireland and on a sandlot in Encino.

When visiting San Francisco, drop in on Capp’s Corner at 1600 Powell St., a block east of the Washbag in North Beach, and say hello to Joe Capp, a reformed bookie who should have been in movies. Sporting dark glasses, a fat stogie and a flashy pinkie ring, Joe looks like someone straight out of “Guys and Dolls.”

If you missed the Beat Generation--or if you simply miss it--Vesuvio Cafe at 255 Columbus Ave. will whisk you back 30 years. Over the years, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Theodore Dreiser and Dylan Thomas have held forth in this graffiti-decorated poet’s pub and unofficial art gallery. Throw on your grungiest dungarees and T-shirt, pick up a tome from the City Lights Bookstore a few steps away, curl up with one of Bob Horber’s stiff and fairly priced potables and--presto!--it’s 1957.

A great saloon will never fleece you. Leading a research mission recently, we dropped into the Albatross at 155 Columbus Ave.--which boasts a magnificent, hand-carved, flame-mahogany back bar. The truth seekers bellied up and ordered; the tab for seven drinks was $10.75. Alex and Tina Celi, who operate this very comfortable and rarely crowded watering hole, see no reason to charge more than $1.25 for a well drink. “It’s happy hour here all the time,” Alex beams.

Known as the Andromeda Saloon when it opened in 1907 on what was then the Barbary Coast, the Albatross employed none other than Jack Dempsey as a bouncer. Nowadays, a Rube Goldberg-type of contraption fashioned out of antique punkah wallah fans from Bombay keep things cool.

A couple of blocks away is the oldest bar in town, the Saloon at 1232 Grant St., which has survived 123 summers and the devastating 1906 earthquake and fire. Not that it was some kind of granite fortress; it was simply that the firefighters made sure that the bordellos and the bars didn’t go up in flames. Today, the Saloon, long of tooth, has one redeeming element--the best jukebox in North Beach. Pump in a few quarters and you’ll hear thrushes from Edith Piaf to Billie Holiday to Cyndi Lauper leap to life.

Later, taxi over to Pier 23 for some live music. During the day, this perfectly safe waterfront cafe, decorated in fishnet-chic, is packed to the gunwales with hungry sailors and pin-striped financial types. At night, with foghorns bleating, Joan Boyer swivels through the crowd delivering refreshments to an audience feasting on Dixieland and mellow jazz.

If there is a show-biz hangout in San Francisco, it’s Tosca at 242 Columbus Ave. in North Beach; it opened in 1918. Actors Sam Shepard, Richard Gere, Jack Nicholson and Harry Dean Stanton, pilot Chuck Yeager, Ed Bradley of “60 Minutes” and others cluster in the poolroom in the back, away from prying eyes.

The diva at Tosca is Jeanette Etheredge, who bills herself less grandly as the proprietor. Etheredge is the guardian of the two tall chrome caldrons, one at each end of the bar, that hiss and steam and spew forth sinfully rich cappuccinos laced with brandy and topped with chocolate at $2.50 apiece. She makes sure that the faithful old Wurlitzer, circa 1935, treats Ernest Tubbs, Jeanette MacDonald, Luciano Pavarotti and Maria Callas with equal respect. Bartender Mario Donnelli has been on the job at Tosca for 40 years.

Other fixtures are fading on the local saloon scene, some faster than others. The Buena Vista Cafe, where travel scribe Stan Delaplane midwifed the birth of Irish coffee on American soil, has been sold to W. R. Grace & Co., and, somehow, the spirit has waned.

The reigning “fern bar” today is Lord Jim’s, 1500 Broadway (at Polk Street, just around the corner from Africa’s. Owner Spiro Tampourantzis swears that he has sunk more than $1.5 million into some authentic Tiffany lamps (hanging among the copies), Victorian love seats and other Napoleonic and American antiques. Tampourantzis, who learned his trade as a bartender on Aristotle Onassis’ cruise ship, might just pour the best drink for the dollar in San Francisco. He sees that an ounce and a half of liquor gets into every drink, and he uses Cutty Sark or Chivas Regal as the house Scotch, and Jack Daniels as his well whiskey. Basic prices are $2.25--trimmed to $1.50 during a 4-to-7 p.m. happy hour, although some of the tariffs do not tumble.

West of Van Ness Ave., it’s 1947 year in and year out at the Caspian at 517 Clement St., a neighborhood bar that looks like a poor man’s Mocambo. Tony Tehrany fancies his establishment a discreet cocktail lounge, and from 4 p.m., platters of crackers and fruit and a bowl of caviar are brought out and constantly replenished.

Over in the Marina district, Mulhern’s at 3653 Buchanan St., was originally a warehouse built by the Catholic church in 1925. Bob Mulhern figured that the place was blessed, so he opted to turn it into a New York-style neighborhood hangout.

The famed No Name Bar in Sausalito (757 Bridgeway) grabs headlines with its annual event--a dry New Year’s Eve. Co-owner John Thompson, one of the more literate mixologists around, made history last year when Prohibition made a one-night comeback. The throngs partied on Calistoga water, alcohol-free Moussy brew from Switzerland, Regis vin blanc from California, apple cider, sparkling grape juice and champagne and cold duck with bubbles but no kick--proof positive that ambiance, not alcohol, makes the difference.

For me, the No Name is a wonderful family room where you can spend a leisurely Sunday afternoon sipping a robust Ramos Fizz, reading the out-of-town papers--thoughtfully provided by Thompson--or catching up on The New Yorker, Architectural Digest or John Kenneth Galbraith’s latest book. All--and more--are stocked in the bar’s lending library, built by a customer and donated for the pleasure of the patrons.