Just for you Neal, we’re offering up a few of our suggestions for next year. Thanks for thinking of us.
Truck
1900 Folsom Street
Thursdays (Poser) and Fridays are both popular nights at this otherwise low-key but well loved haunt that serves fried food and has an extra-cute staff. Also, Sunday night drag show Cocktailgate, hosted by Suppositori Spelling, is quickly becoming one of the best in town.
The Bar (on Castro)
If SF has anything equivalent to consistently crowded, loud and drunk-y WeHo and Chelsea lounges featured in Genre‘s piece like Here, g, Barracuda, it’s the good old BOC. The 2-4-1 happy hours bring in the drunks, the bartenders are the most professional around, and Monday 80s night and Wednesday’s Booty Call are both cool enough in our book. We can even forgive the consistent stale-beer smell that wafts out of the place as we walk by.
Deco Lounge
510 Larkin Street
Two monthly parties for a dressed-down and Converse-clad crowd, The Rod and FSLD (Fuck Shit Let’s Dance), characterize this space, but it’s also host to Bearracuda and Starfucker as well as more neighborhoody nights like the amateur strip show on Sundays hosted by Ginger Snap.
The Transfer
198 Church Street
The weekly skinny-jean fest that is Frisco Disco, since it moved here last year, is coming to define the place which has for a while occupied that ‘gray area’ between gay bar and straight bar that the kids like so much. But even gayer stuff happens all the time, like Tuesday night’s Chilli Dog and Big Top the last Sunday of every month.
Moby Dick
4049 18th Street
This would be the “Cheers” equivalent, if we had one, and it’s the come-as-you-are place where the cocktails are cheap and come in big mugs. There are videos to watch when you’re bored, the poor fish in the saltwater tank all die slow deaths while the music reverberates through the water every night, and no one’s going to show any disrespect if you get really fucked up and fall down in this joint. It’s just par for the course.
Aunt Charlie’s Lounge
133 Turk Street
The carpet probably hasn’t been replaced since the mid-70s, there’s one of those flammable-stuffed-animal crane games up front, and Chris the toothless bartender is the sweetest thing to happen to the Tenderloin since the advent of crack. Don’t miss the Hot Boxxx Girls, Fri-Sat 10 PM. Drag elders Gina LaDivina and Vicki Marlane are institutions unto themselves.
9th & Harrison
It’s legendary, it’s open late, and it continues to host a bunch of fun weekly and monthly parties, including Trannyshack (the weekly party ends in August), Lucky Pierre, the new David Harness Wednesday dance fest Manifesto, and a new 90s party on Mondays called Club 99.
The Eagle
398 12th Street
Another institution, and a favorite among the bears and leather queens and everyone who enjoys a nice, outdoor Sunday beer bust. Also, a nice mellow place to have a beer, shoot some pool and have someone offer to drink your piss in the bathroom.
Oh, and if you want a douchey place that looks like an LA bar and was a bit over-designed, try out Lime, and there are of course well-loved neighborhood standbys like The Pilsner Inn, The Lookout, The Hole in the Wall, Marlena’s and Trax.
*Ed. note: the linked web version of the article is not complete, however the print article, which includes sleepy gay towns Boston and Houston, also omits San Francisco.
RELATED:
Gay Bars Dying Across Country? Not In San Francisco.
Beyond the Castro: The Sword Guide to San Francisco’s Polk Gulch
The Best Bars in America (Genre)
Why do you feel that the only way to promote the bars/clubs of San Francisco is to denigrate bars in other cities?
Complete lack of class.
Good afternoon. Like anyone else, there are days I feel beautiful and days I don’t, and when I don’t, I do something about it.
I am from Vatican and too poorly know English, tell me right I wrote the following sentence: “archipelago typically extended a liquidity order and in 2005 was clarified by the nyse.”
Thank you very much :P. Reynold.