Specs’ Twelve Adler Museum Cafe

📍 North Beach 💰 $ 🍸 Dive Bar / Museum Bar

The Verdict

"Go before 7pm on a weekday to actually see the maritime artifacts and taxidermy covering every wall. After that it's standing room only. Order beer or whiskey, not cocktails, and bring cash."

What you need to know

You could walk past Specs’ a hundred times and never notice it. The entrance sits in a narrow alley off Columbus Avenue. William Saroyan Place, though the old timers still call it Adler. Push through the door and you enter a world that operates by its own rules.

The History

Richard “Specs” Simmons opened the bar on April 26, 1968. His wife Sonia’s birthday. He’d come out from Boston twenty years earlier, worked as a merchant marine and sheet metal worker, and tended bar at Vesuvio across the street before deciding to open his own place. The nickname came from the glasses he wore on construction sites.

The building at 12 Adler already had more history than most neighborhoods. Built around 1850, it had been a Chinese temple, a fishermen’s social club, a speakeasy during Prohibition, a servicemen’s bar during World War II, a bohemian hangout, and one of San Francisco’s first lesbian bars, Tommy’s Place, before Specs took it over. The walls seem to remember all of it.

Legend has it Specs funded the bar with royalties from the song “M.T.A.,” which became a hit for the Kingston Trio after they heard Simmons perform it. The connection is murky, but the story is too good not to repeat.

What You’ll Find

Every inch of wall space is covered with artifacts collected over decades. Labor union banners, Spanish Civil War propaganda, Northwest Coast indigenous art, nautical relics, photographs of old San Francisco, a walrus appendage of notable size, and a life sized sarcophagus carved by a former employee with Specs’ face on it. There’s no official catalog. The current owners, Specs’ daughter Elly and granddaughter Maralisa, keep track of most things in their heads.

The crowd matches the décor: unpredictable and interesting. Poets reading “Howl” at the bar next to tourists who wandered in from Columbus Avenue. Longshoremen and musicians. People who’ve been drinking here for forty years and people who just discovered the place. Thelonious Monk drank here. Herb Caen drank here. You can drink here too.

What to Know

The bartenders are unionized. Have been since 1968. They can refuse to make any drink they don’t want to make and refuse service to anyone for any reason. Order something simple and be polite about it. The food menu consists of cheese and saltines, served on a tray for seven bucks. It’s hilarious and somehow works.

In 1969, a year after opening, Specs decided to join some buddies sailing from San Francisco to Los Angeles. The boat capsized just outside the Golden Gate Bridge around 1:30 AM. They bobbed in the cold water drinking gin and holding up a lantern until Humphrey Bogart’s former boat, the Santana, spotted them and pulled them out. The framed newspaper article is on the wall if you want proof.

Specs passed away in 2016 after battling Parkinson’s, but his bar endures. The city named it a Legacy Business the same year. One of nine in the first class. The family plans to keep it exactly as it’s always been: a sanctuary for anyone who needs one.

📍 Location: This bar is in North Beach. Explore the neighborhood →