Bars

Two hundred people drinking in a gravel lot behind a Mission dive bar. The burgers are cheap, the beer list is long, and nobody cares what you look like. San Francisco’s best beer garden since 1977.

A tiki bar in the basement of the Fairmont Hotel where it rains indoors every twenty minutes and the band floats on a lagoon. San Francisco has been escaping reality here since 1945.

The bar sits on what used to be a ship. The Arkansas ran aground during the Gold Rush, and instead of salvaging it, someone built a saloon inside. The drinks have been flowing since 1851.

Four speakeasy rooms behind an unmarked door at Jones and O’Farrell. Reservation required for the Main Bar, Russell Room, and Wilson & Wilson. Walk-ins can try the Library with the password “books.” Operating as a bar since 2006 in a building that housed an actual Prohibition-era speakeasy.

North Beach institution since 1919. Tosca invented its boozy house cappuccino to survive Prohibition and has hosted Hunter S. Thompson, Bono, and a century’s worth of San Francisco characters ever since.

A Potrero Hill rock club since 1991. The room holds 250 people, the stage is at eye level, and the back patio is the best spot between sets. Closing December 2026.

Live blues, funk, and soul seven nights a week on Fillmore Street. Small room, loud music, packed dance floor by the second set. One of the last clubs carrying the neighborhood’s music history forward.