The building on the northwest corner of Haight and Masonic was put up in 1903 as a grocery store. By 1925 it was the Cloverleaf Market. In the late 1920s it became a Shumate’s pharmacy. None of those are why we’re part of this walk.
In the late 1960s the building became the restaurant of Patricia Donna Mallon, a San Francisco native and burlesque performer who went by Magnolia Thunderpussy. She ran a late-night delivery service of erotic desserts and presided over the room like the den mother of the local weirdos. She was, by reputation, something between a proto-Bette Midler and a stand-alone San Francisco institution. She died in 1996.
In 1997, publican Dave McLean opened Magnolia Pub and Brewery in the same space and named it after her. Every year he brewed a barley wine called Old Thunderpussy. Magnolia was one of San Francisco’s first craft brewpubs and ran for more than two decades before being sold to Colorado’s New Belgium Brewing in 2017. The brewery shut down in August 2024.
It came back two months later. In December 2024, three local operators (Kevin Kynoch, Brian Reccow, and Brandon Phillips) took it over with brewmaster Jon Taylor. They’re working through Dave McLean’s original recipe book.