The Weeknighter

On the real

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culture@sfbg.com

THE WEEKNIGHTER Sutter Station doesn’t give a fuck. In fact, it has been steadfastly sitting on Market Street, not giving fucks since 1969. That’s before BART existed, before Tales of the City came out, and before the Beatles broke up. The United States was still tangled up in the Vietnam War when Sutter Station first opened its doors to show San Franciscans what not giving a fuck looked like.

Sutter Station is a weird and wild place. And I don’t mean weird like “Ooh, look at him, he’s walking down the street in a tutu.” And I don’t mean wild like a bunch of drunk bros screaming WOOO when their friend takes a shot. I mean weird in a disconcerting way and wild in the sense that you may genuinely get your ass kicked for acting stupid. Sutter Station is a working class bar somehow still in the heart of downtown San Francisco where Budweiser is always $3 and sometimes people get physically tossed out the back door. Those people generally deserve it, too.

There’s a legend about Sutter Station. There was once a lingerie show there. That’s it. That’s the whole legend. Stepping inside the joint you can tell that’s enough. Sutter Station is like if a Tenderloin dive bar walked over to the Financial District for a change of scenery and decided to stay. You ever sat down in a bar in the TL and said, “Gee, I wish there was a lingerie show here”? That’s my point. Some legends are legends for a reason.

Sutter Station isn’t all hard motherfuckers though, as the week draws on the crowd gets pretty diverse. People who say they “work in the FiDi” pop in for happy hour beverages, filling some of the tables with women in pencil skirts and men with their shirts tucked in. Both these genders wear North Face fleeces for some reason.

You do actually see some of these same people during other hours as well. Sometimes the ones with a drinking “preoccupation” dip in for a liquid lunch where they know none of their colleagues will find them, while others hang out far after happy hour tipsily making friends with people they’ll ignore when passing on the street the next day. Sutter Station attracts all kinds for different reasons. It attracts me for the free pizza they put out on Fridays.

As real bars keep disappearing, only to be replaced by more and more craft cocktail joints, the importance of spots like Sutter Station grows. Bars are supposed to be where you unwind, have a drink, and let the day slide off you. They are there to help make merry, make friends, make lovers, make amends. I like a really nice cocktail just as much as anyone, but even more so, I like just having a drink and seeing what happens from there. The beauty of Sutter Station is that anything can happen from there. As spots like Sutter Station become harder to find in San Francisco, I can’t help but give a fuck. Luckily, Sutter Station doesn’t.

Stuart Schuffman aka Broke-Ass Stuart is a travel writer, poet, and TV host. You can find his online shenanigans at www.brokeassstuart.com

 

Tapping back

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culture@sfbg.com

THE WEEKNIGHTER Weekends are for amateurs. Weeknights are for pros. That’s why each week Broke-Ass Stuart (www.brokeassstuart.com) will be exploring a different San Francisco bar, bringing you stories about the places and people who make San Francisco one of the most phenomenal cities in the world. Who wants a drink?

Sometimes I wish I could become unstuck in time — you know, in a Vonnegutian sense — and pop back into my own body at different times of my life. I’d love to once again see and feel who I was when I first visited the Gold Cane (1569 Haight, SF. 415-626-1112), back when I was 21, back when I was new to San Francisco, back when San Francisco was, well, different than it is now. They say Virginia is for lovers. Back then San Francisco was for freaks and weirdos. And I felt like I was both.

If I could pop into my own body that night when I was first visiting the Gold Cane, it would be 2002 and I’d be 21. My bed at the time was an air mattress and I slept in a living room that I shared with my friend Mani in a two-bedroom flat at Haight and Central. My hair was three different colors, my pants hung to my ass, and I wore an absurdly long hemp belt that dangled past my knees.

Walking in that night, I saw a barroom split in half: the right side was where the bar was and the left was full of tables. Beer signs and Giants paraphernalia littered the walls, as did old photos and art. Some mean fucker was running the pool table in the back and drunk people were doing drunk people things. It was perfect, and is pretty much exactly the same way today.

That night I met a pretty blond girl whose name I’ll never remember. We flirted for awhile, and I got her number, and when I left I imaged myself and the pretty blonde girl having a sweet summer fling and her letting me sometimes use her Internet to check my email. The place I was staying didn’t have Internet, and in 2002 W-Fi didn’t exist. I never ended up seeing the pretty blonde girl again because the next week I met my first love on the 71 bus.

If I could become unstuck in time I’d pop back into myself on the twentysomething-ish time I visited the Gold Cane. It was my first SantaCon and I’d turned 29 the night before. I’d somehow managed to lose everyone in my group and met some new friends at The Page. We got some food at The Little Chihuahua and then meandered up to the Gold Cane because it felt like the right thing to do. Walking in that night I saw an Irishman with white hair behind the bar, a jukebox playing impeccable tunes, and drunk people doing drunk people things. It was perfect and is pretty much exactly the same way today.

That night I met a pretty brown-haired girl. We drank and talked and laughed and spilled shit all over our Santa costumes. San Francisco was still full of freak and weirdos and we were of that ilk. The pretty brown-haired girl and I hit it off, but I had a girlfriend so I smartly dipped before I did something stupid. I’m not gonna say that being drunk in the Gold Cane makes you do stupid things, but it certainly doesn’t stop you from doing them either.

I dream about time travel a lot, both throughout the centuries and throughout my own life. If I’m time traveling within the Gold Cane I can do both, considering the bar has been around since 1926. I know the Gold Cane has some really cool history but I’m always too drunk to find out what it is, so I just tell my own stories instead.

Stuart Schuffman aka Broke-Ass Stuart is a travel writer, poet, and TV host. You can find his online shenanigans at www.brokeassstuart.com

 

Aloha, partner

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culture@sfbg.com

THE WEEKNIGHTER Weekends are for amateurs. Weeknights are for pros. That’s why each week Broke-Ass Stuart (www.brokeassstuart.com) will be exploring a different San Francisco bar, bringing you stories about the places and people who make San Francisco one of the most phenomenal cities in the world. Who wants a drink?

It was nighttime in North Beach and that series of New York Magazine articles had come out earlier in the day. You know the ones: They were saying how San Francisco was more New York than New York, and then demonstrated it by needling us on how tech was ruining our wonderful town. I was bummed.

It was like reading about the reasons they closed Tu-Lan a while back: You knew terrible things were happening, but up until then you were able to suspend your disbelief. I’d finished a vodka soda at Mr. Bing’s with a friend and then decided to see what else I could drink my way into. I imagine it’s that same sentiment that lands most people in Hawaii West (729 Vallejo, SF. 415-362-3220).

Even though I’d miraculously never been there before, this divey North Beach tiki bar felt like home as soon as I walked in. A guy was face-timing with his girlfriend while playing himself at pool, soul and funk emanated from the Music Choice channel on the TV, and a legless foosball table sat abandoned on a side table. It was my kind of rundown, my kind of weird. The bartender asked my name and then introduced me to the six or seven other patrons sitting at the bar. Their friendliness was overwhelming.

“How the fuck have I never been in here before?” I asked myself as I looked at the scores of pool trophies, tiny drink umbrellas, and the laminated poster suggesting a slew of different tropical cocktails. Hawaii West had been around for roughly 50 years, the bartender told me, but she didn’t know much about its history. I gave her my info and asked her to have the owner contact me so I could find out.

A few days later I got a text from Nolan Kellet, Hawaii West’s owner, a union roofer who’s been a building inspector on military bases throughout the US for the past decade. In our conversation he told me how his grandmother moved from Hawaii to SF in the early ’60s and opened the Aloha Café. His father, one-time president of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1225, reopened the place in 1969 naming it Hawaii West, while his mother worked there serving longshoremen in the ’70s and ’80s and Academy of Art students in the ’90s.

“I remember as young boy in the early ’70s,” Kellet told me, “Hells’ Angels frequented the bar until the police station moved in across the street. I remember motorcycles lined up and down both sides of Vallejo Street. Wish I had some pics. They gave me rides through the Broadway tunnel and around Fisherman’s Wharf at a young age.”

Old bars are like the rings inside a tree trunk, they’re witnesses to history and become a record of it simply by existing. Hawaii West exemplifies this brilliantly. Walking in, you know great stories live there, you just have to dig a little deeper to get them.

“You guys get busy?” I asked the bartender as I was leaving. “Not really,” she told me. “You can pretty much come here with a group of friends anytime and take over the place.” I walked out of there drunk and smiling because I realized New York Magazine had missed a crucial point: We still have Hawaii West.

Stuart Schuffman aka Broke-Ass Stuart is a travel writer, poet, and TV host. You ca find his online shenanigans at BrokeAssStuart.com