Toronado San Francisco

A great great place for sure with Pliny The Elder always on tap! I hope whomever buys it keeps both the past and current spirit of it all intact.

Lots of love for lower haight for me.

I've always loved Toro, despite some of the bartenders being jerkoffs. 

The day Jerry died I spent the entire day playing Johnny Cash and the Ramones on the jukebox. 

From what I understand from a people in the know is that the place needs major upgrades and it won't be easy to find a buyer to just carry the torch. Not at the price they are asking.

We will see. 

***Simple Twist Of Fate***

I've enjoyed my times there, but I always felt a vibe that was juuuuust a bit too tragic cool/faux San Franciscan for me. Like it was trying just a bit too hard to be what it already was naturally. Or maybe more accurately, like what many of those in the bar were trying just a bit too hard to be.

Which is a common thing especially among young people and big cities, particularly young people who are living in but not raised in that big city.

Trying too hard.

Still, Toranado is a cool place and I hope it stays open.

RIP Rosamunde's...

Rosamunde still has 24th/Mission location...

Did anyone else read this as

tornado San Francisco?!

Lol hahaha

I'm a goober 

Shout out to another notable SF dive (in the Richmond District)  -- Trader Sam. If you ever need to get the truth out of someone, or maybe even seduce them, take them there and order one of their tropical concoctions. It was like a liquid Quallude. 

"Geary Boulevard’s Trad’r Sam poured its first mai tai in 1937—the same year the Golden Gate Bridge opened to traffic—making it America’s oldest tiki bar. The love runs as hot as a lava flow for this irreplaceable dive, so when the bar closed for renovations in September—overshadowed by a bitter family feud—regulars were concerned the 86-year-old, self-described “Polynesian paradise” might never reopen. But they needn’t have worried. ...  The things that made Trad’r Sam beloved are still the same: the deep bench of regulars, the horseshoe-shaped bar that invites conversation, the multi-ingredient cocktails for under $10 and that inscrutable drink menu. 

The cocktail list describes the potions by their impacts rather than through their ingredients: The Pisco Punch will “smack you right in the head,” the Mickey Feather Stone will have you “plead insanity afterwards” and Tahitian Deep Purple “makes you see rainbows.”

https://www.vivalazone.org/other-stuff/toronado-san-francisco

Have to agree with Lance on this one. Much preferred Zeitgeist, Lucky 13, Albion, or Finnegan's Wake. Hell one of my friends kid is named Finnegan after that bar. RIP Chillie. 

Also if you are out at Trader Sam's you have to stop by Tommy's Mexican restaurant for some truly mediocre food and the worlds best stocked Tequila bar. Say high to Julio if he is there he redefined the Margarita which is now known as the Tommy's Margarita. Saw a Tommy's Marg on a menu in Rome last year and it blew my mind. Julio showed up once for 7 AM photo shoot at Kezar Stadium for all of the Best of Bay winners with a couple of 5ths of Tequila and 30 shot glasses. Good times 

Thankfully I lived within walking distance and down the hill from Trader Sam and Tommy's Tequila. Stumbling downhill is so much easier. 

Not so much just dive bars because they had music - a shout out to Last Day Saloon (upper Haight) and Full Moon Saloon (Clement St).

There was also that bar near the Marina on Lombard where Tommy Castro used to play regularly with leopard skin covered booths -- I forgot the name.

Of course the North Beach dive bars deserve special mention, most notably the Saloon and Grant and Green.

The era I was occasionally going to Toronado was the late '80s/early '90s, before the (perceived) evil "tech bro" apocalypse happened but right when the craft brew "beer snob" era was taking off.

I think for me it was the ("no Grateful Dead on the jukebox", Go home and work on your web site!") pseudo rules, what I perceived as a superior attitude about no hard liquor and the look I got when I ordered a Heineken that set a tone.

I must admit though that I've never felt particularly comfortable in most any bar and overall I did have good times with my beer snob friends who loved to go there.

(Oh shit, those friends were young guys working tech jobs and making good money; they were dreaded TECH BRO'S!!! I've always been behind the curve on who I'm supposed to hate).

Another SF bar that I went to occasionally in the '90s that also had a very particular and serious vibe was The Tempest off Howard & 5th, and while I never felt particularly comfortable there either that place came across to me as being just what it was - a true dive bar frequented by city bike messengers. Those people also carried a strong persona that was by degree an affectation, but I admired them because they were all balls out crazy, most of those people definitely walked their talk.

Anyway, these are all just my perceptions, and perceptions are almost always based on limited experiences & point of view, like the modern prevailing perception that SF was awesome until the '90s when the "tech bro's" came in and ruined the city and should be hated simply because they're young, well educated, talented and have good jobs, when in reality, like all generations, some were and are arrogant assholes but most are just young and excited to be living in the big city.

Like my father's perception of SF. He immigrated there as a 15-year-old in 1930 and he was convinced that San Francisco went to hell in the '60s when the "dirty beatniks" (he never accepted the term hippie) ruined the city, while his father, who immigrated to SF in 1916 was convinced that San Francisco was never the same after they built "those damned bridges" and outsiders began flooding in.

Cities are always changing while people & our perceptions generally don't; at any given time we're all at least a little bit right but in the big picture we're usually all mostly wrong. I'm as guilty of that as anybody, but I'm trying Ringo, I'm trying real hard.

Now back to the original topic - I haven't been to Toronado in many years, but despite my narrow, limited perceptions I'm sure it's still a cool place frequented by many cool people and I'm rooting for it to carry on, even if I'd still get tarred & feathered for ordering a Heineken.

im kinda curious if the dive bar kinda model just isnt as popular as it used to be. i dont really know anyone in my age group aside from gay people going to gay bars who regularly goes out to hang out in bars like these. when i was younger and going out at night with friends, people went to gatherings/parties at peoples houses, nightclubs with dj's, raves, bars that played live music, beer gardens, places with  decent food etc. the only local bar in my town that was just a bar was like a place where all the losers hung out...a suggestion to go hang out at the bar would have been a sarcastic joke rather than an actual suggestion. 

A little tidbit, the bar phone at the bar was tapped by the DEA. Back then after 6 months the phone co let them know it was a rule of PAC bell at the time. It was called dead end, and they were also running the lot looking for good Old LSD. They did get one of our crew fool mailed some sheets to ohio. They got none of us out of that phone line tap, they also taped a couple friends phones in Oakland. We also went there after Jerry at the Warfield during the Rodney king riots. They were closed but open.....we Have drilled a well there cool clear water, but you can't ever tell 

Vesuvio's, North Beach. Dive Bars Rule.

Since we're talking about SF bars I'll mention the only other bar in SF where I've spent any significant time, the Connecticut Yankee, and I mention that with nothing but positives.

I don't think it's considered a dive bar, to my limited knowledge I'd call it a classic neighborhood bar, and since it's located in a neighborhood that doesn't carry any specific reputation my experience has always been that it's simply a welcoming place with no airs or pretensions, where local folks are just having a good time.

I first came upon it because our very own zoner band the Dedicated Maniacs used to play there, and that was always a real good time, but then when the Giants were in the World Series in 2012 I was on my way to a favorite hang right on the ocean in Half Moon Bay to watch Game 3 in Detroit when there was a major traffic jam getting over the hill. No way I was going to make first pitch and I only had about 30 minutes to come up with an alternate plan.

Thinking that I was closer to SF than home and not knowing anyplace to go on the Peninsula I thought of the Yankee and figured I could make it there by first pitch, which I did. Needless to say, the Giants won the game, I had a totally great time and because of that I naturally felt it would be bad mojo to not go back there for Game 4, so the next night I drove back up to the Yankee, the Giants won that game and the series and a bond with that place was sealed with me forever more.

Maybe it's just a bar like any other, but I've had many good times there and a few personal lifetime memories are imbued into the walls of that place, so the Connecticut Yankee will always be on my short list of great bars.

I rarely went to bars, but when I worked at the Dickens Faire in that huge warehouse in the Embarcadero, there was a bar across the street called 'Rossi's Bar and Grill'. It was nothing special but I loved their tag line, 'Breakfast Lunch & Cocktails'.  As appealing to me as a catchy line at a bait and sporting goods store in Eureka when I lived around there, 'Beer, Wine and Ammunition'.

Roarshock, did you go to Rossi's?

Connecticut Yankee is also a serious Red Sox bar. The early 2000's were a good time to be a Red Sox/Giants fan. Thankfully they never met in the series so I didn't have to choose.

Tempest was also the SF Chronicle bar back in the day when I worked there, but I wouldn't call it a dive bar anymore. Went there after one of the last Phil shows at the Warfield and I would say it now has faux dive bar decor, but I was enhanced so maybe it was me. 

Roarshock, I worked in the ticket office from the very first Renaissance Faire (in L.A.), through the Dickens Faires and Renaissance Fairs of the mid-'70s. I think that's when I stopped.

I think I only heard the great Dedicated Maniacs at TXR. And they were great! Only 3D met hedspace, Canyon ad Mully at TXR, too. And you!

Going to go out a small limb that a Crypto tech bro with the name of Orion Parrott, is one major douchebag. A ToronadoCash crypto coin? Oye vey.

I heard that he actually lowered his bid as they got close to the sale being actualized, basically trying to play Dave and his wife. Scary that he might have been successful if he actually had the money.