The Myth of Fernet

The R Bar, a plain facade situated just between Nikki's Oriental Massage and Amanda for Hair at the dodgy end of the Tendernob, is at the center of the Fernet-Branca phenomenon, and, as such, is something of a miraculous place. Coming through the doorway, you pass beneath a shelf lined with Fernet empties, which stretches into a long, narrow room -- a polished wooden bar on the left, a few small tables on the right, and a small lounge in back. The jukebox plays a steady gale of kitschy, nostalgic butt-rock -- Mötley Crüe, Guns N' Roses, and AC/DC -- a soundtrack suited to the tastes of the quarter-life-crisis patrons who greet each other with hands on the smalls of backs, fraternal shoulder pats, and the too-friendly hugs of people whose bonds are largely based on getting shitfaced in common physical spaces. Dim and loud, the R Bar looks a lot like any other bar in any other neighborhood in San Francisco on a Friday at midnight, except that it's Monday, just past 10 p.m., and this is Fernet-Branca ground zero.

That might be because when you take inventory of the room, it has all brands of Fernet drinker: after-work servers from top-flight restaurants around the city -- hosts and managers from Michael Mina and Myth, Crustacean, Cortez, and Town Hall -- weathered Italian barflies, and the underground fashionista set. The Fernet family.

You saddle up to the bar to yell orders at Chris Fogarty -- the only staff tonight -- and have a few shots of Fernet with ginger backs; soon you're part of the family, too. If every bar in San Francisco has a story of Fernet, the one in the R Bar seems most complete.

As Fogarty does a quick shot with some friends, it starts to rain outside and a cool, clean breeze enters the bar though the open doors and under the shelf of empty green bottles, bringing to mind the parting words of Branca's spokesman, Ricardo Destesano. "I say to San Francisco: I give you my baby! Enjoy! Take the good care!"

The family members in the bar hold their drinks carefully in the air, look each other in the eye, and make a toast -- to each other, to Fernet-Branca, to San Francisco.