Bars & Clubs >>

• Readers' Poll Winners
  Best New Club Infusion Lounge Best Dance Club Mighty Best Club DJs Adrian and Mysterious D Best Jazz Club Yoshi’s Best Club Theme Night ‘Bootie’ Best Strip Club Lusty Lady Best Bar Zeitgeist Best Brewpub Magnolia Best Cocktail Bar Alembic Best Wine Bar Hotel Biron Best Pickup... More >>
• Best Jukebox of the Future
  Ecast
  This year, you can keep your quarters in your pocket: The category of Best Jukebox has gone digital. As evidenced by flatscreens in bars all over the city, the old analog jukebox is officially retro. A local company, Ecast, seems to have a lock on the new juke. One of its interactive screens now... More >>
• Best Hip-Hop Club Night
  'Pacific Standard Time' at 330 Ritch
  Most hip-hop club nights are either too underground or too commercial. But 330 Ritch's "Pacific Standard Time" is that rare exception: Like Goldilocks' porridge, it's just right. Now in its fourth year, the club night — hosted by DJ Sake One and co-promoted by Ankh Marketing — has... More >>
• Best Club DJ
  J-Boogie
  When local legend J-Boogie is on the decks, you know you're gonna hear a set that's eclectic, diverse, inspired, multicultural, and interesting, no matter what the evening's theme or style happens to be. Well-versed in hip-hop, reggae, house, drum 'n' bass, Latin music, and downtempo, the Boogie... More >>
• Best Club Promoter
  Hakobo
  Chances are, if there's a hot, happening, and future-thinking trend in clubland, Hakobo and his Fresco parties introduced it to Frisco. He is the man responsible for bringing venues like Pink, Mighty, and Mezzanine such infamous parties as "Disco Not Disco" (which offers free admission "for... More >>
• Best New Club
  Triple Crown
  Even though it's still less than a year old, Triple Crown is a triple threat as a nightlife establishment, with tasty food, strong drinks, and great music. Its open-minded musical policy has attracted some of the more notable disco, house, electro, and funk DJs in town to spin at recurring happy... More >>
• Best Worldbeat Dance Night
  Last Tuesday of the month at the Elbo Room
  So, you've heard of Fela Kuti, one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, right? The Nigerian political activist and father of Afrobeat (an infusion of jazz, funk, and psychedelic rock) died in '97, but his legend lives on at the Elbo Room every last Tuesday of the month, when... More >>
• Best Lowbrow Dance Club
  Delirium
  Say the phrase "dance club," and many people's minds conjure the following: blinding laser lights, lines down the block, and drinks so spendy they'll flip your mortgage if you order more than two. But not at Delirium. That's because it's a dive bar that just happens to have a dancefloor... More >>
• Best Place to Hear the Worst Music
  'Worst Music Ever' at the Knockout
  At the Knockout's free party "Worst Music Ever," held the first Thursday of every month, Dimitri Dickinson, Ryan Poulsen, and friends drop the bombs that usually drive people away from bars. Here they spin clunkers like Chris De Burgh, Smash Mouth, and Robbie Nevil to court drinkers with a... More >>
• Best Semi-Nude Dance Party
  Club Neon's Valentine's Day Underwear Party
  What better way to spend Valentine's Day than with your pants off? In public, no less. Every year, the folks behind Club Neon flip the switch on that old Jermaine Stewart classic and prove that, while you don't have to take your clothes off to have a good time, it sure as hell helps. Since 2005,... More >>
• Best Dance Club Revival
  Paradise Lounge
  It may seem insane to open a nightclub during the current economic freefall, but that just makes the people behind the newly refurbished Paradise Lounge that much cooler. The venerable SOMA venue's latest incarnation is similar to its last one — as a dance club. (Locals with long memories... More >>
• Best Place to Pretend You're a Redneck
  Bloodhound
  It's appropriate that a state in which Clint Eastwood once held elected office should pay some kind of homage to the cultural trappings of the Wild West, but San Francisco, obsessed with its self-endowed status as an island of ironic high culture, has pitifully few entertainment offerings in... More >>
• Best Setting for a David Lynch Remake of Carrie
  The Make-Out Room
  There's retro kitsch ... and then there's just plain weird. The Make-Out Room's choice of interior design most definitely falls into the latter category. With its prom-gone-wrong decor (streamers hang from the ceiling like innards from a piñata that was gutted in the late '50s, then... More >>
• Best Place to Pretend Drum Machines Never Ruined Music (1 Comment)
  Sunday Nights at the Attic
  Maybe we're getting old, but we've been feeling more and more curmudgeonly every time we settle into some club or bar that blares thumping techno so loud we can't even think straight, much less talk to anyone. Doesn't anyone remember when crooners like Al Green and Curtis Mayfield were all the... More >>
• Best Place to See Little Bands Before They Blow Up
  'Popscene'
  The older we get, the younger the scene becomes, and the longer this club night has had its finger on the pulse of alternative pop. Founded by Aaron Axelsen and Omar Perez, the intrepid party claims to be the longest-running indie weekly in the country. For more than a decade, "Popscene" has... More >>
• Best Basement for Shows
  Li Po
  Li Po is one of the few "anything goes" bars left in this NIMBY city. Want to end your Sundays swaying to rare soul with the Sweater Funk DJs? Craving fractured psych-pop one weekend and ear-bleeding noise the next? Scouting out tweaked techno, "Night Kitchen" style? It's all hiding in the Li Po... More >>
• Best New Gay Club Theme Night
  'Tiara Sensation' at the Stud
  The late, lamented "Trannyshack" drag club is credited with inventing what might be called "creative drag" or "art drag"; many of its acts involved independent music, genderbending unusual even for drag, and a new sense of inclusion. Instead of disappearing, though, the 'Shack seems to have... More >>
• Best Gay Bar
  The Cinch
  Before the Castro became the throbbing heart of contemporary gaydom, the Friends of Dorothy tended to congregate in Polk Gulch — the stretch of Polk Street between Geary and Union that now retains only a few marks of its long-gone days as the city's queer hub. The Cinch is probably the... More >>
• Best Fusion Lounge
  AsiaSF
  San Francisco has no shortage of drag queens, but only AsiaSF, a popular upscale Asian fusion restaurant in SOMA, has its own fleet of "gender illusionists." Dressed to the nines in miniskirts and heels, these waitresses/performers don't just pass: They make genetically female diners jealous.... More >>
• Best Dive Bar
  Ha-Ra Club
  The ingredients that go into a great dive bar are simple and inviolable: minimal clientele of the somber, scotch-sipping variety; no-nonsense barkeeps with nothing but time; shadowy, spilled-gin atmo to burn. The Ha-Ra meets the standards and then some. Walking into the joint is like feeling... More >>
• Best North Beach Bar
  Specs' Twelve Adler Museum Cafe
  Specs' is one of the few bars left where you can ask for a martini and get a cold glass of gin and a little vermouth without having to answer a bunch of damn fool questions. That alone would qualify this venerable North Beach hideaway for übersaloon status, but there's so much more to the... More >>
• Best Hipster Mission Bar
  The Uptown
  So you're a new hipster in town. Or you've just decided that you want to have sex with a hipster. Where should you go? Try the Uptown, particularly on Wednesdays when beer is extracheap. You'll know you've arrived when you begin to feel vaguely uncomfortable and notice all the fixies chained up,... More >>
• Best New Hotel Bar
  Clock Bar in the St. Francis Hotel
  The hotel lobby bar is a subgenre of saloon unique unto itself: a rendezvous, usually in a bustling downtown location, where friends, lovers, and co-workers can meet over a relaxing cocktail in an elegant but convenient setting. The year-old Clock Bar at the St. Francis is the perfect mixture of... More >>
• Best Bar to Bridge the Generation Gap
  3300 Club
  Despite San Francisco's cornucopia of bars, watering holes, and dives, few drinking establishments in the city can tout a balanced age demographic. Face facts: Most bars cater to a younger set. A few have a token old guy, sometimes welcome, sometimes not. But the 3300 Club in the Mission runs... More >>
• Best Bus Stop with a Liquor License
  KoKo Cocktails
  Missed your bus? Sucks for you. But if you're lucky, you're currently cursing Muni at the intersection of Van Ness and Geary — in which case your bus stop conveniently abuts KoKo Cocktails. This small, cool Tenderloin drinkery sits a mere six feet from the Muni shelter, so nicotine... More >>
• Best Lifestyle Randomizer
  Argus Lounge
  Predictability is good when it comes to trains, planes, and paycheck schedules. But sometimes your social life gets in a rut — and that's when a bar like the Argus comes in handy. Unless your brain gets regular RSS event feeds, it's almost impossible to predict what will be happening... More >>
• Best Place for a 'Whis-Skee' Mixer
  Buckshot Restaurant, Bar, and Gameroom
  Sick of slick pseudopimps, overdressed suburban moneyslingers, and other wannabe players? The Buckshot appeals to a different breed of player — those for whom the "game" doesn't involve throwing Benjamins at makeup-slathered skanks, but throwing some rounds of Skee-Ball instead. If it were... More >>
• Best Happy Hour
  McCormick & Kuleto's Seafood Restaurant
  The happy hour concept has been part of the San Francisco barhopping experience since the Silver Boom of the 1860s, when the saloons along Montgomery beckoned customers with groaning boards of oysters, hams, and other thirst-inducing snacks. The tradition continues at Ghirardelli Square's... More >>
• Best Place to Make Your Own Wine
  Crushpad
  Whether you're a wine connoisseur or vineyard pretender, Crushpad is an urban DIY winery in Potrero Hill that welcomes all types. At Crushpad, you don't actually get to stomp grapes in barrels, but hobbyists and newbies can make their own bottles of wine at $19 a pop (or $5,000 for 300 bottles)... More >>
• Best Liquor Selection
  Rosewood
  Make your way to Rosewood's speakeasylike entrance, settle into one of the retro-hip Thonet barstools, and behold 10 dozen bottles in all shapes and sizes, arranged in two backlit rows like so many glittering, multihued works of art. These cordials, aperitifs, digestifs, and (occasionally... More >>
• Best Belgian Beer Resource
  La Trappe
  Belgium produces the widest selection of unique, distinctive artisanal beers in the world — as many as 800 varieties — and a fine place to sample a remarkable percentage of them is La Trappe. Here, the questing suds-sipper can experience the breathtaking range of Belgian ingenuity... More >>
• Best Microbrew
  Salvation
  What we have here is a sippin' beer, best enjoyed with the cheese, walnuts, port, and cognac after a fine meal. The artisans at Russian River craft this chestnut-brown ale with their own strain of Belgian yeast and a preference for malted grain over bitter hops, resulting in a sweet,... More >>
• Best Novelty Drink
  The Bro-seff at the Knockout
  Sparks, the candy-flavored alcoholic beverage that once fueled the nights of many a hipster, is not without its detractors. In fact, enough people have complained that the fizzy novelty drink appeals to children that consumer activists were able to get caffeine scratched from its ingredient... More >>
• Best Sugary Girl Drink
  Gummi Bear Martini
  Girly drinks have been known to sport names that are unfit to print in a family publication, but which all refer to sexual activity. Thankfully, Barracuda Sushi has concocted a sugary girl drink without the sexual innuendo: the Gummi Bear Martini. This insanely sweet mix of Seagram's Extra... More >>
• Best Pisco Sour
  La Mar Cebicheria Peruana
  Last year, Peruvian celebrity chef Gastón Acurio opened the grand La Mar Cebicheria Peruana on the San Francisco waterfront at a time when cocktails really started trending toward the old-fashioned. And while the restaurant has garnered mixed reviews in the local food media, its... More >>
• Best No-Talent-Required Karaoke
  Karaoke Night at the Attic
  Promises of no-pressure karaoke nights are usually false, with even the divey-est, most out-of-the way places sporting their fair share of divas. Not so at the Attic's karaoke night, which happens the third Monday of every month. The complete lack of flair ensures that every flaw in every... More >>
• Greenest Bar
  The Moss Room
  Okay, it isn't exactly a bar and there aren't actually any happy hour discounts, but sipping a Manhattan at sunset in the LEED platinum-certified California Academy of Sciences' Moss Room is lulling enough to rival well drinks at your favorite downtown dive. It opens half an hour after the... More >>
• Saddest Farewell
  Tonga Room
  In an era of crumbling institutions, rampant greed, and change for the hell of it, the all-but-certain demise of the Tonga Room may be the saddest slap at historical preservation to date. The grandest of the city's tiki bars blossomed just after World War II and in the decades since has... More >>
• Best Bar Desserts
  Candybar
  The bar-snack concept attains sweet new heights at Candybar, a hip little Western Addition venue where desserts get top billing with the cocktails, suds, and vino. These aren't your basic Gummi Bear-and-biscotti meal-closers, either. Chef Kyle Caporicci's half-dozen daily offerings are unique... More >>
• Best New Oldies DJ
  Sergio Iglesias
  Sergio Iglesias is one busy DJ. It seems like just about every night of the week, he's playing crazy cool retro music somewhere in town. On second Sundays of the month at the Knockout, he cohosts "Lonely Teardrops," the only all-doo-wop night in S.F.; on third Tuesdays at the Casanova, he offers... More >>
• Best Outdoor Drinking Options
  Pier 23 Cafe|Bambuddha Lounge|B Restaurant & Bar|Bocce Cafe|Jay'n Bee Club
  Fog, wind, and rain aside, San Francisco's largely temperate year-round weather patterns inspire an abundance of out-of-doors strolling, sunning, supping, and sipping. Especially sipping. Here are a few of our favorite places for getting a tan and a buzz at the same time. Pier 23 Cafe Pier 23... More >>