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Rite Spot Cafe
This divey restaurant/nightclub takes on the toughest acts - a Japanese yodeler in a straw hat? - and the steady audience of couples and close friends just keeps coming back, knowing they're in for something outlandish but very worthwhile. Bands crowd into a corner just out of reach of the dining tables, playing anything from Honolulu swing to experimental Moog synthesizer compositions.
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Roccapulco Supper Club
Well-dressed, salsa-loving Latinos and gringos with dance floor game swarm this high-ceilinged, stadium-sized club to strut their stuff. New owner Oscar is a longtime DJ who pulls in big-name bands like El Grupo Niche - obviously, people come here to dance, so expect to be asked as soon as you arrive. Unlike El Rio , this is without doubt a straight bar, full of cologne musk and hormones. Single women may feel overwhelmed - better to come with a group.
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Rohan Lounge
Here you'll find the tastiest soju cocktails in the city for about around US$6 a pop, with yummy fusion Korean bar food to top it off. College hotties mingle on the snaking red velvet banquette, while sophisticates trade glances over the low-lit, streamlined bar.
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Rosewood
Let nature take its course in this irresistibly handsome lounge, where the only decor is sleek wood paneling and low lighting. The DJ keeps the back room on its feet, and serious flirting transpires on the outdoor patio. SF hipsters like their bars just like Chinatown's cops and gangsters of yore preferred their bills - small and unmarked - and this one delivers.
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Roxie Cinema
Independent to the core, the Roxie carries major clout with cinemaniacs for helping distribute and launch Hong Kong films stateside and showing controversial films and documentaries banned elsewhere. Film buffs watch this space to see what's next: Matt Groenig might show up again to introduce a Simpsons film festival, and the audience will probably throw popcorn at the screen during the sell-out screening of the Academy Awards.
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Rx Gallery
Live, breathe and drink technology at Rx, where new media artists and Silicon Valley whiz kids come for soju cocktails, bonding and coded flirting. The mood is engineered with video and robotic art shows and spooky, reverberating beats that sound like the Bionic Woman in motion.
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Rye
Think high design; this place mixes organic/traditional elements with concrete and steel. Particularly edgy is the outdoor smokers' cage, often full of party animals. Theatergoers, hipsters and spillover from too-cool VIP clubs crowd the two rooms after , so come early. If you're not into premium whisky, this is where you do order the basil gimlet, or the bartender's specialty that's not on the menu. It's pricey, but worth it.
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Saloon
The bouncer with the four skull rings will tell you the Saloon survived the 1906 fire by its loyal patrons brandishing buckets of beer and wine to quench the flames. Worn out and well-loved, the oldest bar in the city (1861) looks like it hasn't had a coat of paint since it was first built, and an interesting mix of disheveled old-timers, street people and local hipsters hang here. Blues and rock bands perform nightly and on Sunday afternoon.
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Samovar Tea Lounge
Mellow yet buoyant, like a Zen slumber party. Pull up a pillow among friends and stay awhile: for once your hot beverage order isn't just the price of wi-fi rental, but an occasion for actual conversation. This is the hangout of choice for Castro's clean and sober crowd, and what a coincidence, the tea costs about the same as a cocktail.
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San Francisco Ballet
Continuing under the directorship of Helgi Tomasson, this is the USA's oldest ballet company. Over a hundred performances are shown annually nationally and abroad. The company mostly performs at the War Memorial Opera House, but each season several shows are staged at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Other performances take place at a variety of city venues, including the Herbst Theater. Half-price concession tickets are sometimes available.
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Savage Jazz
A bit like the Smuin Ballet, Savage Jazz performs ballet to nontraditional music. Like jazz itself, the dancing is often explosively athletic, energetic, almost, well, savage. All the traditional jazz greats are given their due using a combination of classical vocabulary, modern dance, jazz dance and improvisation, reflecting the rich and varied textures and moods that are the hallmarks of jazz music.
There are two regular home seasons in Oakland and San Francisco when the company is not touring.
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Savanna Jazz
This newish jazz club has somehow figured out an old-time atmosphere, and now it's one of the hot jazz venues in SF - sometimes literally on Wednesday nights, when the club turns into a lindy-hop mecca with cool cats dressed to the nines. Weekend nights at , the place inexplicably resorts to '70s and '80s music.
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Sf Badlands
Pink porthole disco lights, Kylie Minogue strutting her stuff on umpteen video screens and a 60-foot-long bar: what's not to like? Scope the scene from one of the high bar benches before making a move on the sweaty, gyrating twenty-something gay and mixed crowd.
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Slim's
Biggish acts have been known to play this smallish club started by '70s R&B singer Boz Skaggs (know that song 'Lowdown?') including Prince, Elvis Costello, NOFX, Tenacious D, The Darkness, Gogol Bordello, Technique and The Mekons. But usually you'll just find pretty damn good cover bands on the docket (AC/DShe, Zoo Station, Lez Zeppelin). Shows are all ages, though shorties may have a hard time seeing on the floor or get swallowed in the mosh pit.
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Specs'
Hidden on a tiny pedestrian alley, Specs' is a cavelike dive enjoyed by barflies in the afternoon and a mix of hipsters, loosened-tie types and literary radicals in the evening. Another big draw is that it's a kind of museum with a hodgepodge of intriguing memorabilia culled from ports around the globe, like a merchant marine's basement. The taps are limited to Budweiser, but better brews are served in bottles.
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Starlight Room
Every city's got at least one swanky top-floor lounge-with-a-view, and this is SF's topmost, suited doormen and all. The views are mesmerizing from the 21st floor of the Sir Francis Drake Hotel, where khaki-clad tourists let down their hair and dance to live bands or DJs. It's a safe space for tipsy dorks and conservative parents - except on Sundays, when there's a kooky drag-show brunch.
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Stud
Rocking the SF gay scene for 40+ years yet brimming with youthful vigor, this is the bar equivalent of Viagra. Most nights the bar delivers on its name with hot gay men on the dance floor. But Tuesday night's crossover sensation, Trannyshack, draws a San Franciscan crowd more varied than a UN delegation, especially on its theme nights, such as the recent Rocky Horror/Hedwig showdown.
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Sundance Kabuki Cinema
You can actually choose a stadium seat to reserve, hang out in the cinema's bar, or order from the bistro serving everything from rib eye steak to mac 'n cheese. Just outside Japan Center (read: plenty of fun Japanese restaurants nearby), the Kabuki is a multiplex that features big-name flicks and quality exclusive engagements worth trekking out this way for.
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Teatro Zinzanni
Under an opulent red-cloaked circus tent, top talent keeps you gaping while you tuck into a gourmet five-course dinner. This is no small resort-town dinner theater: a 'clown-wrangler' seeks out world-class talent in Europe and Asia, and the acts, menu and performers are refreshed every three months to keep patrons keep coming back. Dinner attire is expected.
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The Alembic
The Ouija-board-font menu touts not only an impressive range of whiskeys, but accompaniments that include Moroccan-spiced lamb sliders and spaetzle. Drinks are pricey and the place is tiny, but somewhere between the hammered tin roof and the rough-hewn wood floor, a diverse 30-something crowd packs into the five tables and standing bar.
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The Bar
Mini-playground for the Castro's mixed young and restless, this bar walks the line between trashy and cool. Hanging from ceiling poles you'll find cocktail tables, not strippers; cheesy red padded walls oddly counter the screensaver-esque backdrop at the bar. But the flirts here are more interested in each other than the decor.
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The Café
The pool tables were just replaced because go-go dancers tore them to shreds - uh-huh, it's that kind of place, has been for decades. The eclectic mix sometimes lapses into interminable house numbers; grab a test-tube shot and pace yourself until the samba whistles kick in. Anyone in hot pants is welcome, though Fridays favor fellas and every third Saturday is an all-lesbian tea dance.
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The Endup
Funny thing: everyone loves the EndUp, but no one remembers how they ended up here. Anyone on the streets of San Fran after is subject to the mysterious magnetic force of its marathon turntablist sessions. The EndUp is still best known for Fag Fridays and definitive Sunday tea dances, in force since 1973, but they've branched out with reggae on the second and fourth Saturdays and all-star lady DJs at Minx on Thursday night/Friday morning.
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The Mint
With some combination of flattery, flirting and tips, the Mint's karaoke maestro might let you onstage to apply your vocal stylings to Billy Idol's 'Rebel Yell.' Show tunes are serious stuff, so it takes courage and a vodka gimlet to attempt any Barbara Streisand numbers. Prepare to be upstaged by a banker with a boa and a mean falsetto.
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The Transfer
Once seedier than the guy trying to sell late-night Muni transfers out front, this divey joint has gotten prettified in a smeared-lipstick Courtney Love way. Your Muni ticket will expire long before you figure out the various orientations of the crowd gyrating to rock-hip-hop mash-ups. On Mondays, that defunct ticket will get you any drink half price.
