Where Subterranean Sybarites Sipped

A little round of time travel bar hopping would be nice right about now. But where to go? San Francisco’s social history winds through an endless explosion of saloons, speakeasies, bars, hole-in-the-wall restaurants, bizarre and quaint theme restaurants that come and go, elegant dining establishments, and everything in between.  If you share the (odd?) fascination for San Francisco venues that are no more, old postcards will speedily transport the tourist of phantom establishments.  In some cases, postcards might be the only remaining trace of a place where once and long ago people gathered, ate and drank with gusto, and felt alive and rooted in the moment. 

The Dungeon Restaurant is one of these irresistible watering hole ghosts. It was in business sometime in the 1920s, and probably not for long, as I haven’t yet found any references other than the postcard. It appears to have been in a basement, and featured two rows of jail “cells,” each with a sign above the door giving a crime. The two readable signs in the image are “Bootlegging” and “Theft.” Down the center there is a prison style table and benches, and the waiters are dressed fetchingly in convict stripes. There appears to be sawdust covering the floor, as you can just see footprints running in front of each line of waiters. That sets the tone.  It’s tempting to imagine the raucous parties that went on here. It probably wasn’t the kind of place where you went for a quite meal. In fact, based on the look of the room and the era of business—it’s easy to imagine that food was not exactly the focus. The Bootlegging booth must have been the most popular!

The Dungeon Restaurant postcard gives the location as “47 Anna Lane, just above Ellis and Powell St.” However, there is now no trace of the little lane, which was located somewhere in the block bounded by Powell, Ellis, Eddy, and Cyril Magnin. It could bear more research, but no doubt that basement space is now a sadly bland storage room for one of the retailers or fast food places along lower Powell Street!

The Log Cabin Saloon is another establishment that would warrant a place on my San Francisco time traveler’s itinerary.  It was located at 1382 Market Street, so somewhere under the sprawl that is the Fox Plaza Apartment Building and the post office. Not sure of the date, but based on the postcard style, perhaps the teens or earlier? Once again, it seems to be a basement locale—where all properly seamy places reside, of course. The ceiling and walls appear to be entirely faced by actual redwood logs, and are covered with an orgy of taxidermy and pelts. A bald eagle has a place of prominence, and a mountain lion sits coyly on the floor (stuffed, I assume? But who knows!). There is not a bar stool in site, and it looks like spittoons are set on the floor along the front of the bar. There are two little log houses towards the back, which are perhaps the facilities?! Much rustic fun no doubt took place in this debauched-Daniel-Boone interior.

The Backyard Cellar, though also subterranean, looks slightly more salubrious than the other two underground lairs. This bar was in the basement of the celebrated Backyard Restaurant in North Beach, located at 1024 Kearny, which operated from about 1935 to 1953. In more recent decades, the address has been a series of nightclubs, culminating with a rock and punk venue that closed in 2000. It was then renovated into what looks like part of an unremarkable office building. But in 1937, when the Backyard was featured in a volume of Eating Around San Francisco (Hange & Thompson), it was a warm and whimsical retreat. The authors describe walking up the steps beyond the small lobby, and entering the dining room made to look like a backyard:

“Subdued lantern lights revealed the wooden walled room in which were windows with silhouettes depicting intimate phrases of family life, as if again we were looking up from our backyard through the windows of the neighbors… there was youth flirting; there was the old man taking his ‘nightcap’ before retiring; there was the husband, evidently caught at some misdemeanor, if the wife with her rolling pin in action were to be believed... and in front was the neighbor’s balcony with demijohns, an old shepherd’s horn, corn cobs and garlic drying.”

The dining room menu featured a choice of half a boneless fried chicken with pine nut stuffing and cooked with white wine, double lamb chops, or steak, with assorted offerings of salads, salami, peppers, soup, spaghetti, vegetables and potatoes, and a desert of fruit in wine.

And to get to the bar:

“One is directed by a yellow traffic sign to the cellar when he first enters the door… The cellar has been drilled from solid rock. It is walled by real and imitation brick… An old fireplace gives glow and warmth… The hors d’oeuvres table is laden with tasty bits of pig’s feet, crackers, pots of cheese and canapés. The companionable bar, above which are handsome murals of Italian peasant scenes, has a suspended bottle of champagne in the center,” from which a “foaming finish” is given to the cocktails that are served.

So that settles it. I will end my time-tripping first with a champagne foam-topped cocktail in the Backyard Cellar, followed by feasting upstairs with the silhouettes. Okay, maybe I'll nip back to the Dungeon afterwards to see who's hanging out in the Bootlegging cell. If anyone comes looking for me I'll be in the 1920s.

Hanges, Chef Louis, and Thompson, Ruth. Eating Around San Francisco. Suttonhouse Ltd., 1937: San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York.