There it remained, all 12,000 square feet of fun, until the operation of such a large space became more of a liability than an asset."
Kearny Street became home to the bar again until it lost its lease and opened at 77 Battery Street. In 1967 the business moved to Bush Street, where it remained for 13 years. columnist (with no byline) traced its history: "The first Sutter's Mill opened in 1965 on Kearny Street. In a 1991 "Around Town" article "Downtown and Dependable," a B.A.R. Perry was already indicating that there were lease problems in a 1973 column. Sutter's Mill has an amazing history (and client loyalty) in that it moved five times in its thirty year existence, from an unknown location on Kearny to 315 Bush, back to 70 Kearny St, then to 77 Battery and ultimately to 10 Mark Lane. Their stories give us both a window into another time and presage some of the problems that LGBT bars have had in more recent times, with the several moves of Sutter's Mill due to lease problems and the mixed crowd at Ginger's. The two downtown bars which lasted the longest and had the biggest impact, however, were Sutter's Mill and the various incarnations of Ginger's (Ginger's, Ginger's Too and Ginger's Trois). The early Bay Area Reporter columnist Perry wrote in his "Tidbits by the Bay" column from January 1974, "I hope you did not miss the Wilde Oscar's Xmas décor.
Others included Belden 22, which was as much a dining spot as a bar and existed in the 1980s (it is now Café Bastille) and Wilde Oscar's (at 59 2nd Street) which was open in the early '70s and does indeed sound wild, and not nearly as high end. These bars varied widely in their styles and included Chuck Holmes' high-end Trinity Place, which was patterned after "gentlemen's clubs" and in fact inhabited the old Le Domino Club on 25 Trinity Place (described by GQ in 1965 as having "a continental menu and walls covered with paintings of nudes").
The history of Tenderloin bars is long and storied, with bars like the Gilded Cage at 126 Ellis, which featured Charles Pierce on stage for six years before it closed in the late 1960s.īut from the mid-'60s through 2008 there was another type of downtown bar - the businessman's bar. When you think of downtown bars, you probably immediately think "Tenderloin." Nowadays, that is entirely true with bars such as the Gangway, Aunt Charlie's and Club OMG, which are actually more mid-Market.