San Francisco is famous for cable cars. I love San Francisco. I hate cable cars.
Cable cars are like children. They are noisy, undependable, and they can wake you up early in the morning from a sound sleep. Sometimes both are better off viewed from afar. Now, don’t get me wrong. I love children. I just hate cable cars.
I maintain that only tourists like cable cars. Locals hate them. It is part of why locals and tourists cannot drink together in San Francisco. Except at one bar: The Buena Vista Cafe.
Ironic that the best view of a cable car in San Francisco comes from inside of the most famous bar in San Francisco? I think not. Tourists can sip an Irish Coffee, gaze out of the window and admire. Locals can sip an Irish Coffee, gaze out the window and detest.
The Buena Vista, the “BV” to locals, is more that a bar, it is an institution. America first discovered the Irish Coffee over 50 years ago when Stanton Deloplane, Chronicle columnist, went to the BV upon returning from Shannon, Ireland Airport with recipe in hand and several of the drinks in his belly. Today, no place in America makes more Irish Coffees.
The long bar is lined with Irish Coffee glasses filled with hot water. Upon ordering your number of Irish Coffees, usually by holding up your fingers because the place is as noisy as one of those rolling metal box cars I loath, a workman-like, somewhat robotic bartender puts sugar, coffee, and Irish Whiskey into the glass and tops the drink with crème. Waitress service is available at the tables.
Don’t expect much personality from the bartenders, although I have gotten to know the brothers Larry and Paul and they are great guys. Berkeley grads. They make more money at the BV than being engineers.
One Thanksgiving night several years ago my cousins, brother and I had the unthinkable happen. After setting the unofficial three-hour record for most Irish Coffees consumed, the bartender bought us a round on the house. He was probably fired the next day. Make no mistake; the BV is a money making machine.
Food is available from a small kitchen and food counter on the right of the bar and the breakfast is famous. Being at the foot of Hyde Street, where those loud little bastards turnaround before trudging back up the hill, morning is a great time to be at the BV. The bay view is awesome, Fisherman’s Wharf and Ghirardelli Square are waking up, and the air is damp and crisp.
I once saw on a bathroom wall of a bar this logical equation: God is love. Love is blind. Therefore, God is Ray Charles. That logic loosely applied to “The City” means: San Francisco is a city of love. People love to ride cable cars. Therefore, San Francisco is cable cars.
No. San Francisco is the Buena Vista, not the grinding, bell-ringing little pests that happen to call San Francisco home.
So if you are waken from a sound sleep one morning, walk, run, drive or take a taxi down to the Buena Vista for breakfast and a coffee. You might find the culprit that woke you up sitting right across the street. – D.M.