San Franciscans have a reputation for being intensely nostalgic — everyone feels like the city they fell in love with is fast disappearing (or already gone). Change, of course, is natural and inevitable — and a prosperous city that changes is preferable to a stagnant city that decays — but the pace of change went into overdrive over the past decade. Dozens of venerable institutions — from Tosca Cafe in North Beach to the Elbo Room and Amnesia in the Mission to Aardvark Books on Church Street — were swallowed by a boom fueled by Silicon Valley migrating to the city, skyrocketing rents and a seemingly inexhaustible demand for new condos. Ironically, the very things that drew people to San Francisco — great food, nightlife, quirky shops — was getting swept aside to make room for these cookie-cutter condos and glass boxes.
The pandemic only made things worse, launching a new wave of closures that frayed the fabric of the city even further. The latest landmark to fall victim to the march of progress is the Club Deluxe in the Upper Haight. News of the imminent demise spread quickly, spurring a great hue and cry over the prospect of losing another local favorite. As a regular for over 30 years, I was panic-stricken at the idea of losing one of my last go-to spots in San Francisco.
What is it about a little neighborhood bar that inspires such passions? There are over 3,000 bars in San Francisco — can’t we just go down the street to another bar? What makes the Deluxe worth saving starts with the fact that it’s one of the last surviving members of an increasingly rare breed these days: the small, informal venue with live music — two acts nightly — and a modest cover charge.
For those of you who have never crossed the threshold, Club Deluxe doesn’t exactly live up to its name. If not for the line outside on a weekend night, you could easily miss it as you drive down the street, despite its location near the corner of Haight and Ashbury. There’s no neon sign. No grand marquee. Just an angled glass-tiled wall, leading to a modest entrance, manned by the stalwart doorman. Once inside, you find a small room, divided down the center by a half wall that separate the bar proper from the club. Like most bars worth cherishing, the Deluxe has earned its scars and hasn’t fallen victim to the urge for makeovers and rebrands. Not much has changed over the decades. Which means it’s not the kind of place you want to see in the harsh light of day.
When I first stumbled upon the Deluxe in the early 90s, after a ritual pitstop at the Persian Aub Zam Zam to get abused by Bruno, I was seduced by the bar-that-time-forgot vibe that oozed from the warm blonde wood paneling and the panoramic murals that ran around the top edge of the walls, presumably dating back to when the bar first opened in 1949. The wood paneling is still there. So are the murals and the Hammond B3 organ in the corner. There used to be a DJ in a booth at the top of the stairs, spinning records from a window overlooking the bar. The booths that now abut the bandstand weren’t there during the days when the bass player of local rockabilly band, The Bachelors, needed extra room to ride his standup bass like a bull. There also used to be cheaper drinks.
The only other modification that comes to mind is the addition of a metal heart, rimmed with lights framing the initials “JJ” in script — a tribute to Jay Johnson, who opened the Deluxe but passed away in 2015. (Side note: Jay and I didn’t really hit it off until I was sitting at the bar after work on a weeknight. It was quiet, still light outside, and Jay was working alone behind the bar. Some fool came in and walked off with one of the guitars that hung on the wall. I gave chase down the street and retrieved the instrument, which endeared me to Jay, at least in the moment.)
But for these minor updates, it’s the same jewel box of a club as always. The tiny bandstand barely rises above the floor, and sits so close to the audience that you can almost reach out and pluck a bass string or plink a key on the organ as the band plays. In an era when the artist is typically perched above the audience, separated by a moat of bouncers and crowd control barriers, the up-close-and-personal intimacy of the Deluxe is a rare thrill that eclipses almost any musical experience I’ve known in my long career as a barfly and music hound.
That’s saying a lot, considering Club Deluxe has never been a hotbed for up-and-coming talent. I may be wrong, but I’m pretty sure the club hasn’t spawned any superstars. But the reason I keep coming back for 30 years is not the star power or musical virtuosity on display, it’s for the one-of-a-kind alchemy that happens when Mitch Polzak wades into the cheering and stomping crowd during a rave-up ending. Or when Emily Zisman ascends to the top lip of one of the booths to bring down the house at the finale of Creep by Radiohead.
These transcendent moments, available nightly for a token cover of $5, are priceless. The interaction between performer and audience is almost symbiotic. The band feeds off the crowd, the crowd feeds off the band and everyone feels, if only for a brief moment, that they are all unified as one. On a typical night, seniors share the dance floor with college kids, strangers share their table, otherwise grumpy people suddenly cooperate to help someone pass through the tight crowd and everyone lines up dutifully for the tiny bathrooms.
After more than two years of lockdown, Club Deluxe is exactly the cure for what ails us. This is the one place I feel a sense of community and common cause. Maybe it’s my nostalgic San Franciscan coming on, but to find out the Deluxe is on the brink of closure feels like the last nail in the coffin for my San Francisco.
______________________________________________________
I am sweating a lot by now and thinking of
leaning on the john door in the 5 SPOT
while she whispered a song along the keyboard
to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing.— The Day Lady Died by Frank O’Hara, 1964
Once upon a time, a bar was a refuge, sanctuary from the hurly-burly of the city street, a quiet place to gather your thoughts and ponder your regrets over a slow drink. On a Saturday afternoon, you could sit on a barstool at the Deluxe and watch the carnival of life passing by outside on Haight Street through the open door.
One by one, bars like the Deluxe have disappeared from San Francisco, replaced by slicker, louder, cocktail lounges that always seem to be three-deep with the kind of carpet-bagging mooks who have flooded the city, jockeying for position and clamoring for rounds as they chortled over their latest valuation. Even the Zam Zam Room, once as quiet as a chapel when it was ruled over by the martini nazi, Bruno, is now boisterous and often packed. I guess that’s good for business, but it leaves little room for the other kind of bar.
The Deluxe is probably too small to generate much profit. The business model probably won’t work in a world of scale and optimization. But it has that ineffable quality: the appearance of constancy that grounds us in a world where everything seems transitory. We need these touchstones to connect us with the past and reassure us that some things are the same as they ever were. A thousand years ago, the wheels of time moved slowly and the world you died in closely resembled the world you were born into. That sense of permanence, tradition and solidity is under siege everywhere you look, from covid to climate change to housing to community. It may seem strange to place your hopes and dreams on a bar, but these days it’s all we got.
+++
Postscript: It was announced last week that the current bar owners had reached an agreement with the building’s landlord, thanks to mediation efforts by a San Francisco city council member and a city ordinance that safeguards small businesses from debts accrued during the pandemic. So the Deluxe gets a reprieve, for now. At a time when even the grand old Castro Theatre is under threat, that’s good news and perhaps a sign that the tide has turned in this epic battle to save the soul of San Francisco.
