Last call

One final round, to go

Today’s accompanying tune: “Master of Puppets” by Metallica

I wasn’t there the day San Francisco ordered all bars and restaurants shuttered in light of the growing COVID-19 pandemic. The order came down on a Tuesday afternoon, and gave the city’s establishments a few hours to get their affairs in order before locking their doors. I was there the night before, a Monday — we overindulged in bratwursts and IPAs while shooting guests quick glances to make sure they still looked healthy, or at least as healthy as any of the other regulars often looked. The dog was there, the black and white pit bull whose owner had brought her through the dutch door as a puppy and had been reared on the sticky bar floor. I waved to the bartender as I left at a reasonable time and told her I’d see her again later that week. Andrew stayed, and stayed, and stayed. It was one of the handful of times either of us had made it to close.

As we watched the orders come in from our apartment a few blocks away, we guessed how the bar and its patrons were handling it. Underbergs on the house, the pungent digestif the bar’s only available “shot,” perhaps? A final bellowing “last call” and a made dash to refill mostly full pints? Did anyone come prepared with growlers to drain the tap lines dry? Would they use the two-week closure to deep clean those godawful bathrooms? It was a shame, we said, since they’d just reupholstered the vinyl booths and barstools, all to sit empty in the dark without the glow of the neon light to warm them.

Toronado would stay closed until June, when the city began relaxing its stay-at-home orders to allow for outdoor activities. Businesses were told to build outdoor seating or patios in parking spaces in order to serve guests. At first, many bars did to-go drinks only, refilling growlers or mason jars from the taps behind the bar and handing them out to customers waiting on the sidewalk. Toronado waited, and waited, and waited. It waited until the stack of plywood could at least appear to bear a load. It waited until the plastic folding tables and chairs found their way under the massive tree. It waited until its manager had sold off a sizable portion of the bar’s cellar stock for $150 a box to help pay the staff during the closure. The first time we ambled down the hill towards the blue dutch door that summer was the first time I’d allowed myself to hope. We dreamed about sitting at the bar again, the high stools and the worn metal and a direct line to the bartenders. But for now, we bundled up and watched the fog roll in overhead while sipping dark lagers as the manager manned the dutch door, grateful for the smallest normalcy we swore we would never take for granted again.

We walked down the hill one last time, one the eve of our move out of the city, to say goodbye. We told the bartender, the regulars, the bratwurst shop owner. We promised we would be back, as long as they promised not to forget us. Promises surely they had made hundreds of times as folks left the pricey city for farther flung places, places with bars that surely would suffice but could never replace that dive on Haight Street. Promises they expected to keep, even if our end of the bargain was unlikely to come to fruition. But each time we traveled north and landed in the Bay, we were greeted as if we had never left — third pint on the house and a round of Underbergs to celebrate. Though so much had changed, our anchor remained. As long as Toronado remained Toronado, remained its stubborn and delightful self, we would return and the city would still smell of home.

The Compass listing began making the rounds on Saturday morning. David Keene, Toronado’s owner, was selling the bar and the building in which it resided after 38 years in business. He was retiring, one of the articles stated, after a long and noted run as the best beer bar in the country. He was willing to sell to the right person, to keep Toronado its stubborn and delightful self, instead of shutting the business down entirely as he had done to the bar’s outposts in San Diego and Seattle.

For now, it would be business as usual, he said. The cash-only bar would still celebrate San Francisco’s annual Beer Week in its unsanctioned way, with a toast to Keene and a full-throated celebration of Toronado the institution. Toronado the place but also Toronado the spirit. The bar that was open 365 days a year, the bar that hosted potluck Thanksgiving and played movies all day on Christmas. The bar that housed the cheapest ATM in the city. The bar with the best anniversary party in town. The bar that blasted heavy metal and refused to acquiesce to TouchTunes. The bar that always did right by its people, its community. The bar where I decided to quit one job, and then another. The bar we fled to after trips to visit family. The bar at which our friends convened to celebrate our engagement. The only bar Oliver has ever been to. The bar with the secret bathroom that was never as gross as the other two. The bar that made leaving San Francisco challenging. The bar that welcomed two twenty-something transplants into their community when it had every reason not to. The bar beyond work, the refuge from a night out, the shelter in every rain storm. The bar that defined a chapter in my life so thoroughly that I cannot separate the two — to mention Toronado is to instantly transport me to its bar, pint of beer in hand and two dollars left at the rail. It could have been any night, any day. But it never could have been any place.

I will grieve the place, as silly as that sounds. I will grieve the ending of a chapter I knew would always wrap itself up but dreaded nonetheless. I will grieve a place and time where I was always safe, always welcome. Maybe this is how nostalgia gains its power, from grief. From reaching back into the archives of your mind and finding nothing but shadows of places long gone and the grief their loss has left behind. In a city so full of façades, Toronado is the rare exception of a place so true to its core that it can’t help but be itself. For those of us unable to erect façades, unable to fit neatly into the tech dystopia blanketing the 7-mile-by-7-mile city, Toronado was the blinking beacon telling us we did belong. There was a place for us there as long as Toronado was there. A place for us, a place stubbornly resistant to the rapidly changing city around it and open to equally stubborn patrons. A place of undeniable character, in every sense of the word.

I don’t know if I will be able to make one last pilgrimage. It seems odd to say goodbye twice to the same place, to the same people. We kept our end of the bargain as best we could. Now, it is theirs that is uncertain. But I promise to remember. I promise to remember Paulie, Chad, Alene, Justin, Charlie, Tag, Dave. I promise to remember the little blue bar behind the overgrown tree on Haight Street, with its plywood patio and dutch door, the wallpaper made of stickers. I intend to be there, this time. To be there for the last last call, the final day. How else will I ever know?

Cheers to Toronado, always.

- Megan