“Bottom feeder” Bars to Upscale “Metrosexual” Bars

The imagined queer, working-class utopia did not emerge. Undermining the bar economy in particular were the skyrocketing commercial rents during the dot.com boom, the erosion of the cooperative bartender networks, an aging gay bar-going population, and the emergence of the Internet as a social marketing tool and low-cost advertising method for commercialized sex.

Gay bar patronage decreased citywide in the 1980s and 1990s, the result of AIDS-related deaths, a generational shift, and later the rise of the Internet. Reflecting these shifts, the Tavern Guild disbanded in 1995. Many of the Polk Street bar owners, who had purchased the property at the height of the gay bar economy in the 1970s, now retired and sold their bars as bar rents began to increase steadily. Others, such as Marvin Warren, passed away.

Mirroring the changes in the early 1960s, the faltering queer bars that formed the backbone of the Polk community changed hands and were replaced by upscale, heterosexual and mixed drinking establishments.

At least one owner attempted to change with the times. Kimo Cochran made several changes to keep his bar Kimos profitable from 1977 to 2008. “First all I had to do was open the doors and the crowd was here every day,” he said. After AIDS pummeled business, he organized drag shows with the Imperial Court and other events to draw customers. Then, in the 1990s, he converted his top floor into a space for hip rock bands, drawing a young primarily straight crowd. “I’d say sometime 100% of the crowd is straight up there,” he said.

In 2000, Steve Black bought out two low-income queer bars across the street from Polk Street’s transgender club Divas – also the center of the city’s transgender prostitution district. He turned bars he called magnets for “bottom-feeder gay men” and a “sex clubs” into upscale bars and took direct steps to change the clientele. “With a vigilante spirit, he drove the transgender prostitutes out of the Lush Lounge, which landed him in a hearing with the San Francisco Human Rights Commission,” according to a 2006 article. “He also chased drug dealers off the sidewalk.”

“His formula not only has worked to attract young barhoppers (most straight, some gay) but also is inspiring a new social scene. Alongside the R Bar are Hemlock, a wide-open space where bands play, and Blur, a narrow lounge with a red-velvet booth and a sushi bar.”

In 2005, the San Francisco Bay Times noted “a trend …over the last few years as [Polk Street] Gay bars change hands, redecorate…then put in a bid for a new clientele; often straight, or predominantly ethnic or specifically higher toned—or in other words, hustler-free zones.”

Ron Case and his wife Carolyn Abst, attracted to the area by its low rents in 1999, renovated a building and set up an architecture studio and living space around the corner from Black’s shop. Steve Black was one of the first people they met. “He came over and welcomed us to the area and started telling us some of the problems,” Case said. “And he’s investing in the neighborhood and trying to clean [it] up, least his area.”

In 2001, they founded the neighborhood association Lower Polk Neighbors in 2001, which planted trees and cleaned sidewalks as part of “beautification” efforts, and successfully pressured the city officials to increase the number of police patrols in the area.

In one of their most controversial actions, the neighborhood association opposed the relocation of the RendezVous bar in 2005, when it lost its lease and sought to move to empty storefront down the street.

In the early 2000s, the bar was the only business open on a block of closed storefronts, and the association blamed them for the street population that gathered in front and the shuttered buildings in front of and on either side of the bar. By this time, the neighborhood a $90,000 grant for from the Department for Public Works “for beautification issues,” Case said. “Then you’re walking along the street and …there used to be young kids all up and down Polk Street, and [in front of RendezVous] was the last vestige of kids on the street that we saw.”

The same year, restaurant owner Myles O’Reilly spent six million dollars to purchase and renovate a shuttered building on Polk Street across the street from the RendezVous bar. He would later open a high-end restaurant called O’Reilly’s Holy Grail. O’Reilly credits his financial investment in the area, the neighborhood association “decided to crank up the involvement of the merchants,” creating a fund to hire private security and steam clean the alleyways, a favorite site for hustling and drug dealing. “They were just a playground for undesirables and that’s all the alleys were being used for.”

The neighborhood association asked the bar to pay for private security and demanded that hustlers no longer be allowed in front of the building. The RendezVous refused, saying that it was only their responsibility to police the area in front of the building, not on either side. “We started coming back to the planning department saying these aren’t good neighbors,” Case said. “We [told them we] don’t want them to move. And the planning department turned ‘em down.”

“I think that the demise of the Polk Street gay scene was a natural progression,” said James Beales, a bartender at RendezVous. “I think business nowadays couldn’t support that many bars on the street…I was just upset that when we tried to hold the Club RondezVous as one last bastion of the gay history and culture on Polk Street…that we were stamped out like that at the end.”

The First Congregational Church, attracted to the area by the low rents and designed by Case’s architecture firm, now sits on the ruins of the RondezVous, along with a number of high-end condominiums and a banking outlet. What were shuttered storefronts surrounding the area are now high-end salons and wine bars.

By 2006, the City instituted a “Polk Street Commercial Corridor Revitalization and Stabilization Community Action Plan” to plan for “regular sidewalk power-washing…increased police presence…in specific hotspot areas such as drugs and prostitution…[and work to] fill vacant storefronts.”

“It’s very safe here now,” said Myles O’Reilly. “And I think the city will start looking at the undesirables who really cause a lot of problems around here.”