I came across two interesting bits yesterday.  First from Eater:

SFoodie’s W. Blake Gray takes a few bites of the “rich bar food” Justin Navarro serves during his ​The Galley pop-up at Valencia St.’s pseudo dive bar, Clooney’s. He likes the French onion sandwich. He “devours” it, actually.

Then, from the SF Weekly article Eater points too:

Clooney’s Pub is a Valencia Street bar that, to be fair, is a little too nice to really be called a dive bar. SFoodie is big fans of Bouncer columnist Katy St. Clair and we know she would say that the pool table and most of the TVs are too functional, and half-a-dozen beers on tap is at least four too many, for it to really be a dive.

Too nice to really be called a dive bar?  Really?  There are dudes in Rascal Scooters getting drunk in there at 6am.  It still manages to smell like cigarettes despite the fact no one has smoked in the place in years.  The bathroom has no graffiti, yet the toilet is nasty enough that you’d never dare use it.  And the cheap beer on tap is Busch.

That’s not to say Clooney’s doesn’t have its strengths: it’s a bargain drunk, they have Star Trek fiction on loan, the pool table is almost always free, and I can drink there well into my 60s.  But it’s by no means a good bar.

Which begs the question, has San Francisco become so pretentious about not being pretentious that we kid ourselves into thinking Clooney’s is not a dive?  And most importantly, is there anywhere left in San Francisco that’s crappy enough to avoid rubbing elbows with self-described “foodies”?

[Photo by Armand Emamdjomeh]

First it was El Rincon, the latino dance club on the corner of 16th and Harrison.  But after a police officer was shot outside the club last summer, it was revamped as a slightly more classy joint complete with Marcel's Kitchen serving up Louisiana soul-food.  That didn't last long either, and after being closed for months, the guys from the “Thieves” empire of Mission and TL bars have scooped it up.  Eater reports:

Looks like often despised El Rincon on 16th is being taken over by Paul Bavaro of Thieves Tavern. No active DBA yet, but their LLC is called Beards and Mustaches so if you thought the Mission couldn't get more hipster, you thought wrong.

Not completely sold on this name.  On one hand, facial hair is an acceptable fashion trend and mustaches are badassery incarnate.  On the other hand, “Beard and Mustaches” sounds like a gay fetish club, especially given it's proximity to SOMA fetish clubs and the now-defunct Eagle Tavern.  Of course, there's nothing wrong with such things, but it isn't really what I have in mind when I want to put back a shot of Buffalo Trace and sip a 16 of Pabst.

Regardless of their name, I'd bet money that they'll keep the grill going in the space, and if there's one thing the Mission gastronomic culture desperately needs, it's more cheap bar n' grills.

Update: one of the bar's owners fills us in with the details.

It appears that the new Belgian owners of Rolling Rock have figured out that “the kids” don't like being marketed to and prefer the minimal packaging of simpler times.  Ordinarily I'd hate on Rolling Rock for missing the mark on this—part of the cachet of PBR/Tecate/High Life/Hamm's/Olympia is that their packaging has always looked shitty and they haven't had national television campaigns during major sporting events in recent memory.  This, on the other hand, is a blatant attempt to pander to the—dare I say it—“hipster” market, thus making it inherently lame.

So yes, ordinarily I'd say all that and then some; however, the new Rolling Rock “Throwback” was the cheapest 12 on the Castro Safeway's shelf, which landed it a prized spot in my refrigerator.  I can only imagine that if Rolling Rock keeps dominating the cheap beer race to the bottom, it will become the park beer of 2011.

Apparently the 2010 sign was so aweosme, that Coachella just reused it again this year.

Local pinball ninja assassin type and San Francisco resident, Matt W., hit it big while camping at Coachella this past weekend. After entering the 4th annual Coachella Campground Pinball Campionship for shits n giggles, Matt went on to demolish the competition and win the grand prize; a pair of VIP tickets to Coachella 2012. The face-value alone of those tickets is worth more than what most Coachella attendees make in a week. Lucky, lucky bastard. 

This year's competition sported some RAD vintage machines (pic via Getty Images).

When I spoke with Matt, an old college friend, it turned out that he had been a ringer for the competition all along. Prevously unknown to me, Matt has been haunting the machines at Haight St and Mission District bars for the last year or so. When asked what his secret was, Matt chalked it up to the following:

“I usually play at Molotov's cause they have two machines in good shape and a good happy hour, sometimes at Shotwell's for the same reasons. Its all about practice and performance enhancing drugs.”

Now that he knows the greatness of his powers, I fear that Matt will begin sharking unsuspecting pinball enthusiasts and dive bar patrons for their cash. Look out San Francisco.

Matt W., tearing it up.