For poetic purposes, I wish I could say that I’ve been to the 500 Club at least 500 times. I’d make a silly rendition of the “I would walk 500 miles” song and sing it every time I went anywhere near the bar. I would think it was hilarious. My wife would likely divorce me way before I sang it to her for the 500th time.
I don’t actually know how many instances I’ve drank there though. I’ve lived in and around the Mission for over two decades, so it’s very likely over 100 times, but nowhere near 500. Looks like my marriage won’t be destroyed by me being exceedingly annoying … at least in this particular case.
I was thinking about all this as I sat down to interview Ali Razavi in the back room of the 500 Club last month. While the bar has been around since the 1950s, Razavi has owned the place since 2018. Considering how many years the 500 has been sitting on the corner of 17th and Guerrero streets, people were worried it was gonna change drastically when Razavi took it over. And there was definitely some pushback at first.
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“Mainly it was based around the fact that there was false information going around. I don’t remember the different website names now, but one was reporting that a techie from Southern California bought it,” Razavi explains about the reception he got when he first bought the bar.
The Saturday night crowd bustles outside the 500 Club in San Francisco’s Mission District on May 23, 2026.
Kevin Kelleher & Emily Trinh/For SFGATE
The 500 Club in San Francisco’s Mission District comes alive early on Saturday night, May 23, 2026.
Kevin Kelleher & Emily Trinh/For SFGATE
Ali Razavi, owner of the 500 Club, hangs at his classic San Francisco bar in the Mission District on Saturday evening, May 23, 2026.
Kevin Kelleher & Emily Trinh/For SFGATE
It was particularly odd considering Razavi is a native Bay Arean, and he worked in the hospitality and booze businesses before buying the bar. But if you remember what the 2010s were like, we saw dozens of nightlife landmarks like Gold Dust Lounge get turned into mustachioed cocktail bars or replaced by fast fashion chains. To be honest, I’m still furious about that one.
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About that smell …
Luckily Razavi didn’t change very much. In fact, it looks very much like it did before he took over. There’s still the long bar with the passthrough so that bartenders can serve customers in both rooms. It’s still darkly lit and decorated with beer signs, random photos, and a velvet Elvis painting. There’s still the fireplace, the wood paneling, and the Christmas lights above the bar. And, a lot of the staff stayed on as well (Donny Hodge has been there 30 years and Andrew Jackson, aka Prez, has worked at the 500 for 20 years). What he did change desperately needed it. They started by photographing everything so they could ensure it would look and feel the same afterwards. Then Razavi and his team went to work.
“The floors were so rotted over there,” Razavi points across the room, “if the lights were on downstairs, you could see the basement.” They also upgraded the beer system so that drafts were always cold — something that wasn’t the case before — and most importantly, they fixed the bathrooms.
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“It smells so much better!” I tell him as we discuss the changes. And there’s a very good reason for that.
The back room at the 500 Club in San Francisco’s Mission District offers additional seating, a photo booth and lots of character, as seen on Saturday night, May 23, 2026.
Kevin Kelleher & Emily Trinh/For SFGATE
“It smelled so bad,” Razavi explains, “because, when we opened the wall up to move the urinal over a little bit, we realized that the pipe coming out of the urinal had rusted away completely. And the urinal was just emptying out into the wall.”
At this I shudder and audibly gasp, “Oh god …” but still, there’s more.
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Razavi continues, “And the fan … here’s where it gets better … here’s why it smelled so bad in here. The fan in the men’s room didn’t have an exhaust pipe going out of the building. The fan was sucking air out of the bathroom, but it was just pushing it into the crawl space above the ceiling. And then it would just permeate throughout the entire bar.”
So yes, they changed a few things, but even while upgrading, they did their best to keep the decor period correct, and they got rid of the putrefaction happening in the walls at the same time. Little victories, my friends, little victories.
The history of the 500 Club
Before Razavi bought the 500 Club, John Sherlock owned it for nearly 30 years. This is the third time he’s come up during my research for this column, but after looking back at my previous articles, this is strangely the first time I’m actually dropping his name. You’d be surprised how much ends up on the cutting room floor; there’s only so much that will fit in these articles.
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Rileigh Sayles slides over a couple of freshly squeezed greyhounds, a Sunday specialty cocktail at the 500 Club in San Francisco’s Mission District, May 23, 2026.
Kevin Kelleher & Emily Trinh/For SFGATE
The 500 Club pays tribute to the late John Sherlock with an old photo of the former owner on the wall in San Francisco’s Mission District, May 23, 2026.
Kevin Kelleher & Emily Trinh/For SFGATE
John Sherlock also owned the Albion, which became Delirium, and Molotov’s. Both of which I’ve written about before. What an unsung legend!
According to Razavi, Sherlock was an absolute character who drank vodka sodas into his 80s and had a 35-year-old boyfriend in his 80s as well. And at first, he didn’t want to sell the bar.
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“I cold-called him to buy the place and he said ‘no,’” Razavi explains. “He repeatedly told our agent ‘no’. Finally, my wife and I wrote a big, long letter, sent pictures of ourselves, and then he wanted to talk.”
They were in escrow for eight months because every few months Sherlock would back out and suddenly decide, “Nope, it’s not for sale.” Eventually he relented and sold the bar to Razavi and his wife, and they were all friends until Sherlock’s passing in 2020.
“His picture is up there with that 500 Club sign,” Razavi points to a wall across the room. “You’ll see the gray-haired gentleman.”
When you own a business as old as the 500 Club, lots of rumors get bandied around about the place’s history. If that business is a bar, you can probably triple the hearsay. And if John Sherlock was the previous owner … well, I can’t count that high.
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“Everything I know about it is what Sherlock had told me,” Razavi says while relating his knowledge of the building’s history, “and those who know Sherlock will tell you that everything he said, you gotta divide by half.”
Ali Razavi, owner of the 500 Club, hangs outside his classic San Francisco bar in the Mission District on Saturday evening, May 23, 2026.
Kevin Kelleher & Emily Trinh/For SFGATE
Of course, I couldn’t resist responding, “You gotta say, ‘no s—t, Sherlock?’”
Razavi goes on explaining that, according to Sherlock, there used to be a card room downstairs in the 1970s, and there were mob ties to the place. Sherlock used to jokingly tell Razavi not to ever dig down in the basement. Sherlock also said it used to be a butcher shop.
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“But you know,” Razavi continues, “you gotta take everything he said with the grain of salt.”
Somewhere during the fixing up process though, Razavi and his team came across some real, verified history of the bar. He shows me a photo of a flyer they found that reads:
Irene and George Riedinger
Cordially Invite You to Attend Their
3rd ANNIVERSARY PARTY
at their 500 CLUB
The party is scheduled for Saturday and Sunday, May 19 and 20, 1956, and there’s a list of four different people who will be playing the organ at the party. So, through this we learn that the 500 Club opened in 1953 and that it used to have an organ! How cool would it be if it still did?
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The iconic neon martini glass hangs high above the 500 Club at the corner of Guerrero and 17th Street in San Francisco’s Mission District, as seen on Saturday evening, May 23, 2026.
Kevin Kelleher & Emily Trinh/For SFGATE
Clockwise from top, Lora Lafon of Nob Hill, Tiana Gerecke of San Jose, Jemila Moses of Santa Clara, and Aleeyha Patterson of the Inner Sunset celebrate Jemila’s law school graduation at the 500 Club in San Francisco’s Mission District on Saturday night, May 23, 2026.
Kevin Kelleher & Emily Trinh/For SFGATE
To find out the rest of the history of the building I once again enlisted the help of the ever-incredible Pam Larson, a local history sleuth who previously worked at SF Heritage. As usual, she dug up some interesting stuff:
1888-1894: The first record of a building at 500 Guerrero is all the way back in 1888. It goes through four or five owners as a drugstore.
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1895: It’s occupied by a physician/surgeon named Edwin Bunnell. He must not have been very good because doesn’t last long.
1896-1905: Back to the drugstore game.
1906: The Great Conflagration happens and the building likely burns down.
1907-1911: The current edifice is likely built. It becomes a liquor store.
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1912-1951: It has a nearly 40-year run as a grocery store with at least six different owners during that time.
1953-1965: Irene and George Reidinger open the 500 Club and run it for over a decade.
1966-1991: Donald Schooley and a couple friends take over in 1966 and Schooley stays on for 25 years until John Sherlock buys the bar in 1992.
1992-2018: The illustrious John Sherlock owns the bar.
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2018-Present: Ali Razavi becomes the main character of our story.
A local legend
At some point during our talk, Razavi calls over the bartender on duty, Donny Hodge. Hodge has been working at the 500 for 30 years. In the early 2000s he was managing the 500 Club, the Albion and Molotov’s — all at the same time — for Sherlock. When I ask if he thought he’d be in the game this long, he responds that the 500 Club is “basically the best job I think I’ve ever had.”
From left, James Farrell, Donny Hodge and Rileigh Sayles do time behind the stick at the 500 Club in San Francisco’s Mission District on Saturday night, May 23, 2026.
Kevin Kelleher & Emily Trinh/For SFGATE
Rileigh Sayles pulls out all the stops making freshly squeezed greyhounds, a Sunday specialty drink at the 500 Club in San Francisco’s Mission District, May 23, 2026.
Kevin Kelleher & Emily Trinh/For SFGATE
As so often happens in nightlife, I’ve known Hodge by face for decades but never really had a conversation with him until this moment. Considering how long he’s been at the 500 though, I had a feeling he could answer a question I’ve been wondering about: Whatever happened to the old guy who used to play pool?
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In a 2013 article I wrote for 7×7 about the 500 Club, I described him like this:
“There used to be a pool table in the side room which was lorded over by an old man who may have slept on the floor beneath it. I’m pretty sure he came with the building. He had a long white beard, wore some kind of wide brimmed hat, and possibly an orange jumper that you might see trash-picking crews wear on the side of the highway. Truthfully, his physical details are quite blurry because of the aforementioned heavy-handed bartenders, but he was a crazy eyed mainstay of the establishment and always tried to convince you to play him at pool and, of course, buy him a drink. If I recall, he was kinda an asshole, but for those of us who drank at the 500 Club, he was our asshole, and we appreciated him for it. One day a few years back, I showed up to find the pool table gone, and so was old crazy eyes. I always wonder if he’s haunting another pool table somewhere else in town.”
“Yeah, his picture’s up there,” Donny says as he points to a wall in the back room. “His name was Howard.”
A portrait of Howard, a longtime regular and pool player, hangs in the back room of the 500 Club in San Francisco’s Mission District, May 23, 2026.
Kevin Kelleher & Emily Trinh/For SFGATE
Apparently, while Howard didn’t actually live under the pool table, he did live right by the bar. And it seems he was a fascinating character. His best friend was named “The Booster,” his wife was a phone sex worker, and he wore wild clothes like the orange jumpsuit I mentioned. After a car wreck when he was a young man in the military that cracked his skull open, he became … “our Howard.”
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A number of years back, Howard’s house caught on fire and when he tried to put it out, it burned up his feet. “I went and visited him in the hospital,” Hodge tells me, “and they moved him to some kind of long-term care thing. And then I never got to speak to him again.” Howard passed away shortly after, Hodge says.
Another thing I’d been wondering about for a while is when the bar stopped opening at 6 a.m. Just under the big, beautiful neon sign outside the building is another sign that says, “Open 6:00 AM” and someone has written “Not” just above the word “Open”. Even the 1956 anniversary invite says the bar opens at 6 a.m.
Apparently, it was Razavi who finally put an end to that early bird special. The previous team had stopped doing it but then started up again a little while before Razavi took over. Considering that Colleen, the 6 a.m. bartender, was there all alone, he didn’t feel it was safe. And then when Razavi tried to get insurance for the bar once he bought it, the first company he talked to wouldn’t offer coverage if they opened that early. That got him thinking that nothing really good happens at 6 a.m. anyway, and he decided to open at a more reasonable hour. Yet another 500 Club mystery solved.
Bartender Corey Rogers of Staten Island takes a moment for a photo op at the 500 Club in San Francisco’s Mission District, May 23, 2026.
Kevin Kelleher & Emily Trinh/For SFGATE
From left, Emily Derrick of Oakland, Reed Klaeser of Western Addition, Kristina Hambley of Nob Hill, and Ryder Easterlin of Alamo Square catch up in a front room booth at the 500 Club on Saturday night, May 23, 2026.
Kevin Kelleher & Emily Trinh/For SFGATE
Changing crowds
When I first started drinking at the 500 Club, the crowd was a mix of bike messengers, metalheads and hipsters whose pants were so tight that their keys couldn’t fit in the pockets. You could always hear them coming because their jingling keys were attached to their belt loops with carabiners. This sound was probably a good thing considering they wore all black and rode fixed gear bikes at night with no brakes, helmets, blinkers or reflectors. They basically had the life expectancy of a cheap umbrella.
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These days, the clientele has changed a bit, but so has San Francisco. I mean, the only thing rarer than a bike messenger is a tinkling hipster on a fixie. When I ask Razavi who his customers are he tells me, “You get everything from 21- to 70-year-olds, mixing together. Yes, you do get the techies, but that’s part of who we are now. You get everything from people working in that industry to blue collar workers, to white collar, it’s that melting pot … and that’s what I f—king wanted.”
The 500 Club stands at 500 Guerrero Street at the corner of 17th in San Francisco’s Mission District, as seen on Saturday night, May 23, 2026.
Kevin Kelleher & Emily Trinh/For SFGATE
And that reflects the bar’s ethos; it’s a neighborhood bar that, given its proximity to Dolores Park, is more than a neighborhood bar. It lets people feel a connection to old San Francisco, while getting an affordable drink in the modern one.
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As I was wrapping up my interview, I asked what I ask every bar owner: Is this place haunted? At this Hodge chimed in saying, “Everybody says yes, but I say no. I’ve been here the longest, I’ve never seen or heard anything. But I always say, if I die, I’m gonna come back and haunt this f—king place.”