Red’s Place, a small dive bar that has served Chinatown regulars for more than six decades, is closing.
The bar at 672 Jackson St. has long billed itself as the oldest bar in the San Francisco neighborhood, having opened in 1963.
For generations, Red’s has been less of a destination bar than a local hangout: a place where regulars could stop after work, sit at the bar, catch up with friends and order a drink without much fuss. San Francisco Travel described it as the “Cheers” of Chinatown.
Owner Jerry Chan, who took over the family business after his parents, Herman and Lisa Chan, bought Red’s in 1990, confirmed the impending closure to NBC Bay Area in an interview set to air Wednesday.
“San Francisco, Red’s is closing,” he said in a teaser clip posted to Instagram on Tuesday.
Jerry Chan, owner of Red’s Place in Chinatown, prepares to light a strand of 100,000 firecrackers at the stroke of midnight on the eve of the Chinese New Year in 2017. (Beth Spotswood/S.F. Chronicle)
The bar’s history stretches back beyond its current incarnation. According to Red’s Place, the building housed a barber shop in the late 1800s, followed by a cigar store and a saloon. Historic photographs show the exterior looking much as it did decades ago.
The basement, which is not open to customers, still contains teller booths that Red’s says are remnants of the neighborhood’s underground gambling days.
The bar became particularly intertwined with Chinatown’s Chinese New Year celebrations. When the parade route ran down Grant Street toward Broadway, revelers would gather on Jackson Street after the parade, where firecrackers were set off in front of Red’s.
In a 2017 interview, Chan described the bar as something he did not want to see disappear as San Francisco changed.
“I’m still here,” he said at the time. “This city is changing rapidly, and this is one thing we don’t want to lose.”
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This article originally published at Red’s Place, billed as the oldest bar in San Francisco’s Chinatown, is closing.