Amid decorating a tree and putting up lights, I, like many San Franciscans, came across the viral video of a drunken woman berating, and violently attacking, bar staff at Hazie’s in Hayes Valley earlier this month.
Of course, I was horrified. But it was the quote from one of the bartenders given to SFGATE that really hit a chord.
“This is the life of being a bartender,” Miguel Marchese, who was attacked and had his hair pulled, told the outlet. “I’ve been a bartender for over eight years. I’ve been slapped, I’ve been degraded, I’ve been given homophobic slurs, I’ve been sexualized … when you work in service for a long time, it fortifies you into a really resilient person.”
For this “Sips in The City” column, I visit a bar once a week and interview bartenders, managers, and owners about what makes their establishment stand out in San Francisco’s thriving cocktail scene, and then have them teach me how to make a drink, or two, or three.
But in the spirit of the holidays — specifically the airing of grievances associated with Festivus, the fictional Dec. 23 holiday from the iconic “Seinfeld” episode — I went back to some of the bartenders I’ve met this year to have them share the good, bad and ugly interactions.
As Jerry Stiller’s Frank Costanza tells his gathered family, friends and acquaintances at his dinner table, “I got a lot of problems with you people! And now you’re gonna hear about it!”
Warning: The stories you are about to read are not safe for work.
Carlos Yturria
Carlos Yturria has been a bartender for decades, and he runs the cocktail program at White Cap, Beehive and Treasury. On the first Friday night the latter bar opened downtown in February 2016, a man wanting to get his friends’ attention banged his hand on the large front window facing Bush Street. The ring on his finger shattered the glass, destroying the entire window.
“Party’s over,” Yturria said. “We’ve got to get everyone out, because if the window drops, it’s going to be a horror movie.”
While clearing the room, he’d also called the police on the man, who was wearing a suit and in his early 30s. Before he knew it, the man had started running down Bush Street, and Yturria chased after him.
“I’m yelling, ‘citizen’s arrest,’ because I saw that once in an Andy Griffith episode,” he said.
No one intervened, and by the time he caught up to the man, Yturria and him started scuffling. Yturria finally managed to pin the man’s arms and sat on him, at which point the police arrived.
However, instead of arresting the man, the officers pulled out their guns and slapped zip ties on Yturria and held him on the ground, a knee to his neck.
“All I can think about is like, my eyeball,” he said. “I’ve never felt this much pressure on my eyeball.”
After going through his pockets, one of the officers confirmed Yturria was the owner of the bar.
“He’s like, ‘This is the new bar right there on Bush, isn’t it?’ And he’s like, ‘I’ve been wanting to take my wife there,’” Yturria said, recounting the disbelief he felt as officers continued pinning him.
Finally, after some back and forth, they let him go and arrested the other man. The officers advised Yturria that instead of pressing charges, they could attach a police report to the man’s license and he could sue for damages to the window.
This is what Yturria wound up doing, which he said he regrets instead of having his insurance cover it, as it took weeks for the new window to come. Once it did, it was the wrong size, leaving Treasury boarded up as he waited.
“We lost a lot of business,” he said.
Since then, Yturria has vowed never to chase someone down again.
Scott Baird
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Starlite bartender Scott Baird makes a cocktail at the aforementioned lounge in San Francisco on Thursday, Nov. 6, 2025.
Craig Lee/The Examiner
Scott Baird, the beverage director at Starlite at the Beacon Grand Hotel, said that in his long tenure as a bartender, he’s had to deal with criminals bringing in guns, vomit, and even a regular getting drugged.
Baird was working late on a slower night by himself at 15 Romolo, a North Beach bar currently closed for renovations, when three men came in with a young woman. The three guys looked a bit rough around the edges, Baird said, but she was dressed to the nines with “expensive stilettos” and “a really, really expensive handbag.”
Baird clocked her walk, noting she seemed a bit unsteady and quickly determined she had already had a few too many drinks that night. When her companions tried to order for her, Baird refused, and when they complained, he made them a proposition.
“I was like, ‘Guys, I will bet you this round, plus another round, that she’s going to throw up in the next 5-7 minutes, and if she does, you’re cleaning it up, and you’re paying for all the drinks,’” Baird recalled saying.
The men agreed, and without fail, 5 minutes later, she threw up, ruining her handbag in the process.
“To these young men’s testament, they got up, paid for their drinks and asked for a mop, and they cleaned the floor,” Baird said.
The trio “did a good enough job,” he said.
Duggan McDonnell
Duggan McDonnell bartended for decades in The City, eventually writing the 2015 book, “Drinking the Devil’s Acre: A Love Letter from San Francisco and Her Cocktails.” He said his brain was a “bit rusty,” as he no longer works in the industry, but one incident stood out.
More than 15 years ago, at his former bar, Cantina, he said that a man exposed himself and began rubbing his genitals on customers seated at the bar.
“Myself and a fellow bartender immediately removed him,” McDonnell said, but the man kept coming back. He said “things got physical” so they wound up having to close and lock the front door while customers were still inside.
“He then urinated all over the front door,” McDonnell said of the man. Staff called the police, and the man was arrested.
Hannah Forrester
Hannah Forrester, who bartends at Specs’ Twelve Adler Museum Cafe in North Beach and Phone Booth in the Mission, said these types of stories are all too common, and it’s part of the industry to “talk s–t” after a shift and vent with coworkers.
But she said she tries to focus on the positives.
“The plot twist is that we all really kind of love our jobs and our lives, but it’s really easy for it to become this negative thing,” she said.
Bartender Hannah Forrester making a Gingeroo cocktail at Phone Booth at 1398 S Van Ness Ave. in San Francisco on Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2025.
Craig Lee/The Examiner
She shared that two of her regulars who come into Specs’ every Saturday, neither of whom is thriving financially, always bring her snacks to eat. Another time, she wound up bonding with a customer over Bob Dylan, and the patron wound up being a well-known older British journalist who offered a room at his outlet’s exclusive hotel in London if she ever came to town.
“The environment can tend to be really chaotic, really unstable, sort of the Wild West, behavioral conduct-wise,” Forrester said. “So these little examples of just goodness can sometimes really anchor you.”
The main thing she wishes customers could internalize is that a little understanding can go a long way.
“I think that if you can walk into a bar, whether it’s crowded or there’s one other guy there, and lead with patience and magnanimity, you’re going to have a good time,” Forrester said. “Your bartender is going to appreciate you. And you know your bartenders might have interesting stories too.”