{"id":8962,"date":"2025-10-17T02:27:17","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T02:27:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/8962\/"},"modified":"2025-10-17T02:27:17","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T02:27:17","slug":"north-beachs-nightlife-domination-continues-with-a-new-elevated-dive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/8962\/","title":{"rendered":"North Beach\u2019s nightlife domination continues with a new \u2018elevated dive\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome to Swig City<\/a>, where we point you toward can\u2019t-miss drinks at the best restaurants, taprooms, and craft cocktail temples in the Bay Area. Cheers!<\/p>\n

With a constellation of lively bars<\/a>, the city\u2019s most oyster-centric<\/a> late-night joint, and a madcap circus<\/a>, North Beach may be the one San Francisco neighborhood that emerged from the pandemic even stronger. The trend shows no signs of stopping, as a shuttered neighborhood bar has been reborn as a quietly excellent lounge.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s called The Lucky Spot (opens in new tab)<\/a>, and its eight craft cocktails \u2014 all in the $13 to $16 range \u2014 fit North Beach\u2019s nightlife-centric atmosphere hand in glove. To create them, owner Barry John Walsh, who also owns retro-themed Marina bar For the Record (opens in new tab)<\/a>, enlisted the help of longtime collaborator Kelsey DeCarlo. Among the standouts is the peppery, bracing Herb & Heat, the components of which read like an eccentric cold remedy: tequila, lemon, honey, pepper listed as \u201cheat,\u201d and \u2026 celery. Then there\u2019s the Wilde Thing, a practically mandatory whiskey-with-Fernet creation that\u2019s garnished with a lime wheel as big as the glass and drinks like an adult cherry cola.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"AA dirty vodka martini, left, and an \u201cOrange You Glad\u201d \u2014 made from peach and orange vodka, vanilla, and coconut.\"AThe \u201cRoot Awakening\u201d is built from mezcal, chartreuse, vanilla, and root beer.<\/p>\n

A spin on an espresso martini is equally obligatory, while the Lucky American ditches vodka in favor of sweet vermouth and Cappelletti Aperitivo, the Italian liqueur that\u2019s less sweet than the better-known Aperol. At the opposite end of the martini spectrum, the Dirty Deeds takes Grey Goose vodka or Bombay Sapphire gin and adds a house-made pickle brine instead of olive juice.<\/p>\n

Things only grow more creative from there. If you\u2019ve ever wondered why root beer, that assertive and complex flavor, feels banished to the periphery of mixology, check out the Root Awakening, which rescues the flavor of sassafras from the realm of sugary sodas and combines it with mezcal, chartreuse, and vanilla. Running with one of the bigger cocktail trends of 2025, it\u2019s got a dense layer of cream on top \u2014 but in this case, it doubles as a visual gag, riffing on the classic root beer float. Thick foam reappears atop the vodka-based Orange You Glad, a combination of peach, orange, vanilla, and coconut that isn\u2019t so much a tropical drink as a love letter to the Creamsicle.<\/p>\n

\"FiveThe Lucky Spot took over the former Vieni Vieni Lucky Spot, which had been around for approximately 80 years (no one really knows just how long).<\/p>\n

Walsh, a native of Ireland who\u2019s lived in the city for 12 years, often crows about San Francisco to relatives who have been under the impression that the place has fallen apart completely. If anything, downtown\u2019s recovery<\/a> is accelerating, so it made sense to capitalize on the turnaround from one neighborhood over. \u201cIf I\u2019m ever going on a night out with my wife, we\u2019re always in North Beach,\u201d Walsh said.<\/p>\n

The bar takes over the former Vieni Vieni Lucky Spot, from which Walsh has removed the pool table, repainted the interior, and mounted some framed bits of local trivia to the wall, including a 1960s-era black-and-white photo of erotic dancer Carol Doda<\/a> holding an umbrella and clinging to a street pole. Apart from removing the vinyl floor to reveal the hardwood entombed beneath it, Walsh left much of the predecessor\u2019s bones intact. Outside, The Lucky Spot\u2019s sign, fashioned by artist and neighborhood resident Jeremy Fish (opens in new tab)<\/a>, depicts the Transamerica Pyramid as an upside-down martini glass, with Coit Tower as a beer stein.<\/p>\n

Gen Z calls this \u201caura-farming (opens in new tab)<\/a>.\u201d But in North Beach, with its entrenched Italian American culture, it\u2019s better understood as \u201csprezzatura,\u201d or the art of looking effortlessly hip. That\u2019s why Walsh refers to Lucky Spot as an \u201celevated dive,\u201d where the drinks are refined but the attitude remains as low-key as any punk spot on nearby Green Street, where the restroom walls are covered in stickers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Vieni Vieni had been around for 80 years or so \u2014 the previous owners weren\u2019t sure of the exact date \u2014 and Walsh wanted its regulars to feel instantly comfortable in its replacement. It should help that his love for San Francisco is infectious. \u201cPeople think I live in an apocalypse scene, and I am trying to defend it to them, like \u2018Have you come?\u2019\u201d he says. \u201cNow they can.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Welcome to Swig City, where we point you toward can\u2019t-miss drinks at the best restaurants, taprooms, and craft…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8963,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[8697,416,6512,101,103,102,104,106,105,8696],"class_list":{"0":"post-8962","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco","8":"tag-bars","9":"tag-cocktails","10":"tag-north-beach","11":"tag-san-francisco","12":"tag-san-francisco-headlines","13":"tag-san-francisco-news","14":"tag-sf","15":"tag-sf-headlines","16":"tag-sf-news","17":"tag-swig-city"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8962"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8962\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}