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Platial | Who and What's Nearby
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by Joe Donohoe
I remember the Sandbar because one night I somehow ended up there, very drunk, after an evening of exploratory chaos that somehow brought me almost to the edge of the ocean. The place smelled like beer and puke and the floors were sopping wet with what seemed like the sweat of the patrons. The Sandbar was right “where the debris meets the sea,” at the edge of the city.
The Sandbar first materialized in 1941 as the Oar House at 47th and Taraval in the Outer Sunset. Half of the present building was divided off and served as a bait shop for Ocean Beach fishermen, known as The Master Bait Shop. The Oar House acquired a rough reputation. In the 60’s and 70’s it became a biker bar and extremely violent fights were not unknown. One well-told story recalls the loser of a fight retreating into the reasonable sanctuary of the night after being stabbed, and returning again later in the evening with a shotgun to shoot off the arm of the man who’d stabbed him. As the gunman fled, the other patrons took the severed arm and put it on ice in the hope that if they kept it fresh, the good surgeons of UCSF might be able to sew it back on. Unfortunately, this didn’t work. And fortunately everyone was drunk or somebody might have gotten hurt.
In 2003, the Sandbar was acquired by Dave Quinby and Les James from the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department. Inside, among other things, they found the vents in the men’s bathroom had caved-in. The smell of the sea and years of shit had seeped into the sand below and now hovered in the air, rather than being pumped out into the atmosphere. The drainpipes from the bar had corroded and anything that had ever been poured down the bar sink had collected and fomented in the sandy soil beneath.
“You know you got a problem when even your plumber says it smells bad,” said James. Thousands of metric tons of Rose’s Lime Juice will take their toll.
Haunted by the thought of the bad karma of decades worth of drunken amputation and other debaucheries, Quinby hired a practitioner of Haitian voodou to come in and exorcise the place with doves and sage.
Reborn as the Riptide, the pipes are fixed now. The ambience feels like that of a proper neighborhood bar. The staff is solid and there’s a roaring fire in a stone fireplace to keep out the Pacific chill. The two TVs are always playing surf films and the walls of knotty pine create great acoustics for live music nights (bluegrass and blues feature heavily). The walls bare signed promotional photos of musicians Quinby or James have met (James was the drummer for one of the Bay Area’s premiere country bands: Red Meat) including Johnny Cash and Ralph Stanley. For solid working class ambience and low pretension it’s the best night-spot west of 9th Avenue.
by Joe Donohoe
I remember the Sandbar because one night I somehow ended up there, very drunk, after an evening of exploratory chaos that somehow brought me almost to the edge of the ocean. The place smelled like beer and puke and the floors were sopping wet with what seemed like the sweat of the patrons. The Sandbar was right “where the debris meets the sea,” at the edge of the city.
The Sandbar first materialized in 1941 as the Oar House at 47th and Taraval in the Outer Sunset. Half of the present building was divided off and served as a bait shop for Ocean Beach fishermen, known as The Master Bait Shop. The Oar House acquired a rough reputation. In the 60’s and 70’s it became a biker bar and extremely violent fights were not unknown. One well-told story recalls the loser of a fight retreating into the reasonable sanctuary of the night after being stabbed, and returning again later in the evening with a shotgun to shoot off the arm of the man who’d stabbed him. As the gunman fled, the other patrons took the severed arm and put it on ice in the hope that if they kept it fresh, the good surgeons of UCSF might be able to sew it back on. Unfortunately, this didn’t work. And fortunately everyone was drunk or somebody might have gotten hurt.
In 2003, the Sandbar was acquired by Dave Quinby and Les James from the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department. Inside, among other things, they found the vents in the men’s bathroom had caved-in. The smell of the sea and years of shit had seeped into the sand below and now hovered in the air, rather than being pumped out into the atmosphere. The drainpipes from the bar had corroded and anything that had ever been poured down the bar sink had collected and fomented in the sandy soil beneath.
“You know you got a problem when even your plumber says it smells bad,” said James. Thousands of metric tons of Rose’s Lime Juice will take their toll.
Haunted by the thought of the bad karma of decades worth of drunken amputation and other debaucheries, Quinby hired a practitioner of Haitian voodou to come in and exorcise the place with doves and sage.
Reborn as the Riptide, the pipes are fixed now. The ambience feels like that of a proper neighborhood bar. The staff is solid and there’s a roaring fire in a stone fireplace to keep out the Pacific chill. The two TVs are always playing surf films and the walls of knotty pine create great acoustics for live music nights (bluegrass and blues feature heavily). The walls bare signed promotional photos of musicians Quinby or James have met (James was the drummer for one of the Bay Area’s premiere country bands: Red Meat) including Johnny Cash and Ralph Stanley. For solid working class ambience and low pretension it’s the best night-spot west of 9th Avenue.
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