A bar of one's own

The ups and downs of opening your own watering hole

By Adam Martin

› barsandclubs@sfbg.com

You don't have to be an alcoholic or a frustrated service worker to want to own a bar. Perhaps you long to chat up beloved regulars as you refill pretzel dishes. Maybe you dream of introducing the next Beatles. Could be you've just been 86ed from every other joint in town.

Whatever your angle, the fantasy basically boils down to a desire to turn your love of entertaining into a livelihood. Being a good host will make your bar successful, but you'll need a fair amount of bureaucratic savvy just to get the place off the ground. In addition to the required state-issued liquor license, a host of local zoning, building, health, sound, fire, and decorating regulations provide a seemingly endless parade of hoops to jump through.

But it can be done. People buy bars from each other and turn them into their own. People buy delis and turn them into clubs. Some people even take old meat-smoking houses and turn them into fantasy watering holes. Since each city and county has different regulations, it's difficult to outline a universal prescription for success as a start-up proprietor in the Bay Area. But most owners share enough common experiences to give some idea of what it takes to get your dream den of tipsy iniquity off the ground — and keep it running smoothly.

CODING UP

You might think scoring that pesky liquor license is the trickiest part of opening a new joint, but that's probably not the case. Unless you're lucky enough to totally love every inch of your space (or unless you just don't care), you're probably going to want to do some amount of construction. But before you pick up a hammer and start smashin', your first stop should be the city planning office. Pretty much everything from wheelchair access to paint must conform to some type of regulation, and the most overarching of those is your space's zoning. In San Francisco, in addition to following national and local building codes, business owners almost always have to file for a change-of-use permit, which can require a hearing, in order to operate a business that is different from what was in the space before.

In Emeryville, a recent hot spot of nightlife, things are a bit more streamlined but no less of a pain in the ass. "We wrote the city of Emeryville a pretty big check to get them to even consider letting us open a bar here," Kitty English says of the conversion of an old meat-smoking house into her bar, Kitty's, which opened in December 2005.

GETTING ALONG WITH THE NEIGHBORS

All cities require bar owners to do some form of outreach, whether it's sending letters to everyone in the neighborhood, posting an announcement in the window of the proposed bar site, or even circulating a petition.

"I sat in front of the space, getting people on the sidewalk to sign a petition," says Leila Fakouri, who opened her club, Madrone, on the site of a former Falafel King in October 2004. Though she presented the city with a packet of neighborhood support, including the petition and letters from local residents, the president of the neighborhood association preferred that she open a juice bar instead of an actual bar.

"The problem with San Francisco is that there's not really any requirement for the person to have a legitimate complaint like 'I live next door,' " Fakouri says. "This person can come with her opinion, and just because she owns a house three blocks away, she can screw up the whole process." If only one person writes a letter to the city opposing the opening of the bar, it goes to a hearing.

"Those crazy people have a lot of power," Fakouri says.

Regardless of how charming you are and how awesome you think your vision is, it's almost guaranteed you'll encounter resistance in one form or other. (And perhaps over the oddest of things: English had to walk around taking photographs of the parking spaces around Kitty's location just to prove to the city of Emeryville that there would be enough room for everyone.) The best thing to do is start letting people know of your plan as early as possible, and identify potential thorns in your side so you'll know whom you're dealing with if you have to plead your case with the city.

LICENSE TO CHILL

All the building permits and neighborhood support in the world aren't going to do you any good if you don't have the proper licenses. State law prohibits the Alcoholic Beverage Control from issuing new Class Two liquor licenses (the kind you have if you're a bar but not a restaurant), so owners of new bars have to find a place that's going out of business and buy their license. That's where brokers come in.

Some counties have restrictions on how many licenses can exist at one time, and in San Francisco there are even restrictions on the number of licenses in some neighborhoods. The Mission District, for example, has reached its bar quota, according to San Francisco Entertainment Commission director Bob Davis. If you want to open up there, you've got to find someone else who's closing.

English found getting a license in Emeryville to be a snap, but Fakouri had more trouble securing Madrone's. Your license stays in escrow until you get the rest of the necessary permits, and in the meantime, your license broker might get a better offer on it. That happened to Fakouri, and for a minute it looked like she was out a license and headed back to square one. Some confident talk and an extra $2,000 persuaded her broker to keep the license earmarked for her, but it was a close shave. "It's such a big gamble — it's really scary," she says.

John and Daniel "d.X." Segura, of the new Knockout Bar in the Mission, had to get a new entertainment license in addition to their liquor license, even though they're using their space in almost the exact same way it was used when it was the Odeon Bar. An entertainment license allows a bar to have dancing, DJs, and bands. The Odeon had one, but John and d.X. had to reapply when they bought the place, because the Entertainment Commission issues that particular license to the individual owners themselves.

Once all the inspections are passed, the licenses granted, the neighbors pacified, and the taxes paid, you're ready to open, but a whole lot of work remains. From hiring staff to buying liquor to planning a menu and booking bands, running a bar is not nearly as easy as it looks, and it looks damned hard.

"It's a lot of work, but it's worth it," d.X. says, while John discusses a lime shortage with the bartender. "We were just really driven to create a neighborhood watering hole."

After sending a blown speaker to be repaired and before talking to the printer about a new set of menu covers, English pointed out that not only was there a lot of work involved, but opening her bar also took a lot of money and sheer will. "It was a gamble, of course. I bet my house on it," she said. "A lot of other people wanted to make this space into a bar, but we were the only ones with the cojones to do it."

In the end, however, running your own joint can be pretty rewarding. When the doors are open, the music loud, and the bar packed with thirsty patrons, it's a sure sign the gamble paid off — and you are, professionally, the host with the most. *