It’s kind of like a case study in what happens when a true, down-and-dirty, old-school dive bar staunchly retains its character — and a good number of its original, elderly, early-morning-boozing regulars — while wide-eyed hipsters and foodies make a concerted effort, going back a couple years already, to colonize it. The place in question is Clooney’s (25th and Valencia), recently the subject of an amusing piece in hipster-friendly online mag The Bold Italic as well as a Thrillist promo, and the home of one of the Mission’s latest nonstaurants called The Galley, serving six-dollar PB&Js; and such. Uptown Almanac decided to pay them a visit recently too, and while complaining about the foodie faction trying to invade, they remain charmed by the dingy interior, which “resembles the Hollywood set of a ghastly, Nebraska backwater dive which five road tripping youths enter before being dismembered with a dull butter knife.”
As for how the old-timer regulars are adjusting to having a couple kids cooking up food next to the bar, food that they’d rather eschew in favor of beers and shots, it sounds like it’s at least giving them a few laughs. To wit:
So I sat at the bar, drinking my “Working Man’s Martini” [a pint of Busch with two olives] and proceeded to listen to the old men harass the cooks at The Galley.
“What’s the special today?,” asked a man no younger than 60.
The cook muttered something back with four or five adjectives that neither impressed the old men nor myself.
“Can I give you money right now to go to the Safeway, buy me a steak and potatoes, and cook that up?”
The cook muttered something back that was essentially “no.”
“Then what the fuck good are you for?,” and all the drunk old men laughed.
Suffice it to say that guy wasn’t going to order the beef tongue and mushroom flatbread.
Clooney’s is Certainly Getting A Lot of Press Lately [Uptown Almanac]
Earlier: Spending Morning, Noon, and Night at Clooney’s, Complete With New Food Menu [Grub Street]
Once Again, Somebody Tries to Make Clooney’s Pub Cool [Grub Street]
