Reopenings

Gold Dust Lounge Will Be Reborn Tonight!

The old Gold Dust will get its last goodbye in today's parade.
The old Gold Dust will get its last goodbye in today’s parade. Photo: Brian Smeets/Grub Street

2012 was rough for The Gold Dust Lounge. The bar stood at 247 Powell Street, right off the corner of Union Square, since at least 1918, when it began as the Techau Tavern, and the current ownership, Jimmy and Tasios Bovis, owned it from the mid 1960s on. It was forced to close because the landlords (the Handlery Hotel) needed the real estate to give to a retail store moving in on that corner, and evicted the Bovises last May after a five-month fight that saw everyone from the Historic Preservation Commission to Willie Brown involved. And today, February 1, the bar is being reborn on the other side of the hill in Fisherman’s Wharf at 165 Jefferson Street, in a freshly built-out space with a few Victorian details. And the owners are celebrating the rebirth with the help of Mayor Ed Lee, a random character actor, and a whole cable car procession up Powell Street starting at 3 p.m.

The parade will begin, as Bay City News reports, with a salute to the old location, and then make the symbolic trip over Nob Hill, concluding at 4 p.m. with a dedication and ribbon cutting ceremony featuring Mayor Lee, State Senator Mark Leno, Supervisors David Chiu, Jane Kim, Scott Weiner, Carmen Chu, London Breed, and Norman Yee; and police and fire chiefs Greg Suhr and Joanne Hayes-White, and District Attorney George Gascon.

Also, the parade will feature a horse-drawn carriage carrying local actor Stuart Whitman — most famous for appearing in The Comancheros with John Wayne, and starring in the TV series Cimarron Strip, but who also did some guest turns on Fantasy Island and Murder, She Wrote — who’s celebrating his 85th birthday tonight at the bar.

There will then be a crowded party this evening, with the public allowed in after 7 p.m., and another party on Saturday starting at 7 p.m., with major Super Bowl festivities happening Sunday, beginning at 8 a.m.

Anyhow, welcome back, Gold Dust! We’ll bring you some photos after the big weekend.

Gold Dust Lounge To Reopen Amid Much Fanfare Friday [BCN/Appeal]
Earlier: Gold Dust Lounge Prepping February Debut at Fisherman’s Wharf
The Gold Dust Lounge’s Wharf Location Revealed
Gold Dust Lounge Does Not Quite Get Reprieve from Preservationists, But the Fight Is Far From Over
Historic Gold Dust Lounge May Close In a Couple of Months

Gold Dust Lounge Will Be Reborn Tonight!