The vaguely school-themed Gold Star bar will make the switch within days.
Photo: Urban Daddy
The team of Duncan Ley and Ben Bleiman recently expanded their local bar empire by 50 percent, acquiring the former Four Corners space and turning it into Lightning (1875 Union Street) and then quickly snapping up the bar briefly known as The Gold Star Bar (1548 California Street at Polk). That bar now has a new name, which it will take on later this week, as Eater reports, and it’s taken from a 1980s video game: Soda Popinski. That would be a Russian boxer character from Nintendo’s Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!, and “much like the team’s loosely Muppet-themed [Dr. Teeth and the Electric] Mayhem, the decor here at Soda Popinski will lightly follow its theme: “Soviet propaganda meets Wild Wild West.” [Eater, Earlier]
