Buddha Bar
901 Grant Ave
(at Washington)
This little dive in Chinatown is one of the best people watching bars I've ever enjoyed. It's set on Grant Street at ground level with no division between the bar floor and the sidewalk outside. Grant street is busy with tourists and Chinese locals passing by. It seems as if every single one of them looks in with an idiotic curiosity, as if they've never seen a bar before. This makes for a drive-up window of ready-to-mock fun!
The scene inside is a hoot as well. Drunks, hipsters, and randoms come together here to sit at the bar (there's only one table,) and talk to each other and the friendly bartender. The jukebox is it's own kind of fun. The most current CD there is probably the Pointer Sisters, one of many "Greatest Hits" in the collection. The Pointers share shelf space with Captain and Tenille, Dolly Parton, Elvis, and Wayne Newton. With the jukebox kitsch factor so high, the entire place occasionally has a spontaneous sing-a-long. The last time I was there, a drunk on the street also joined in and danced with us. This was fun until I snapped his picture and he came after me.
There is a cavernous area on the way to the downstairs bathroom that resembles the basement storage area in all too many scary movies. Scarier yet is the fact that anyone can walk into the bar, but there is a locking gate to the bathroom. You feel like you could get trapped down there by evil spacedroids and by the time your friends noticed that you hadn't come back, you'd already have been implanted. Then again maybe everyone doesn't think like that. Use the buddy system like girls do and you won't have to worry about it.
If the commute from the Mission wasn't such a bitch, this would be my most frequently visited dive bar. Still I do the cross-town commute every now and then to be there. It's totally worth the trip.
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