The Wild Side West
424 Cortland Ave.
This girl Hallie is not calling me back. I met her at the Wild Side and she gave me her phone number. She's a lawyer, she's cute, she has a dog, she's a lawyer. And only two weeks after getting her number I have been rebuffed! But I'm sure to run into her again, because she is part of the mainly neighborhood clientele of this Bernal Heights bar, and I go by every once in a while when my friend Audrey is working.
Pat is avoiding me, too, and Pat is part owner of the Wild Side. The lesbian-owned and mostly lesbian-frequented bar is up Cortland off Mission, and the four women who own the place have established one of the friendliest out-of-the-way dyke rooms in the city. I wanted to sit down with Pat because she's crazy and funny and crude, but her head always hurts, so I stopped calling and making her head hurt. Now I'll just see her around, the way you see everyone around when you go to the Wild Side.
High wooden ceilings open the room, and just inside the door are a pool table and a jukebox, a cigarette machine that doesn't work and a payphone in the corner. Off to the left is the bar, and a fireplace in the middle of the room separates the front end from the pinball machines and tables in back. Every wall and the ceiling are hung with old paintings, posters and signboards - images of everything from naked women to Spuds Mackenzie -- and the mantel of the fireplace is decorated with pairs of antique shoes.
Out back is a second-story deck with benches circling a table and plenty of big mother-of-pearl shell ashtrays. Down the wooden steps and under the upper deck is another table and set of benches and chairs. Here the walls are a mural of earth tones, and a disused crab bucket dangles from above. Away from the building is a garden, presumably seating more customers, but I can never get all the way back because there have always been people out there already, and presumably not just sitting there in the dark.
If we sign up together and the first of us wins her game, Audrey and I will play pool. But it takes forever because she won't play slop and scratches on every turn and by the time we start to play I've had too many beers to care about aiming. No one is competitive here, except the girl who hustled her way out to the West Coast, although nowadays she just plays for fun. Between turns you can leave your drink on a high wall-side shelf or on the bar or the cigarette machine or the big circle table in front of the fire. The Wild Side is never so crowded that you lose track of your beer, and no one busses anyway except the bartender.
Although other bartenders and the owners are usually around, only one person works at a time. And if the bartender needs a cigarette break, an off-duty employee or even a regular will take over the register. Wild Side is removed, out near the top of Bernal Heights, but as soon as you've become a part of the clientele, there doesn't seem to be much need to go anywhere else.
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