Polk Street in San Francisco is embracing change (2024)

Lane Murchison, founder of Bird School of Music, has lived and worked on Polk Street for 19 years. In that time, he has shepherded neighborhood kids from rambunctious novices intofull-fledged performing artists, experimenting with new sounds and personas.

Over those two decades, Polk has gone through similar shifts: Its community and identity have grown up and leaned into something new. Once best known for its rollicking nightlife, the street has clearly gotten tamer.

“You don’t see as many staggering drunks anymore,” Murchison noted.

While that reputation has faded, the neighborhood’s other qualities —like its eclectic mix of retail, restaurants, bars and vibes —have taken precedence.

“It’s definitely quieter at night around here,” Murchison said. “The daytime, though, it’s just the same.”

Business owners along the corridor report that the winding down of nightlife energy began prior to the pandemic, but Covid and its closures amounted to a slowdown accelerator. However, if there’s a silver lining to Polk shedding its boisterousness, it’s that more people might recognize it as a cute, around-the-clock hub worth visiting for more than a vodka and Redbull.

There’s a rallying cry to support the vibrancy of all kinds of businesses, said Suzette Gresham, owner of Italian restaurants Acquerello and Sorella.

“Come check out Polk: Walk down the street, pop in our shops, visit our restaurants and bars,” she said. “I guarantee you’ll find something you like.”

The lack of a unifying ambiance for Polk Street has led to some hand-wringing about an identity crisis, but the street’s more diffuse spirit has its charms.

Paul Perretta, co-owner of sexy bakery Hot Cookie, loves that the Castro-founded shop’s second location on Polk is tied to the neighborhood’s status as a gay mecca between the 1950s and 1980s.

“We have the most diverse customers you can imagine,” Perretta said. He doesn’t see an overarching Polk Street vibe these days or, really, the need for one: “I don’t think there’s any one identity here, and I think that’s pretty cool.”

Hot Cookie’s customers range from bespectacled hipsters to harried parents to curious tourists to late-night drunchie warriors, from across all socio-economic strata.

These days, the range of neighborhood options includes an upscale speakeasy (BlindPig), quirky dive bar (Kozy Kar), cult favorite (Bob’s Donuts), trendy vintage shop (ReLove), specialty grocer (Cheese Plus), Michelin-starred cuisine (SSAL) and just about every other category you could desire.

The owner of French wine bar Amelie, Germain Michel, praises that tapestry of tastes and atmospheres.

“Polk Street has always been a little village of its own,” he said, ticking off its expansive list of offerings, from fine Italian dining to massage parlors to upholsterers. “I think Polk Street looks like the image of San Francisco overall: It’s not only one type of restaurant or bar; it’s everything, like a big melting pot.”

After starting out in San Francisco in 2006, Michel has opened Amelie locations in Fairfax, New York City and Washington, D.C. — but Polk Street remains his favorite. In June, the restaurant had one of its best-ever months, he added, perhaps because the weather has been lovely and many people stayed local versus traveling. “It seems like this summer will be busier than last year,” he said.

Generally, Polk’s mix of styles and offerings can fit a range of budgets, whether people are looking to splurge or explore cheaply. “We have Michelin stars and dive bars,” Bird’s Murchison said. While he thinks that people still come to Polk as a destination, it’s now as much about the day scene as the nightlife.“Everything you want or need,” he added. “I could live my entire life within these blocks and never leave.”

Ben Bleiman, head of the Discover Polk community benefit district, agrees: “It’s everything I love about San Francisco, encapsulated in a neighborhood,” he said. “It’s not too fancy, and it’s not too gritty. It’s like Goldilocks.”

While some businesses have thrived since the pandemic —the neighborhood has several census blocks where revenue from taxable sales has increased since 2019 —the bar scene foundational to its pre-pandemic reputation is more subdued.

“Things are definitely slower,” said Benny Davis, long-time manager at Kozy Kar. While he describes Sunday evenings as essentially a “ghost town,” he can’t resist some optimism: “Nothing has bounced back completely, but we’re still doing pretty good.”

Many bar regulars have simply grown up. Brooke Wagner, store manager at Polk Street’s High Trails Cyclery, who has been going out on the corridor since she was 21, feels like she fits in with the street’s drinking crowd just as much a decade later as she did then.

“Maybe we all just aged into Polk Street,” she said with a laugh. “People have a little more money to spend, but they’re not necessarily hopping from place to place.”

Case in point is 82-year-old Dan Blackwelder, owner of One Half, who said running his Polk Street gift shop for 27 years has kept him feeling young and connected with the community.

“It’s pretty old-school San Francisco,” Blackwelder said of the neighborhood. “An awful lot of people have lived within a few blocks of this store for years and years.”

While he’s decided that it’s time for him to retire (he’ll close One Half before the end of the year), he hopes a similar shop opens in its place.

For McTeague’s Saloon manager Fiachra O’Shaughnessy, the dearth of 21-year-olds has felt stark. While the bar’s regulars still come in —“They care about the business, and they care about us,” he said —they’re generally not staying out as late. The bar has rolled out promotions, like a $5 happy hour after midnight, to try to pull folks out later. O’Shaughnessy also pitched the slower scene as a potential draw.

“The biggest attraction for people on Polk Street right now is you don’t have to deal with such a huge mass of people,” he said. “You can have a nice, semi-busy Friday or Saturday night with a good vibe, without having to push your way through throngs of people or wait half an hour to come to the bar.”

Ultimately, one of Polk’s biggest challenges is that it’s pockmarked with empty storefronts. (The most egregious vacancy is the massive Lombardi Sports building, which has remained empty for a decade).

“The stuff that’s here is cool, but there needs to be more of it,” Gallery-O-Rama’s Kaytea Petro said.

Since she opened her gallery and studio space last summer, there has been a spattering of other debuts. An offshoot of the shuttered Mission staple Stuff recently opened, as did a second location of Mission-Bernal’s custom framing shop Orion.

“There’s just a lot of energy over here,” Orion owner Micah Ruiz said of his 4-month-old store.

So far, he’s been impressed with the amount of foot traffic passing by his expansive front windows (and stopping in) and has felt welcomed by locals, several of whom explicitly thanked him for “investing in the neighborhood,” he said.

On his opening day, they embraced him both figuratively and literally (meaning: lots of hugs).

“There’s always people out and about,” he noted of the neighborhood. “And it feels like the momentum is building.”