Showing posts with label The Bar on Church. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Bar on Church. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Another One Bites the Dust: Bar on Church and The Edge
The Scene is admittedly a bit slow in keeping up with the current SF club industry news, what with being on the East Coast and all, but word has finally reached us, via Grubstreet, that the Bar on Church and Castro stalwart The Edge are shutting down and changing hands. The end of BOC comes as no surprise, since, when I reviewed it shortly after its opening in 2009, I asked why, though it was a nice bar, anybody would want to go there when it was offering everything that could be found more conveniently in the Castro. The end of the Edge is a little more surprising, though I suppose there can only be so many Daddy bars in the Castro, and this one always seemed a bit more grim in vibe and clientele than the others.
Friday, February 6, 2009
Bar Review: The Bar on Church
Those of you who've been reading this blog for a while probably already know what my opinion of The Transfer was, but for those don't, I regarded it as very possibly one of the worst places to hear DJ music in the entire city. It was laid out poorly, with half the patrons huddled over a bar on one side, and the other half trying to find some flow between the pool table, bench seating, and standing tables on the other. The sound was horrible, and way too loud to boot, and there was no place to just hang out and have a drink and a conversation. I stopped going to events there because, if they were good and crowded, you spent the whole night with a drink in your hand, constantly moving around to find a resting place, and if the night didn't go off, it felt like the shitty little dive that it was.
The Bar on Church, Greg Bronstein's replacement for The Bar on Castro, is a one hundred percent improvement over The Transfer, with great red lighting (very reminiscent of BOC), comfy padded banquette seating (ditto), and a layout of the bar along the long back wall instead of off to one side. The space feels balanced, comfortable and chic.
However, in continuing with the traditions of the Bar on Castro, the music is wholely mediocre. The boyfriend and I stopped in last Friday around nine as we were headed down to Pulse at Paradise Lounge, and after hearing the TingTings' "Great DJ (Calvin Harris Mix)" we thought, oh yeah, this could be good, only to bear witness to the playing of two Prince tracks within the span of 10 minutes, an electro mix of a Coldplay track, and a remix of "Circus" by Brittney Spears.
For a typical Castro bar, this is the kind of thing I'd expect, and at least there was a little innovation in the tracks we heard, but adhering to the usual formulas of lowest-common denominator dance music, a la 92.7, is not going to work for a bar that's off the beaten path. In the Bar on Castro you could get away with this sort of thing (and worse) because people weren't coming there for the music, they were coming there because of the location. With The Bar on Church, though, it's a destination, a place you have to go to on purpose, and you need something to draw people in there that's not just a replication of what they can more conveniently obtain at (shudder) Qbar, Badlands, The Cafe, or even Jet. The Transfer, though it was a dumpy hole, at least held out the promise of presenting innovative club nights, from Frisco Disco to Bender, where you could hear good music and dance. If the Bar on Church is going to be anything more than an out-of-the-way version of a Castro experience, it needs to return to the kind of innovative programming that The Transfer was developing a reputation for.
The Bar on Church, Greg Bronstein's replacement for The Bar on Castro, is a one hundred percent improvement over The Transfer, with great red lighting (very reminiscent of BOC), comfy padded banquette seating (ditto), and a layout of the bar along the long back wall instead of off to one side. The space feels balanced, comfortable and chic.
However, in continuing with the traditions of the Bar on Castro, the music is wholely mediocre. The boyfriend and I stopped in last Friday around nine as we were headed down to Pulse at Paradise Lounge, and after hearing the TingTings' "Great DJ (Calvin Harris Mix)" we thought, oh yeah, this could be good, only to bear witness to the playing of two Prince tracks within the span of 10 minutes, an electro mix of a Coldplay track, and a remix of "Circus" by Brittney Spears.
For a typical Castro bar, this is the kind of thing I'd expect, and at least there was a little innovation in the tracks we heard, but adhering to the usual formulas of lowest-common denominator dance music, a la 92.7, is not going to work for a bar that's off the beaten path. In the Bar on Castro you could get away with this sort of thing (and worse) because people weren't coming there for the music, they were coming there because of the location. With The Bar on Church, though, it's a destination, a place you have to go to on purpose, and you need something to draw people in there that's not just a replication of what they can more conveniently obtain at (shudder) Qbar, Badlands, The Cafe, or even Jet. The Transfer, though it was a dumpy hole, at least held out the promise of presenting innovative club nights, from Frisco Disco to Bender, where you could hear good music and dance. If the Bar on Church is going to be anything more than an out-of-the-way version of a Castro experience, it needs to return to the kind of innovative programming that The Transfer was developing a reputation for.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)