One of San Francisco’s greatest dive bars doesn’t even have a sign

In February 2020, June Russell was handing over the keys to her beloved Geary Club as she entered retirement.

“Feel free to take down that ugly cocktail sign,” she told Justin Trujillo and Michael Levin, longtime San Francisco service industry vets and the new owners of the Tenderloin dive bar.

It was the only signage at 768 Geary St. that made anyone realize the place was even a working business. Yet June (everyone knew her by her first name), who had operated the bar for the past “40 or 50 years,” according to Trujillo, still didn’t like it. She had reluctantly let a regular put up the small waymarks in more recent years, but the bar had been fine for the previous decades without them.

The Geary Club, after all, has thrived in that sweet spot between legendary and anonymous. Perhaps that’s what makes a dive bar great. It’s been that way since Russell and her late husband took over four or five decades ago. A place that is easily missed, unless you are in the know. A place where the curmudgeonly bartenders are more well-known than any sort of cocktail list or craft beers on tap. So when Trujillo and Levin took over once Russell retired, they changed only two things.

“We had two very clear goals when we were reopening the Geary Club. We wanted to increase the liquor selection and clean the bathrooms,” Trujillo said with a laugh during a phone interview with SFGATE. “Besides that, we wanted to keep it as much like the old days as possible.”

Two years after reopening, the place is just as incognito as it was before. Only a few minor touch-ups, including a wall full of pictures as an homage to the glory days when Russell was at the helm, make the bar seem any different. There’s still no signage out front, but beers are priced as low as $5, and beer-plus-shot combos hover around $10. Hidden in plain sight, the Geary Club might be one of San Francisco’s greatest dive bars — a true relic of the city.

As I neared the corner of Geary and Hyde streets, I actually walked past the bar. Sandwiched between a tattoo parlor and a defunct-looking Vietnamese food takeout spot, the exterior wall, painted navy blue and bordered by green marble tile, looks mundane and deserted. But when I walked through the front door, the bar was vibrant and very much alive. Laughter, chatter, the clinking of shot glasses and the refreshing “phsssh” sound of a just-opened beer echoed through the tiny confines.

And yes, the interior is small. Thrillist listed it as 400 square feet; Trujillo didn’t know the exact number off the top of his head. If it weren’t for San Francisco’s Black Horse London Pub, the Geary Club might be the smallest bar in the city. On the right side, a crooked bar, where the lower peg of the L shape skews downward, stretches all the way to the back wall. Black bricks, speckled with white spots, cover most of the walls except for behind the bar, which is wood paneled and has an old-school cash register in the middle, giving it strong Midwest tavern vibes. Above the register is the head of a stuffed tiger — Tony the Tiger, as June named him. Vintage photos of the bar hang on the wall to the left, with a special section just for photos of June and her reluctance to smile when a camera is in her face.

Originally opened as a bar in 1942, the space was actually connected to the now-tattoo parlor next door. Trujillo said it used to be called Geary Restaurant before a wall was put up that separated the two. There isn’t much history about who owned the bar before 1969, but an ad in the San Francisco Examiner listed the bar at only $8,000 that year. If June was the person who purchased it at that price, she surely could have made no better investment.

As I sit at the very end of the bar toward the back with two co-workers, sipping on $6 cans of Modelo Especial and chatting with Trujillo and Levin, it seems like the owners know every person who walks through the door. They are constantly stopping midsentence to say “What’s up?” to regulars who stop in for a one-and-done shot or a long haul (also known as the rest of the night). That kind of warmth has kept this sanctum as a home away from home for the residents of the Tenderloin.

The convivial vibe is exactly how Trujillo likes his bars. Growing up, he would watch TV and was fascinated by how bars were places where people would congregate and talk with each other, face to face. Nowadays, he sees too many people at other bars on their phones and “in their own world.” It was important to him to maintain the vibe when he and Levin took over the Geary Club.

“I think that was always one of my favorite things about bars — the interaction with strangers,” he said. “You know, getting to know people and making new friends. The Geary Club, being so small, I felt it naturally brought that out of people.”

“That’s something you can’t really describe unless you are there,” he continued. “You can’t put a price on that.”

Trujillo had actually been coming to the Geary Club for 10 years before he bought the bar from June. From the first time he stepped into the Geary Club, he told June that it was his favorite bar in the city.

Trujillo recalls June telling him in 2009, “You know, in 10 years, I’m gonna sell it.”

It became a running joke between him and June. Every year, he would say, “Hey, would you want to sell it?” and she would reply, “In nine years, I wanna sell it.” “In eight years, I’m gonna sell it.” So on and so forth.

“She had her timeline, and she stuck to it,” Trujillo said.

In 2019, when Trujillo asked June if she was still going to retire that year, she said she had already put the bar up for sale. Trujillo told her he was happy for her, but in the back of his head, he still wanted to be the buyer.

“But I’m not sure those people are serious,” June told him.

“Well, I’m very serious,” he replied. “This is my dream bar.”

Trujillo, who also co-owns The Tempest, among other city establishments, contacted his friend Levin almost immediately and told him they might have a chance to buy the Geary Club. Levin used to live a few blocks from the bar and was also a frequent visitor. They both felt they would be the right owners because they knew they would hardly change anything. In the eyes of Trujillo and Levin, they were simply going to continue June’s legacy.

That legacy is one of family. Ultimately, the Geary Club is a place you feel welcome. Across from the bathrooms, you’ll see Polaroid pictures of regulars and old staff stapled to the wall. If you’re lucky, you might encounter a regular named Sir Thomas Winston walking atop the bar. He is a brown dachshund who lives across the street and comes in with his owner.

The Geary Club is still all about June (who now lives with her daughter) and the neighborhood.

“She used to say to people at the bar, ‘You see Tony [the stuffed tiger] up there? Well his other half is on the other side of the wall,’” Levin regaled. “She was the heart and soul of this place.”

With Trujillo and Levin now at the helm, she still is. The legacy of June Russell lives on at the Geary Club, and that’s the way it should be.