San Francisco, CA
The Best Happy Hours in San Francisco Right Now
The primary purpose of a great happy hour is to do exactly what it promises it’s going to do: make you happy. We’ve all had those days, when work was too damn frustrating or we just couldn’t shake that thing from our mind that’s been eating at us — and there’s nothing like gathering with friends over drinks and bites, or even saddling up to a bar solo, to put a smile on your face before the evening comes around. San Francisco has tons of happy hours sprinkled throughout the city, but there are some can’t-miss ones you should seek out. Whether you’re after fresh oysters and drinks on the cheap, a rooftop with a view before sunset, or even a late-night cocktail and a bite, these S.F. happy hours will fill those needs and more.
Monday-Thursday, 3-5 p.m.
This cozy, bright space with ample sidewalk seating in the Marina packs a legit happy-hour punch for an introduction to chef/co-owner Melissa Perfit’s seafood dishes. Start with the $5 cured trout deviled eggs, with the oils from the fish melding divinely with a dash of fine olive oil sinking into the canals around the filling inside of the egg white — definitely as delicious as it sounds. The grab a pair of BBQ oysters for $8, or venture into the main menu for the Velma grilled oysters with nori, yuzu and trout roe surrounded by compound butter. Cava, a French white and Portuguese rosé are all just $7, and if you come on Tuesdays, wildly fresh Miyagi oysters are $2 all day. There’s hardly a more lovely corner of the city for a glass of wine and a dozen oysters.
2095 Chestnut St
Daily, 2:30-5 p.m.
Sitting outside on the patio at Waterbar, looking out at the Bay Bridge, might just be the most scenic happy hour in the city. If you opt to stay inside, you’ll feel the same grandeur sitting at their gorgeous wraparound bar. It’s a beautiful Embarcadero destination with a $1.55 daily featured oyster special served with a hibiscus apple mignonette. The happy hour beer selection is $5, wine is $8 and cocktails are $10. Once happy hour is over, expand beyond these and try one of Beverage Director Valentina Moyà’s memorable drinks, like the Queen Bee with Barr Hill Gin, St. Germain, Lillet, chamomile, prosecco, honey and lemon.
399 The Embarcadero
Monday-Friday, 4-6 p.m.
On the far edge of Golden Gate Park, across the street from the crashing waves of Ocean Beach, Park Chalet has the most thorough happy hour menu in town. While sister restaurant Beach Chalet offers an iconic dining experience upstairs, it’s the open-air dining room and grassy patio at Park Chalet that totally rules for soaking in the sun over house-brewed beers and diverse bites. All draft beers are $4. Head brewer Marco Tapiz’s Presidio IPA and the more tropical Sea Serpent IPA are killer; meanwhile, the VFW is one of S.F.’s best long-standing locally-made light beers. Start with a half dozen oysters for $14, then move into crispy buttermilk fried calamari for $8. There’s also taco, slider and wing specials to be had in this sweeping backyard patio.
1000 Great Highway
Monday-Friday, 5-8 p.m.
Time melts away when you’re sitting down at this Castro haunt on Upper Market. Blackbird’s happy hour has been so steady for so long — plus, I just love how expansive the space is; on a random weekday, it’s spacious enough to feel like you have your own small domain within it all, no matter where you’re sitting. Proper cocktails and beers are $1 off, including a house Old Fashioned, Aperol Spritz and rotating selection of local brews on draft from Temescal, Standard Deviant, etc. Oh, and you’re more than likely gonna hear solid gold ’90s R&B on the speakers. This is simply a wonderful spot for a catch-up with a friend.
2124 Market St
Monday-Friday, 4-6 p.m.
Quickly establishing itself as one of the most versatile spaces in the city, Cavaña — which was named one of Tales of the Cocktails’s top new cocktail bars in the U.S. — recently launched their La Hora Dorada happy hour, and it crushes. The multiculturally Latin-focused bar has drink specials led by a Margarita that’s downright transportive and a game-changing Michelada Verde with tomatillo, cilantro, cucumber, pineapple, lime and Tajín. Chef Edwin Bayone III’s chicharron de pollo (fried chicken thighs with coriander crema, salsa macha and herbed cucumber) is an absolute show-stealer, while the guacamole is an easy call to start. The latest full cocktail menu feels like a trip around the world, highlighted by drinks like the Feijoa, with Cañada rum from Oaxaca, Bolivian singani, New Zealand feijoa, honeydew lime leaf apéritif, lime and egg white (yes, please). Cavaña is a great spot for an upscale happy hour before a Giants game across the street, and the late afternoon rooftop views (of the city and the ballpark!) are truly golden.
100 Channel St, 17th Floor
Monday-Friday, 4-6 p.m.
While San Francisco’s SOMA and Financial District after-work scene hasn’t completely recovered since the pandemic, there’s something incredibly commendable about how the bright and sunny, women-owned Wine Down has kept chugging along through these valleys. Owned by Sarah Garand and Jaime Hiraishi, Wine Down is committed to featuring mostly small-production California wines from women, LGBTQ+ and BIPOC winemakers. Happy hour has $5 off carafes of wine and $9 pours of intriguing selections like Terah’s Orange Falanghina. Meanwhile, $7 drafts from local breweries like Harmonic, Laughing Monk and Fieldwork pair nicely with mushroom empanadas or charcuterie plates featuring local cheeses. This is a top-notch wine bar (and more) that even has a monthly wine club showcasing favorite bottles.
685 Folsom St
Tuesday-Friday, 3-5 p.m.
Noe Valley’s Billingsgate is probably the only full-service fish market in town that sports a happy hour. On a charming stretch of 24th Street, you can get half off cava and fresh oysters — like briny shigoku and St. Simon — from one of the best seafood counters in town. If Billingsgate’s oysters might hit a little different, it’s because the fishmonger is part of local seafood purveyor Four Star Seafood, which provides fish to restaurants and markets all over the Bay Area. There’s a half dozen two-top tables inside by the fish counter and two coveted sidewalk tables outside. The menu also features poke with your choice of fish, along with cioppino, seafood salads and other delights. When you’re done with happy hour, definitely look to take home fresh fish for dinner, like Mt. Lassen trout, king salmon and local rockfish, along with something from the fresh produce and herbs selection to help you prepare it.
3859 24th St
Tuesday-Saturday, 9 p.m. onwards
For all of the afternoon happy hours in the city, there aren’t nearly enough late-night ones. Enter the Madrigal, which offers a badass happy hour that’s especially friendly for the post-concert crowd at nearby venues off of Van Ness like Davies Symphony Hall and Rickshaw Stop. Get started with $7 beers, plus $10 wine and cocktails (the Tough Honey with Scotch, ginger and honey is aces), before digging into a house burger with truffle aioli, or the real lifesaver, a “Breakfast on a Bun” with house-made sausage, fried egg, cheddar and hash browns on a potato bun for only $9. There’s ample seating in the crescent-shaped booth area along the window, but if it’s not busy, saddle up at the bar for the best vibes. This is a rare late-night find that does things right.
100 Van Ness Ave
Monday-Friday, 4-6:30 p.m.
Inside of the Hotel Zeppelin, PLS on Post is a classic rock-and-roll and smashburger joint right off of Union Square that has some seriously boozy shakes. Happy hour features a rotating $5 cocktail like a Smoky Margarita, $6 draft beers and sangria, plus discounts on all food and shakes. So yeah…about those? Flavors like Cookies and Cream and the peanut-buttery Choco Nut are served in pretty decadent fashion, especially when you add a shot of peanut butter whiskey. It all pairs well with the Classic American smashburger heaped with caramelized onions, or the Korean Smash with gochujang cucumbers and Korean slaw. It’s a fun room, spruced up with Jerry Garcia ephemera and the Zeppelin’s groovy ’60s decor and psychedelic motifs.
545 Post St
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San Francisco, CA
Year 1 of the Lurie era is done. Here’s how he kept — or whiffed — his biggest promises
On Jan. 8 of last year, San Francisco tried on its new mayor like a pair of Levi’s 501 jeans.
So far, it has liked the fit.
For 365 days, Mayor Daniel Lurie has taken swings at solving the city’s ills: scrambling to scrap the fentanyl scourge, working to house the homeless, and shaking his proverbial pompoms with enough vigor to cheerlead downtown back to life.
So is San Francisco all fixed now?
The eye test tells one story. The data tell another. But politics is more than paper gains and policy battles. It’s also a popularity contest — and Lurie has categorically been winning his, riding high on a stratospheric 71% approval rating.
Lurie’s rainbow-filled Instagram posts have gone a long way toward soothing locals’ doom-loop fears, but the political fortress he’s built over the past year could easily crumble.
After all, his predecessors as mayor, London Breed and the late Ed Lee, each enjoyed positive approval ratings (opens in new tab) in their first year in office. But the honeymoons lasted only about that long before voters gradually soured on their performance. Should San Franciscans’ adulation for Lurie similarly ebb, his policies might meet more resistance.
Still, if there’s one pattern with Lurie’s efforts in his freshman year, it’s this: While he hasn’t achieved all of his lofty goals, he has fundamentally changed how the city approaches many of its problems, potentially setting up success for future years.
As we enter Lurie: Year 2, here’s a rundown of where the mayor has delivered on his campaign promises, where he’s been stymied, and why voters may continue to give him the benefit of the doubt. At least, for now.
Misery on the streets
Headwinds: While Candidate Lurie promised to declare a fentanyl “state of emergency” on his first day in office, he quickly found it wasn’t legal to do so. (Per the city’s administrative codes, an emergency needs to be sudden and unforeseen; the fentanyl epidemic was neither.) Instead, the mayor asked the Board of Supervisors to grant him similar powers that an emergency declaration would have afforded him, and they agreed. But as Lurie touted his efforts to curb drug use on Sixth Street, all those drug dealers just moseyed on down to the Mission. The mayor’s first year in office ended with 588 drug overdose deaths, according to the office of the medical examiner (opens in new tab). That’s an improvement from the 635 in 2024, but it’s still an appalling body count — and December 2025 isn’t even part of the official tally yet.
Silver linings: The mayor employed his newfound powers to speed up approvals of initiatives, notching well-publicized wins, like fast-tracking the 822 Geary stabilization center, where police can place mentally ill folks instead of arresting them. It’s got a 25% better success rate at connecting patients to treatment than previous facilities, according to city data, part of a noted change for the better in the Tenderloin. And while some of the police’s high-profile drug busts didn’t net, you know, actual drug dealers, law-and-order-hungry San Franciscans were just happy to see batons fly.
Shelter-bed shuffle
Headwinds: On the campaign trail, Lurie talked a big game about his nonprofit experience, which he claimed had allowed him to cinch deals to create shelter that seasoned politicians had been too slow to enact. He even promised 1,500 treatment and recovery beds built for homeless folks in just six months. By midyear, he had backed off that promise. The real number of beds Lurie created in 2025 is about 500, and that’s after 12 months — twice the amount of time he gave himself.
Silver linings: Housed San Franciscans gauge success on homelessness with their eyeballs, not bureaucrats’ spreadsheets. By that measure, Lurie is succeeding. As of December, the city counted (opens in new tab) just 162 tents and similar structures, almost half as many as the previous year. (And as a stark counter to what some would call an achievement, for people on the streets, that can mean danger — without a thin layer of nylon to hide in, homeless women say they are experiencing more sexual assaults.) And drug markets haven’t vanished; they just moved to later hours. But are folks really getting help? Rudy Bakta, a man living on San Francisco’s streets, would tell you no, as he’s stuck in systemic limbo seeking a home. He’s just one of thousands.
Reviving the economy
Headwinds: Lurie asked for (opens in new tab) “18 to 24 months” to see downtown booming again, so we shouldn’t ding him for Market Street’s continued slow recovery. Foot traffic downtown has generally risen, reaching 80% of pre-pandemic levels by midyear, but slumped to roughly 70% as of November. While it doesn’t sound like much, that’s a reversal of the rising trend the city controller had projected. Office attendance is also slipping. It had risen past 45% of pre-pandemic occupancy in January 2025 but by the fall had slid below 40%.
Other economic indicators are wobbly too. Hotel occupancy “lost steam” in November, the controller wrote, nearing pre-pandemic levels in the summer but dipping below 2019 levels in the fall. The poster child for downtown’s troubles is undoubtedly the San Francisco Centre, the cavernous, and soon tenantless, shell of its former self. And while public employee unions are undoubtedly happy that promised layoffs were avoided, Lurie’s light hand in his first-ever budget pushed some even harder decisions to 2026’s budget season.
Silver linings: There’s a brighter story to tell outside the Financial District: Neighborhoods are where the action is nowadays. Just ask anyone dining at one of Stonestown Galleria’s 27 restaurants. This is where Lurie’s Instagram account (opens in new tab) truly has generated its own reality, crafting an image of a retail and restaurant renaissance. While that neighborhood vibrancy may lead some to shrug their shoulders concerning downtown’s continuing malaise, it’s worth noting that San Francisco’s coffers depend on taxes generated by the businesses nestled in those skyscrapers. There’s a reason we had a nearly $800 million budget deficit last year.
Fully staffing the SFPD
Headwinds: At first glance, Lurie appears on track to meet his campaign promise to staff up the city’s police force. “I’ve talked with current command staff and former command staff. We can recruit 425 officers in my first three years. We will get that done,” he said at a 2024 League of Women Voters forum. True to his word, the SFPD hired and rehired roughly 144 officers last year. There’s just one problem: The department recalculated the number of officers it needs in order to be fully staffed, raising the number to 691. And the police academy, which already struggled with graduating officers, might be hampered in the aftermath of a cadet’s death, after which top brass reassigned the academy’s leadership.
Silver linings: Crime is trending down, and that’s what voters care about, full stop. The reduction is part of a national trend (opens in new tab), yes, but San Francisco’s rates are experiencing an exceptional drop. Really, Lurie really should be sending Breed a thank-you card. Her March 2024 ballot measure Proposition E (opens in new tab) gave the SFPD carte blanche to unleash a bevy of technological tools to enable arrests, including drones and license plate readers, which have seen noted success. “Soon as you slide past that motherf—er with stolen plates, they’re gonna issue a warning to every SFPD station in that area, if not the entire city … and they start dispatching to that area,” rapper Dreamlife Rizzy said in a recent podcast, as reported by the New York Post (opens in new tab). That is music to any crime-fighting mayor’s ears.
The federal immigration court in downtown San Francisco that started 2025 with 21 judges and will soon be down to just four, thanks to Trump administration mass-firings, will close by January 2027.
News arrived Wednesday that federal officials are planning to shut down the immigration court at 100 Montgomery Street in San Francisco by the end of the year, and transfer all or most immigration court activity to the court in Concord. Mission Local reported the news via a source close to the situation, and KTVU subsequently confirmed the move.
Jeremiah Johnson, one of the SF judges who was fired this past year, serves as vice president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, and confirmed the news to KTVU.
The Executive Office for Immigration Review, which oversees immigration court operations, has yet to comment.
As Mission Local reports, a smaller set of courtrooms at the other SF immigration facility and ICE headquarters at 630 Sansome Street will remain open for business.
The Concord immigration court saw five judge fired last year, though two had not yet begun hearing any cases. Seven judges remain at that court, and four remaining judges based at 100 Montgomery are expected to be transferred there by this summer.
Mission Local previously reported that out of 21 judges serving at the courthouse last spring, 13 have been fired in recent months, and four others are scheduled for retirement by the end of this month.
This is happening as the court has a backlog of some 120,000 pending cases.
As Politico reported last month, the Trump administration has fired around 98 immigration judges out of the 700 who had been serving as of early last year.
Olivia Cassin, a fired judge based in New York, said this was by design, and, “It’s about destroying a system where cases are carefully considered by people with knowledge of the subject matter.”
This is all perfectly legal, as Politico explained, because immigration judges serve in administrative courts as at-will employees, under the purview of the Department of Justice — and do not have the same protections as the federal judiciary bench.
A spokesperson for the DOJ has said that the department is “restoring integrity to our immigration system and encourages talented legal professionals to join in our mission to protect national security and public safety,” following “four years of the Biden Administration forcing Immigration Courts to implement a de facto amnesty for hundreds of thousands of aliens.”
Johnson also spoke to Politico suggesting that this recruitment language by the DOJ is disingenuous, and that the real intention is just to cripple the entire court system and prevent most legal immigration cases from being heard.
“During Trump One, when I was appointed, there was a policy that got some pushback called ‘No Dark Courtrooms.’ We were to hear cases every day, use all the [available] space,” Johnson said, speaking to Politico. “Now, there’s vacant courtrooms that are not being utilized. And any attempts by the administration saying they’re replacing judges — the math just doesn’t work if you look at the numbers.”
Two Democrats in the House, Reps. Dan Goldman of New York and Zoe Lofgren of California, have recently introduced legislation that would move immigration courts out of the Executive branch, but that seems likely to go nowhere until Democrats regain control in Congress.
SAN FRANCISCO – San Francisco supervisors are calling for a hearing by the board into the massive power outage in the city last month.
Calls for a hearing
What we know:
Supervisor Alan Wong and other lawmakers say residents deserve answers about the outage on December 20, which, at its height, affected about a third of the city.
Wong added that the credits offered by Pacific Gas and Electric are insufficient to cover lost food, wages and many other disruptions. The utility has offered customers and businesses impacted by the Dec. 20 blackout $200 and $2,500 respectively.
Wong in a statement said power was gradually restored during the initial outage, but that periodic outages continued for several days and that full restoration was achieved on Dec. 23.
“This was not a minor inconvenience,” said Sup. Wong. “Families lost heat in the middle of winter. Seniors were stranded in their homes. One of my constituents, a 95-year-old man who relies on a ventilator, had to be rushed to the hospital at 2 a.m. People watched their phones die, worried they would lose their only connection to 911.”
Wong’s office had sent the utility a letter after previous outages on Dec. 7 and Dec. 10, regarding the utility’s lack of reliability. The letter called the frequency of the outages unacceptable.
PG&E agreed with Wong’s office’s characterization of service specific to the Sunset District and met with the supervisor.
Despite this development, the root cause of the outage on Dec. 20, that impacted some 130,000 residents citywide, was due to a substation fire near Mission and 8th streets. That fire remains under investigation.
Wong thanked fellow supervisors Bilal Mahmood, Connie Chan, Stephen Sherrill, Danny Sauter, and Myrna Melgar for co-sponsoring his request. The boardmembers have asked board President Rafael Mandelman to refer their request to the appropriate committee.
Wong is separately submitting a letter of inquiry to the SF Public Utilities Commission requesting an analysis of cost and implementation of what it would take for San Francisco to have its own publicly-owned electrical grid.
The other side:
A PG&E spokesperson addressed the board on Tuesday, asking for the hearing to be scheduled after they get results of an independent investigation.
“We have hired an independent investigator company named Exponent to conduct a root-cause investigation. We are pushing for it to be completed as soon as possible with preliminary results by February which we will share with the city,” said Sarah Yoell with PG&E government affairs. “We are proud of our ongoing investments to serve San Francisco.”
Yoell assured the utility would be transparent with whatever they find.
PG&E added that they have met all state requirements and that they have a current Safety Certificate approved by OEIS (Office of Energy Infrastructure Safety).
Loss of inventory
Abdul Alomari, co-owner of Ember Grill in the Tenderloin, said his business lost electricity during the massive outage.
“It’s not just me. Across the street, all these restaurants here, nearby businesses. It hurst a lot of people. I’m just one small voice from so many people here that got hurt,” said Alomari.
He plans to attend the PG&E hearing and said Tenderloin merchants already have a tough time.
“Less people come here, the Tenderloin, Every single bit of help helps. It doesn’t help that every three months we get a power outage for four hours and we lose business,” said Alomari.
He said compensation from PG&E alone is not the answer. He wants reliability and stability.
“That’s only short time if we have things like this happen all the time, eventually it’ll off set what we get,” Alomari said.
The Source: PG&E statement, interviews with the supervisors, interview with a restaurant owner and original reporting by Amber Lee.
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