Welcome to Drinking Companion, a column about our favorite bars in San Francisco. Each month, we’ll be toasting the places that inspire us to get dressed, go out, and get a drink or two. Next up: Persona.
The first thing most bars tend to ask of patrons is “ID?” Approaching Persona, you will encounter an A-frame sign on Sutter Street denoting the descent to the bar underground with a more existential question: “Who are you? Are you sure?”
Evidently, I wasn’t sure anymore. Urged by my editor who had tired of seeing so many synonyms for “dive,” I set off for a bar with no tall cans of PBR, busted ATM machines, or wall-mounted bike racks. Visit Mars, he put it, as he approved a slightly higher than usual expense budget for me.
Persona wasn’t my first choice, but after I’d been softly turned away from one extraterrestrial cocktail lounge on behalf of my past-the-knee shorts, vintage boots with freshly-dried Shoe Goo oozing from the soles, and, — the nail in the coffin, as far as I’m concerned — wired headphones Rapunzelling out of my purse, I made my pick. (I’ll be back there eventually in my crispest button-down and trousers.)
Vulnerable and out of my element, I dipped downstairs under the neon Persona sign and was met with stunning darkness. (She who cannot be seen cannot be judged by her boot-to-pant ratio.) I’m pleased to report that while San Francisco is suffering a bright lighting epidemic in bars and restaurants, this Lower Nob Hill cocktail bar at 685 Sutter St. is a sexy, subterranean nocturne completely insulated from the sunshine and speeding cars of street level.
As my eyes adjusted, I was greeted warmly by a bartender so perfectly matched to this sleek, moody setting that I could have sworn he was scripted like Lloyd of the Gold Room. He handed me a menu booklet, leather-bound and as thick as a high-end catalogue. (The menu itself can be purchased for $10.)
Inside I found $16 to $20 cocktails named things like Tropical Tease and Pleasure Palace, nods to Sutter Street’s erotic film culture; one room is collaged in these posters of iniquity. My drink, the Sultry Starlet, arrived in a tall glass with a forest of mint and a glass straw which, along with the elderflower liqueur, made the gin smooth as silk. I barely felt the $17 price tag.
Happy hour, until 7 p.m. on weekdays, will shave $3 off your drink, but the real party usually begins around 8 p.m. when the music starts. With jazz and other bands some weeknights and DJs after 9 p.m. Thursday through Sunday, Persona has one of the more active live music schedules of cocktail bars in the city.
Inside, four main seating areas are broken up by warm wooden fixtures, leather booths, and that luxuriously dim lighting. Each of these regions can be rented out for groups or private events.
Persona was opened in 2021 by three bar veterans: Juan Loredo and Jose Natividad, who co-own BarrelHouse and Vinyl Room in Burlingame, and Keith Goodman, who owns the Mexican bar and restaurant Matador upstairs.
Persona is the Latin word for an actor's mask. In literature, the persona is invariably distinct from the author; a charade deployed by the writer to tell a story that is not theirs. Socially, one’s persona, as an active performance, is designed for consumption. The owners chose this as the bar’s namesake so that patrons could go downstairs and take on whatever persona they’d like.
Unfortunately, everyone chose the same one: male tech worker with a fresh cut and a breezy neutral-toned top who is new to the city and eager to spend his Polymarket earnings on a Matcha Mirage for you. The male-to-everyone-else ratio in this bar is the stuff of legends, the physical manifestation of San Francisco dating scene complaints that I thought only existed on specific corners of X.
My drinking companion and I, between swatting men away from our table like flies, studied the copy-paste dynamic of the clientele. Men came in twos, ordered cocktails, and sat across from one another with their elbows on the table. They would converse with each other, but their eyes rarely met; they scanned the room tirelessly searching for eligible, which is to say any, single females. At one point, in a sea of men sipping drinks and performatively shooting pool, we could not locate another woman in sight. Eventually, one descended the stairs with her boyfriend — darn! — and immediately began taking flash photos of the bar, a clear out-of-towner. I watched as every man in the room turned his head away.
The “Tech Bro” persona, if considered seriously (which I’ll entertain for this sentence only) conveys entitlement, toxic masculinity, and hustle culture; it’s derogatory at best, and, especially in dating, has created an inverse population of men who identify proudly as “not tech.” Looking around Persona on that desperate Thursday night, enveloped by “I Want You Back” remixes (yes, more than one), I wondered why so many of these boys, many of whom seemed mild-mannered, generally chill, and hopeful for connection, continue to wear this tired meme-fodder of a costume with the hopes of it yielding anything of value.
Then again, I remembered that I was on Mars and that I could just as easily return to the comfort of Earth at any time.
On our way out, a member of the ensemble addressed the issue head-on: He joked about the rancid ratio and asked why there were so many more men than women in San Francisco and where he can go for better odds.
As long as they’re playing Tech Bro, I decided to play the persona of a girl who doesn’t know any cool bars. Maybe try Balboa Cafe?
Go if you like: Blade Runner, Nujabes, DoorDashing yourself breakfast burritos from across the city, wingmanning bro
Ask for: The Sultry Starlite
Leave: If you identify as female
Avoid if you want: Reprieve from thinking about the rent crisis
Persona is open daily from 5 p.m. to 2 a.m.
