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: Last Rites.
Having grown up in a popular Halloweentown, I’m continuously amazed (and bothered) by people who don’t love the holiday. Halloween is such a fascinating creative exercise, whether one’s costume is thrown together with things from the closet, delivered in an Amazon package, handmade months in advance, or snapped up at CVS on the way to the party. Halloween parties are an even grander chance for expression: Themes are executed, narratives are crafted, mysteries are written, and spaces are transformed. Don’t you just love when a Halloween party hasn’t left a single space, even the bathroom, undecorated?
That’s how Last Rites, at 718 14th St. in the Castro, feels 365 days a year. In a city more or less devoid of super Halloween-y bars (pop-ups notwithstanding, though generally, those have felt too gimmicky for my taste), Last Rites is the perfect place to step out of the normalcy of daily life and into someone else’s weird little world.
Upon entering, visitors find themselves in the wreckage of a plane crash in the jungle. This isn’t the kind of tropical paradise tiki setting found in other bars such as the Tonga Room or Smuggler’s Cove. Last Rites, as one may expect from the name, is far grimmer. If you, like me, grew up watching Legends of the Hidden Temple and Indiana Jones, this is your kind of tiki bar.
True to the plane-crash narrative, the bar itself is made from salvaged parts of an old airplane fuselage, and its eight seats are old, height-boosted airline chairs. Stone booths and semi-private nooks accommodate larger groups. Palms, ferns, and skulls are almost as abundant as bottles of rum, of which Last Rites has at least 150 different kinds. The space is narrow but surprisingly deep. The few inches of open wall space drive home the feeling of a lush, dense tropical forest.
Then there are the two large stone skull heads, made by fabricator Brian Sullivan, that protrude from the walls and are illuminated with eerie green lighting. Maybe we didn’t survive that crash after all.
It smells (fondly) like a fog machine. On the speakers, jungley sounds of wind rustling leaves, bird calls, insects, and frogs play over Crystal Castles-esque 2010s synth-pop. (“Crimewave” actually sounded great amid the tropical sound collage.) Periodically, the sound of an airplane crashing rumbles through the bar. Something divine might be at play with the timing of the airplane crash: As my drinking companion noted, it always comes during hilariously serious points of conversation.
Last Rites opened in 2018. Its owners, Justin Lew and Ian Scalzo, are also behind Divisadero cocktail bar and restaurant Horsefeather, and sought to bring their signature wine-based syrups to the tiki cocktail cannon.
Horsefeather is to Last Rites what Fourth of July is to Halloween, which is to say, incomparable. It’s a beautiful juxtaposition, how ordinary Horsefeather is compared to how hard Lew and Scalzo freaked it with Last Rites.
Last Rites has a standing menu of 10 signature cocktails, including some twists on classic tiki drinks and three frozen ones. There’s the Last Rites, otherwise known as their house grog, a pleasant concoction of rum, amaro and spices, citrus, and a flamed cinnamon stick. They also take a spin on the Painkiller with the addition of absinthe. However, their most memorable might be the Kali Maa’s Doom, which has pisco, grappa, melon, Georgian wine, citrus, and a delicious homemade marshmallow. Cocktails can be ordered as a single serving for $16, a couple’s portion for $35, or in a large bowl to split four-plus ways at $70.
We opted for their seasonal Halloween drinks: I got the King in the Interval, made with rum, shochu, grapefruit, maraschino, citrus, and spices, served up in a skull glass with a mini jungle of mint. My companion had the Conspiracy Junkie, an autumnal twist on the highball with an orange and marigold garnish.
Through roughly next week (our server explicitly told me not to quote him on that), the seasonal drinks serve as clues to a mystery. They recommended that since all six seasonal drinks are required to solve the mystery, you come in a group of at least three — these ABVs are no joke.
On Wednesdays, they screen Survivor, now in its 112th season, and on Thursdays they host bingo. While any time is a good time for Last Rites (except maybe not on Survivor night), Halloweentime is certainly the best.
Go if you like: Rum, Les Baxter’s “Necronomicon,” Legends of the Hidden Temple, Rainforest Cafe’s noise machine, coach seating
Ask for: Kali Maa’s Doom
Leave: Your cool card at the door and embrace the kitsch
Avoid if you want: A ye olde pint
Last Rites is open 5 p.m. to 11 p.m. on Sunday, Tuesday and Wednesday, from 5 p.m. to 1 a.m. on Thursday, and 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. on Friday and Saturday.
