Retro chic nightlife
New ‘Blue Room’ mixes timeless cocktails with live music in Lower Nob Hill
Sleek lines and a color palette that harkens back to the glamour of the Art Moderne movement of the 1930s and 40s. Stookey’s recent expansion is retro chic at its finest.
By Virginia Miller
Weaned on films of the 1930–1960s as a child, I was a martinis and jazz girl long before I could drink. I dreamed of the kind of 1930s bars and 1940s supperclubs I saw in those movies, teeming with icy martinis, jazz and a beautifully-dressed clientele.
When Tim Stookey, his wife Leslie Cole and her cousin Aaron Cole opened Stookey’s Club Moderne in Lower Nob Hill in 2015, it stepped right out of a 1930s film. Their devoted passion for the era translated to an intimate bar of glossy blues and whites that feels like time traveling. Enter their brand new neighboring live music bar, The Blue Room, which debuted February 8, 2024.
Stookey’s calls out with a glowing neon marquee outside, inside with porthole door windows and white-jacketed, black bow-tied bartenders. Its style is Streamline Moderne, a 1930s evolution of Art Deco with curved, aerodynamic design and even nautical themes. It looks like the kind of bar you’d find on a 1930s cruise ship, walking the deck before pre-dancing in a ballroom with martinis. You can pretend you’re doing just that here.
The neighboring Blue Room, which is connected to Stookey’s to the left of its bar, sports a shimmering disco ball, circular yellow and red tables, Fred and Ginger films on the flat screen, and album covers as wide-ranging as Eartha Kitt and Talking Heads side-by-side over the toilet. The bars feel congruent, but Stookey’s commits to the 1930s-40s even in its drinks, while Blue Room ventures a bit further afield. Live music, from jazz to cabaret, centers the Blue Room from its cozy stage by the front window, a beacon to those walking by outside, while cocktails span a few decades.
This feels like old SF, certainly of the 1930s but even of 20-ish years ago when I moved here. Stookey’s has long been the kind of place where I’ve run into Art Deco Society members in full vintage dress and fedoras, or I’ve chatted with clothing designer Al Ribaya of North Beach’s iconic Al’s Attire at the bar. Certainly Stookey’s draws a fashion crowd, music and vintage buffs. But it also pulls in tourists and casual locals wandering downtown or up from the Tenderloin either on a bar crawl or looking for a pre- or post-dinner, event or show tipple. Two bars means expanded moods and options.
Both bars are equally welcoming and relaxed if you aren’t a history buff or retro-head. At Stookey’s, expect uncommon, should-be-more-popular classic cocktails like my beloved 20th Century (gin, Kina Lillet, creme de cacao, lemon juice) or New York Sour, a whiskey sour oozing blood red with a float of red wine. It’s also one of the only places in the West where one of my Nola faves has been on the menu for years, an Absinthe Frappé. The menu is extensive, grouped by spirits with a little something for everyone.
Named after Kansas City’s Blue Room, BR honors its namesake with a couple vivid blue cocktails, namely the signature Blue Room, combining gin, lemon, Cocchi Americano and Blue Curacao. Modern-day Chai Old Fashioneds or a balanced Bonfire (mezcal, Tempus Fugit Gran Classico Bitter, sweet vermouth, chocolate bitters) co-exist on the menu next to cocktail classics like a Paloma or Corn and Oil.
In both cases, drinks are more well-crafted in some of our top cocktail bars, but the range and historicity is here with an atmosphere like no other. BR will add bites eventually and the live music is a major draw. Check out Stookey’s site for the lineup, well-curated from music lovers like Tim and Leslie, choosing some of our best local bands. You can veer from the breezy retro Hawaiian vibes of the Alcatraz Islanders, 60s-style surf band The Hi-Watters, jazz trios like the Mike Lipskin trio and longtime local jazz great, Nick Rossi. But they also plan on drag shows, piano sing-alongs and cabaret.
Blue Room’s 30-seat, 600 square foot space feels partner to New Orleans’ intimate live jazz bars, yet with its own truly SF, Maltese Falcon vibes. In fact, the now dynamic duo of Stookey’s and Blue Room feel like that Dashiell Hammett, film noir-San Francisco, where Bogey and Bacall might have slipped out for a nightcap from Lauren’s North Beach apartment in Dark Passage, my favorite film of theirs and one of the best set-in-SF films. Stookey and the Coles have given us a unique SF bar duo that feels like true, insider San Francisco, the SF of today, still ever-evolving but with rich ties to its past.
// 891 Bush Street (Blue Room); 895 Bush Street (Stookey’s); www.stookeysclubmoderne.com
Virginia Miller is a San Francisco-based food & drink writer.
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