San Francisco dive bar Specs’ might as well be its own country

I’ve been drunk in nearly 30 countries, and Specs’ Twelve Adler Museum Cafe is probably my favorite one. I know it’s not a sovereign nation per se, but Specs’ is certainly a world of its own.

Entering Specs’, you almost expect to see Tom Waits at the back piano writing songs about brawlers, bawlers and bastards. The walls of the North Beach institution are covered in strange bric-a-brac — labor union banners, Spanish Civil War propaganda, a giant walrus penis bone. And it operates on unique social bylaws, where you can sit at the bar and have an 85-year-old poet reading a worn copy of “Howl” on one side of you and an influencer on the other. You never really know who you’re gonna see in there. One time, Robin Wright sat next to me at the bar, and we talked for 20 minutes while an old drunk regaled her boyfriend with whatever lies and limericks old drunks blather about when they’ve got your attention.

Richard “Specs” Simmons opened his eponymous bar in 1968. He’d come out from Boston in 1948 in connection with some left-wing “political crap” and then made his way down to Los Angeles since there were more metal-working jobs there, which was his profession at the time. While in LA, he met a woman whom he followed back up to San Francisco. “She ended up kidnapping and savaging me,” Specs told me in a 2012 interview while navigating his electric wheelchair through piles of tchotchkes in his living room. “It was f—king lovely. She lived up here and she left me with crabs,” he said with a smile. Never one to hold his tongue, Specs told me how he didn’t trust the police and that in all his years of running a bar, he never called them once.

The site of what’s now Specs’ was a lesbian bar back then called Tommy’s Place, and the woman whom Specs followed to SF used to hang out there. Specs stayed in the neighborhood, eventually working at Vesuvio and meeting his wife, Sonia, there. But when he opened his bar 15 years later, one of the first tchotchkes he installed in the back was a little cast-iron inkwell in the shape of a crab. It was in honor of the girl who had brought him to North Beach.

The building has had a lot of lives over the past 170 years or so. According to a small unofficial history nestled in among the trinkets on the wall, the bar’s legacy goes a little something like this (with the caveat that some of these dates were barely legible):

1850s: A three-story building was erected.

1906: Destroyed by the Great Conflagration.

~1911: Rebuilt as a four-story building.

1920-1933: A Prohibition speakeasy.

~1937: Alaska fishermen’s social and political club.

1941-1945: A servicemen’s bar during the war years.

1945-1948: A place for local artists, bohemians and seamen.

1948-1954: Tommy’s Place, the first business in SF owned and managed by out lesbians.

1955-1963: A nightclub that featured local jazz trios, Middle Eastern music and belly dancing.

1963-1968: A vacant storeroom.

1968 to today: Broke-Ass Stuart’s favorite bar (aka Specs’).

The owner of Specs’ was a lifelong union member and supporter who insisted his employees were union too. Plus, he was an open-minded libertine who liked to have a good time. So, when he opened the bar, it immediately became a haven for artists, weirdoes, musicians, writers, drifters and anyone who didn’t fit in anywhere else. It’s been that way ever since.

In 2016, after nearly 50 years of being the wryly consummate, whip-smart barman, Specs passed away at 88 years old after a battle with Parkinson’s. It was then that a new chapter of the best bar in the world began.

“I grew up in the bar. I probably crawled around here,” Maralisa Simmons-Cook tells me over dim sum and drinks at a table in Specs’ one early afternoon in June. Maralisa is Richard “Specs” Simmons’ granddaughter, and she now co-owns the bar with her mother, Elly Simmons. She laughs while describing how weird it is that, at 30 years old, she’s now the boss of people who’ve worked at the bar since she was 12.  

Maralisa grew up in Lagunitas in West Marin, but she spent a lot of time at the bar throughout her childhood. “I was probably at every anniversary party and birthday party for Specs’ when I was growing up. It was like a second home.” Her mom Elly, an artist originally from San Francisco, spent much of her life around the bar as well. She’s actually in the process of making a documentary about the joint.

Maralisa moved to New York City for college when she was 18, so when she and her mother took ownership of the bar after her grandfather’s passing, she lived 3,000 miles away. Doing what any other millennial would do after taking over the stewardship of a weird and wonderful, 50-year-old, booze-drenched SF landmark, Maralisa started an Instagram account, a Facebook page and a website. Specs’ had officially joined the 21st century.

When the pandemic hit, Maralisa and her boyfriend moved to Los Angeles to be closer to family and the bar while staying near the music industry, since both of them are musicians. But the bar was closed … and remained closed for 14 months.

Despite Payroll Protection Program loans and running a bottle shop outside the bar (thanks for the bottle of Jameson, Elly!), it was GoFundMe that really helped keep Specs’ afloat during the darkest days of the pandemic. It raised over $130,000 between two campaigns.

“That really made me emotional, seeing the response,” Maralisa explains. “Because it was online; it wasn’t just in the neighborhood or word of mouth. So, it started spreading around to people all over the world who knew and loved the bar. … The response was really incredible.”

With the world opening back up, Maralisa began splitting her time between LA and San Francisco so she could take a more active role in the business. Before the pandemic, there were probably three or four concerts a month, but Maralisa used her experience performing solo and in the band Space Captain to fuse two of her favorite things: Specs’ and live music. 

“It’s still first and foremost about being able to come in and have a conversation,” she tells me. “But I’ve tried really hard to curate a vibe … while making sure everything still fits the culture of the bar.”

There’s now a monthly calendar of events that includes everything from jazz to surf rock to klezmer music. Plus, Alan Black, the man behind the famous literary scene at Edinburgh Castle in the 1990s and 2000s, now works at Specs’ and is throwing literary events there.

Despite being a classically trained singer and a lifelong performer, Maralisa has never booked herself for a proper show at Specs’, though she’s taken part in a few impromptu jam sessions. “I have performed here, but it’s always been sort of spur of the moment, like sitting in with a jazz group, if some buddies are playing. It’s always spontaneous, I’m never prepared, and I always have to have a lot of drinks before I get up there.”

Besides establishing a website and a social media presence, there have been a few other small changes at Specs’ since Maralisa and Elly took over. One that particularly delighted me is that, in addition to the bar’s famous giant wedge of cheese and crackers, its “culinary program” now includes It’s-It ice cream sandwiches (a suggestion from Maralisa’s boyfriend, Max). Another recent development is that, after a suggestion from bartenders Alan and Mike, Specs’ now has a cocktail menu for probably the first time ever … even if not too many people actually look at it.

One thing that hasn’t changed, and never will, is that Specs’ is a union bar.  

“We’re still a union bar. We’re still in Local 2,” Maralisa tells me. “And it was tough during COVID because we had no income! But my grandpa was always insistent upon being union.” (Unite Here Local 2 is a union of over 15,000 hospitality workers in San Francisco, San Mateo County, and the East and North Bay.)

While the bar was shut down for 14 months, Maralisa and Elly obviously worried if they could continue having a union house, or if they should try to help their workers get on Healthy SF — the program designed to make health care services available and affordable to uninsured San Francisco residents. But being union was such a founding principle of the bar that they committed to making it work. Among other things, the union has led Specs’ to provide its full-time workers and their spouses with health care, including dental and vision.

Specs’ is still one of only a few union bars or restaurants in San Francisco that are not part of a hotel or a major arts organization like the opera and symphony. Others are John’s Grill, Tommy’s Joynt, Scoma’s, the SF Zoo concessions, the United Irish Cultural Center, and the Original Ghirardelli Ice Cream and Chocolate Shop at Ghirardelli Square.

Despite all the bemoaning and hand-wringing about downtown San Francisco’s “doom loop”, many of the city’s neighborhoods are flourishing. And that is especially evident in North Beach, which is having a bit of a renaissance. New restaurants are opening along the Columbus corridor while upper Grant Street has seen numerous galleries, vintage shops and boutiques take root. Even places like Specs’ are feeling the love.

While many of the old-school writers and artists who’ve been drinking at the bar for 30 or 40 years still come by regularly — the writer’s circle that was led by late SF Poet Laureate Jack Hirschman still happens every Wednesday — a younger crowd has discovered the bar and claimed it as their own as well. And they all come for the same reason: There are no TVs or frilly trends — just art and music and poetry and a place to drink and have great conversations.

“I feel that energy a lot when I’m in the neighborhood, and also just in the bar,” Maralisa tells me. “I think the events have helped a lot. But I also think just the general energy of the city is changing. Going through COVID, and sticking it out, and staying here means a lot to people.”

Although almost no one refers to the bar by its full title, officially the bar is named “Specs’ Twelve Adler Museum Cafe,” and the word “museum” is key to understanding the place. Maralisa tells me that it was important to her grandfather that Specs’ served as a museum of sorts but never became a mausoleum. And with her help, it hasn’t. It’s 2023, and Specs has shimmied and staggered into the present like a happy drunk popping outside for a smoke. It’s here for future generations of artists, poets and weirdoes to discover and realize that possibly the best bar in the world is hiding in plain sight in an alcove off Columbus Avenue.