How 43-year-old dive El Rio was decades ahead of one of SF’s most progressive trends – SFGate

“Sugar Pie DeSanto, in her late ’70s,” Temprano says, referring to a “magical” 2014 Hard French performance by the R&B singer and dancer who’s spent most of her life in the Bay Area. “All 4-foot-whatever of her. It felt like we were transported back to the late ’60s. We had this soul queen on this stage, just giving us everything.”

As unique as that set was, it’s hardly atypical for El Rio. The 43-year-old venue — “Your Dive,” according to the sign out front — is probably the one bar in San Francisco that comes closest to giving everybody everything. Two years after the building was put on the market and the bar’s future was temporarily in doubt, the home of parties like Swagger Like Us and Mango remains in top form. Its strongest material asset, the thing that fuels all the unquantifiables like the energy and atmosphere, is a tiered backyard that gives pretty much every vantage point a good sight line — for short-statured soul queens like Sugar Pie, or anyone else.

“I love, love, love that patio,” says Heklina, a drag legend and one of Temprano’s co-conspirators at Daytime Realness, reached by phone from Iceland while rehearsing for Reykjavik Pride. “Somebody obviously takes really good care of the plants out there, the bougainvillea. Even the lemon tree is just so great.”

Asked about the best performance she’d ever seen at El Rio, Heklina, speaking from somewhere just below the Arctic Circle, paused.

“Maybe Fauxnique and Jordan L’Amour?” she said. “They did ABBA with two puppets as the boys and perfect replicas of ABBA dresses.”

(Reached for confirmation, L’Amour texted, “Those boys were real lol. But I definitely puff painted those outfits! I got groped and Fauxnique ripped the guy a new asshole too. That was a wild day.”)

COVID-19 aside, wild days at El Rio are contingent on good weather. 

“Rain sucks even if you’re throwing a party indoors, because people have to commute in the rain — and it absolutely kills an outdoor party,” Heklina says. “We’ve had that experience a couple of times, but they are blessed to have that patio.”

Yes, rain sucks if you’re wearing denim or white or mascara. However, this reporter once waited for two hours to get into Hard French in 2011 and when the sky opened up, handed their phone and wallet to a water-averse friend and kept on shaking their tail feathers outside. That’s the kind of vibe El Rio has.

Like a beneficent high priestess of chunky beads and tropical fruit, the totemic Carmen Miranda presides over the patio. Painted in 1974 by Demetrie Kabbaz — or possibly Kablaz, as his signatures differ — it’s one of four murals throughout, including a smaller Carmen, a James Dean and a Marilyn. 

“Obviously it’s not just safe for queer people, but supportive for us to hold events, meet friends for a drink, hold birthdays,” Temprano adds. “It’s our space, but also all of my straight metal-head friends can go to shows and feel just as welcome. It’s a bar where, when my 60-year-old straight parents are in town, they have a great time and make new friends. It would be the highlight of their trip.”

Inside, apart from the pool table and the shuffleboard table — major dive points for that one — El Rio’s most distinguishing characteristic is probably the restrooms. Years before gender-neutral restrooms began to proliferate, they were labeled the Universal Toilet (single-use) and Galactic Urinal (room for two).

“We were all on board with these signifiers for who gets to use the toilet,” says El Rio general manager Lynne Angel, explaining the tongue-in-cheek nomenclature. “I think it was a mandate to have the bathrooms labeled and they didn’t have the option of ‘whomever.’” 

Angel has worked at El Rio for 18 years and confirms that its secondary bar was a Chinese restaurant at one time. Eighteen years in the industry is a long time, to say nothing of working in just one spot, but for El Rio that’s almost common. 

“It’s a very special, magical space, and that’s not just me,” she says. “Most of the people who work there tend to stay there.”

Angel ticks off the pre-COVID fundraisers (Transgender Gender-Variant and Intersex Justice Project, St. James Infirmary, LYRIC, UndocuFest) and drag performances (Nicki Jizz and VivvyAnne ForeverMORE, Persia and Yves Saint Croissant) that have been a highlight through the years.

It’s not just a commitment to social justice that distinguishes the bar, either. Unlike most shot-and-a-beer dives, another draw of El Rio is drinks, whether in simpler pre-pandemic days or during its socially distanced cabaret-style period this spring. 

“We were going for simple,” Angel says. “We use fresh lime juice in our margarita recipe. Paloma, some tequila-based drinks — those are our top sellers.” 

For Frida Ibarra, aka DJ La Frida, a resident at the trans-centered dance party T4T, El Rio is one of the rare places she goes out when she’s not DJing.

“It just seems like one of those places where people in my community will meet up, whether they’re queer or not,” she says.

This is largely because of the staff, Ibarra adds, many of whom are queer and/or transgender themselves.

“I think that ensures quite a bit of safety, where you see yourself in the staff and you know you’re going to be safe because they know what it takes for them to be safe,” she says.

When Ibarra and her co-promoter Shannon were hunting for a home for T4T — it had been at the now-closed Stud, and Jolene’s before that — the ability to party all afternoon and into the evening was a big asset.

“That part is cool, too: the flexibility around the hours. We were outside until 1 a.m. We made it work — I was pretty wowed. The levels were at where they needed to be,” Ibarra says. “You know you’re going to get a very energized and eclectic crowd, so thinking about that helped me with my performance, which I hoped to transfer to the crowd.”

Loud parties are some of the best parties, but even in designated entertainment corridors like 11th Street in SoMa, that can often cause a conflict with the neighbors. El Rio’s patio, in spite of its quasi-amphitheater structure and the high walls around it, doesn’t reverberate like an acoustical cave. At least, not according to Stephen Torres, a former El Rio bartender who happens to live upstairs.

“The noise isn’t that bad, which sounds crazy but it’s true,” says Torres, the secretary of the Castro LGBTQ Cultural District advisory board who now works at Twin Peaks, a queer bar in that neighborhood. “I think that El Rio has benefited in its 43-year-history from the fact that on two sides it was flanked by garages and warehouses and on the other side was another bar — which was Nap’s and then Virgil’s Sea Room, soon to be Mothership.”

When he worked at El Rio, the bar’s original owners still owned the building (which, incidentally, is really two combined lots). They had a policy of letting prospective tenants know that the bar below was active. Fast-forward a few years, when those owners put 3156-3158 Mission St. on the market, and El Rio’s future was in doubt. The Mission Economic Development Agency swooped in and purchased it for $6.8 million in 2019, financed by the city’s “small sites” program intended to shore up affordable housing in vulnerable neighborhoods.

“Currently, the building is owned by MEDA, and when we moved in, it was part of our lease that we were recognizing that we were above an operating bar that was open until closing hours,” Torres says. “Everyone that’s lived upstairs has had to be OK.”

He recounts a surprisingly varied history. When it opened in 1978, El Rio catered primarily to gay men, but its development as a home for progressive politics brought in members of the women’s community. The bar’s longest-running event, Salsa Sunday, added a bit more diversity.

Torres calls that party El Rio’s trademark. “Such a mixed crowd of hard-core cumbia dancers from the neighborhood, regardless of sexual orientation or identity, mixing with a very queer crowd and having world-famous orquestas come through there! There used to be a whole circuit of salsa clubs. Some were super-nice and straight, and El Rio was this funky, uneven dance floor where you danced at your own peril.”

For a brief period earlier this summer, the pre-pandemic vibe was back in full force. On the last Saturday in July at Disco Daddy, the mood outside was as buoyant as the cuts were deep. But like so many other bars in San Francisco, El Rio has readopted mask-wearing in response to the delta variant, and some long-running parties like Daytime Realness have chosen to cancel upcoming events. 

Eventually — one hopes — delta will fade away. Summertime dance parties will resume, soul and disco will reverberate without upsetting the neighbors, and Mothership will open in the former Virgil’s space next door. Impatient cheapskates will probably try to hop the fence to get in, like they always have. Even if they avoid that line, they’ll still have to wait for their $4 Tecates. But El Rio will still be Your Dive. It’s still ours. It’s everyone’s. 

Peter-Astrid Kane (they/them) is the communications manager for San Francisco Pride and a former editor of SF Weekly.