Hobson's Choice — Restaurant in San Francisco

Poorly ran bar. I get it's a local neighborhood dive bar, but what we experienced on Saturday night was rough.

My girlfriend and her friend decided to do a Haight street birthday bar hop. This bar was one of the stops. We gave them a few days heads up that we were bringing in up to 30 people. They were accommodating, reserved an area for us and even offered to make a special drink for the birthday crew.

We arrived at 10pm like scheduled. They ran out of all punch bowls. One of the the main reasons this was on the list.

They wouldn't close tabs out because it was "too busy". First time this has ever happened at a bar.

Despite being a bar that specializes in mixed drinks, they eventually refused to make basic mixed drinks. Considering they were low on a lot of their items on the menu, people naturally asked what they could make.

They eventually stopped making mixed drinks and diverted to shots/beers at 11-1130PM because they were 'overwhelmed'. There was a lot of people, but the birthday party wasn't sloppy. Everyone was in really good spirits until the bartenders brought the energy down by being incredible rude about asking for basic mixed rinks. Despite they're disfunction because of their management team, they took it out on the customers and were sassy about everything.

Lastly, special shout out to bartender Dave. He was the one who we coordinated with and came through with nothing that was promised.

Not only did he fail to execute, he pulled some racist stuff and got one of the birthday girls mixed up with her friend. The birthday girl that he coordinated the event with and had full on conversations with. The birthday girl that wore an orange dress and her friend was in all black. The main similarity being they're both the same ethnicity. Most people of color have experienced this and...

Out of state visitors beware.

tl;dr - Don’t go here with out of state licenses, they will confiscate it and force you to have the police come out to get it back.

We tried going here as a group last Friday. The lady at the door allowed three of us with California drivers license. My sister with a Tennessee (recently moved here) license handed to the door lady. She took it then said “I’m not dealing with this tonight.” Confused we all confirmed this is a real identification.

She then said some language I won’t write here. Now we all frustrated said fine let us have her ID and we will go elsewhere. She refused, and again used inappropriate language and told us to leave. At this point we are all thinking this isn’t real. I then started to call the police.

At this point she went in and my wife followed, the door lady then finally involved another person at the bar (5 minutes in at this point) and the bartender could clearly see it was a real ID. Handed it to my wife and we finally could leave.

I then called to see if we could speak with the manager. And unfortunately said if he was involved “I would have waited for the police to come.” This to me is an unacceptable use of our tax money.

To sum up, just avoid this place if you’re out of state. They are perfectly fine if you have a California license. There are plenty of great bars on Haight. We live in Haight and never at any other bar have had this problem. in fact never in my life has someone refused to give...

Oh Hobson's Choice. How I hate to love you! Much like the namesake, you think you're making a good decision coming here. It sounds like a fantastic idea after you've already had a few with your friends. What could go wrong? There's a bunch of us! We can finish a delicious punch bowl the size of Rocky Dennis's head EASY!

That delicious bowl of GoGo Punch went down so smooth, why not get another?!? Victorian Punch it is this time!!!

A few hours later, you stumble out the door. Feeling sticky from all the maraschino cherries you've eaten. You're sweating rum so strong it makes the Haight streetfolk run. Soon you're crashing a fancy party filled with Asian students, buying bottles of wine to share from the corner store and waking up in Duboce Park when the sprinklers come on.

I wish I could say this has happened to be only once. Sadly/Amazingly it happens every time I make the Hobson's Choice. A choice we all should make...