Not even a $500 fine is keeping people from jumping into this SF bar's pool

If you drop your phone in the Tonga Room pool, a manager will grab this pool skimmer to fish it out. If you drop your phone in the Tonga Room pool, a manager will grab this pool skimmer to fish it out. Photo: Blair Heagerty / SFGate Buy photo Photo: Blair Heagerty / SFGate Image 1 of / 22 Caption Close Not even a $500 fine is keeping people from jumping into this SF bar's pool 1 / 22 Back to Gallery

At the end of an average night at the Tonga Room, the staff might need to fish some cocktail umbrellas out of the pool. Sometimes, it could be a tiki mug or two. If it’s a particularly rowdy night, a shoe.

In an unlucky moment, someone might lean against the bamboo railing, angling for the perfect selfie including the sweeping lava rock, and their precious iPhone X tumbles into the blue-green depths. On the most wild night? 12 people jumped into the pool all at once.

(On my most recent visit to the bar, I spied coins, a straw, a fork and what looked to be one of those plastic stars they affix to the strings of helium balloons abandoned at the bottom.)

The Tonga Room has waxed and waned in popularity over the years, but integral to its continued success is undoubtedly something that most indoor bars across the country can’t claim to have — a pool. The “lagoon” acts as the focal point of one of San Francisco’s most beloved institutions and keeps locals and tourists alike coming back to enjoy the spot where “rain” falls from the ceiling at a regular cadence, a 3-piece band floats on a retractable thatch-roofed barge and guests drink sweet Mai Tais out of giant tiki-carved bowls well into the night.

It’s kitschy. It’s unique. It’s a place where it’s as common to find tech executives as a couple of tourists in from Nebraska.

There are plenty of tiki bars in the Bay Area, but none can claim the type of stories that are born when one of the busiest bars in the city creates half-hourly “thunderstorms” around a 75-foot pool. From celebrities to bands that want a chance at playing on the stage to regular drunken revelers — the staff even once received an audition tape from a woman applying to be the bar’s resident mermaid — everyone wants a seat near the pool.

The pool’s history

In 1929, Fairmont San Francisco added the indoor swimming pool, known as the "Fairmont Plunge,” on its lower level. The new attraction in the luxury hotel drew in local crowds and even celebrities such as actress Helen Hayes and then-actor Ronald Reagan.

But in 1945, the hotel decided to transform the pool. They hired Metro Goldwyn Mayer’s (MGM) leading set director, Mel Melvin, to redesign the space into a restaurant and bar with live entertainment. The pool became a “lagoon” and he added a floating stage for a band. Tiki was hot at the time — Trader Vic’s had been operating in Oakland for more than 10 years — and the Southern Pacific atmosphere provided an oasis to customers with wanderlust, especially those who had served overseas in the actual South Pacific during the war.

A late-1960s update gave us the Tonga Room we now know and love, opting for a focus on the Polynesian/tiki vibe without a cruise ship atmosphere, thus removing an upper level of “life boat” dining. (Scroll through the gallery above for current and historic photos of the Tonga Room, including when the bar was designed to look like a ship.)

A spot for mischief

But no matter how hotel staff dressed up the pool over the years, from hosting real lily pads on the surface to dying the water different colors, people have always wanted to jump in.

Famed San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen, a documented fan of Tonga Room, wrote in 1946, “Well, it finally happened; a couple of spiffligated gents stripped down to their shorts in the F’mont’s Tonga Room the other night–and leaped into the swimming pool!”

While the bar has tried to curb pool jumping over the years, even adding a $500 fine two years ago, the practice hasn’t stopped it altogether. “In the five years that I’ve been here, we’re currently going through the largest dry spell of pool jumpers,” Matthew Elia, a bartender for the past four years, said. “Before we started charging people it would happen once a week, but now it’s closer to once a month.”

It might be easy to assume it’s young, drunk tech employees hopping in after one-too-many Zombies, but Elia said the urge to jump extends to all ages. “It’s not 21-year-olds, it’s 50-year-old men oftentimes,” he said. “The old people know the history of the place. We had older, big money business guys jump in one time.”

Longtime San Francisco residents may be tempted, but visitors are too. When the late Anthony Bourdain came to film a segment for the Travel Channel’s “The Layover,” his crew went back after closing to take a dip. He subsequently called Tonga Room “…the greatest place in the history of the world.”

And while it takes hotel security to help a pool jumper out (there’s no stairs and the pool is fenced in), the staff has even more reasons to stay on land. “We keep the pool clean, but I don’t know that the chemicals in it are the ones you’d want to swim in,” Elia said.

There’s a reason it doesn’t have that quintessential “pool smell.”

“The band is playing above with equipment that has electricity and we definitely don’t want anyone to get shocked,” Melissa Farrar, the Fairmont's director of marketing communications said. “But they love doing it. When there’s a sign that says do not touch, people want to.”

Since they’ve instituted the fee, Elia estimates they’ve collected more than $6,000 in fines.

Many items cleaned from the pool are just accidentally dropped in (keys, leis, straws), but some objects are purposefully thrown in as well. A few staff members recalled a time when a woman was proposed to, and allegedly didn’t react well to the question, throwing the engagement ring in the pool. (Staff later used diving equipment to find it and return it to its owner.)

One staff member, Basharat Ahmad, who’s been serving at the Tonga Room for 26 years, said that wasn’t the first time an engagement ring ended up in the pool.

“In the Tonga Room, things happen,” Ahmad said. “I say the Tonga Room is the only room where adults act like kids.”

It shouldn’t come as a surprise it's also been mistaken for a glorified fountain, with coins tossed in in the hopes of wishes granted. Taking advantage of this misinterpretation, Ahmad said that once during a nonprofit fundraiser it was purposefully used as such and all the money tossed in went to charity.

San Francisco’s best kept secret concert stage

The glittering water also acts as a stage for the Island Groove, the live band that plays covers nightly on a moveable boat for the crowd of diners and dancers. The rotating trio is there every night the bar is open, but the special stage is one that many musicians have tried to commandeer. “It’s a highly coveted thing to be able to perform on that boat,” Farrar said. “We have rock bands and other musicians come in all the time, especially ones on tour.”

Chris Isaak hosted his Warner Bros./Reprise release in the Tonga Room in 1989. The barge hosted electronic duo Jack Ü, the group made up of Skrillex and Diplo, in an UberX promotional concert in 2016. M.C. Hammer hosted his birthday there in 2012.

Jimmy Buffet credits his song, Altered Boy, with a visit to the Tonga Room, though staff is unsure when he visited or whether he played on the stage.

And countless musicians and celebrities have made appearances that Farrar said she can’t mention on the record.

An enduring popularity

With long-running institutions closing every day in San Francisco, the Tonga Room appears safe for now. After a brush with death in 2009 when the hotel planned to demolish part of the hotel and redo the lower levels, longtime devotees came out of hibernation to celebrate the Tonga Room, rallying together to save the spot. A Facebook group gathering support at the time garnered more than 4,000 members.

The Tonga Room is now a member for San Francisco Heritage's Legacy Bar & Restaurant Program and Elia said it’s busier than ever.

Just don’t call it an adult Rain Forest Cafe.

“A lot of people say this is like a Rain Forest cafe, which I find pretty aggravating because that’s a children’s restaurant with animatronics,” said Elia. “This is a 75-year-old San Francisco institution.”

Tessa McLean is a digital editor with SFGATE. Email her at tessa.mclean@sfgate.com or follow her on Twitter @mcleantessa.