Hayes Valley comes alive around the holidays. City Hall is lit red and green. The San Francisco Ballet performs “The Nutcracker.” And more than 700 Santa Claus dolls are on display at 488 Hayes St.

A lot of things have changed in the neighborhood over the years, but one thing that everyone has been able to count on since 1990 is that these Santas will be here come December. Big and small, traditional and contemporary, mechanical and stuffed, the dolls line the shelves and dangle from the lights.

Brass Tacks, the bar at 488 Hayes St., upholds this tradition, but it didn’t start it. That distinction belongs to Marlena, also known as Gary McLain, a drag queen who operated the beloved bar Marlena’s in this space from 1990 to 2013. Six years after handing over the keys to a new set of bar owners, Marlena can still often be found sitting on a stool near the front window — especially when all her Santa Claus dolls are out.

These Santas aren’t just Santas. They are the token of one of the neighborhood’s most enduring traditions, a physical representation of the continuity between old and new. Many of San Francisco’s queer bars have closed in recent years, but the Santas show that the spirit of these bars — these havens for people who don’t always feel welcome in traditional settings — can sometimes live on, long after their doors have closed.

Back in 1990, Marlena was the reigning Empress of the Royal Court of San Francisco, an organization that held parties and celebrated local drag culture. Shortly after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, Janice Buxton convinced Marlena to buy into the bar, which was then called the Overpass.

Marlena already loved the bar business. She had previously owned a bar in Modesto, the Brave Bull, before moving to San Francisco.

“I don’t care what race or creed you are,” she says. “I just love people, and this business attracts all types of people.”

And people loved her. Under her and Buxton’s ownership, the Overpass became a gathering place for all walks of life, and a hot spot in the drag scene. Marlena quickly became the face of it, and within a year Buxton officially changed the name to Marlena’s.

“I came in one day and Janice had the paperwork ready,” she remembers.

Buxton told Marlena to make the bar her own, and she wasted no time. On Saturdays, they would pull a murphy bed-style stage from the wall on top of the pool table, where it could fit more than 10 ladies who would sing all night. She brought in a piano. She raised money for charity. She enticed every sitting San Francisco mayor to visit. She lined the shelves with tchotchkes, rotating themes throughout the year, like “Star Wars” and Disney.

But her favorite was always the Santa Clauses.

“I love Christmas,” Marlena says. “My mother did, too. She always over-decorated. I was the oldest child, so I helped her with it. Now I’m a Santa Claus freak.”

She started with three St. Nick dolls. Within three years, the collection had swelled to hundreds. She shopped at a Santa Claus factory in Hong Kong, a Christmas market in Italy and a year-round holiday store in Sausalito. Many people would gift Santa Clauses to Marlena, too.

“I was at Macy’s one day looking for some with a friend,” she relates. “I saw this one that was life-size, but it was $900. I couldn’t do that. But the next day, my friend drove up with it in a pick-up truck and gave it to me.”

In 2013, Marlena and Buxton decided it was time to retire. Three partners, Matty Conway, Anthony Healy-London and Josh McAdam, opened Brass Tacks that year. Conway and Healy-London had been living nearby since the early 2000s and knew the legacy of Marlena’s. Conway recalls visiting the bar during his first year in San Francisco: “I’m from Boston, and the community is a bit different there,” he says. “I was a little taken aback by the intensity of the Santa experience at first,” but soon he was so charmed by it that he began bringing visitors.

The closure of Marlena’s broke many hearts — chronicled in “Marlena’s Curtain Call,” a 2013 audio documentary by David Boyer — but the transition was amicable.

“Marlena was one of our biggest supporters from the moment we opened the doors,” says Healy-London. “She always encouraged us to do what we wanted.”

But they knew they wanted to keep the Santa Claus tradition alive. Every year, the collection continues to grow. And this nod to Marlena’s encouraged some of the old customers to stick around.

“It wasn’t immediate — it took a little time for them to warm up to a new bar — but we’re fortunate to have kept a lot of Marlena’s regulars,” Conway says.

Marlena told people not to write them off. Plus, she’s there all the time. She lives upstairs.

More Information Brass Tacks: 2 p.m.-2 a.m. Monday-Friday; noon-2 a.m. Saturday and Sunday. 488 Hayes St., S.F. http://brasstackssf.com

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“Sometimes the whole front corner is filled with my people. And having that flag there makes a difference,” she says, pointing to the rainbow flag on the far side of the bar.

As soon as the Santas come up each year, “I come in and bask in it,” Marlena continues. “This year, they added more. It looks phenomenal.”

The bonhomie between her and her successors is palpable — a rare sort of relationship between old and new owners. Conway and Healy-London often help her get her groceries upstairs.

“We’ve grown to be family,” Marlena says. “They got stuck with me. I never left.”

Marlena turned 80 in November and had five birthday parties. One of them was at Brass Tacks, organized by Dae Echols, a regular at Marlena’s and now at Brass Tacks. Conway, Healy-London and the bartenders all dressed in drag. They had a huge chocolate raspberry sheet cake with 80 candles (it took three people to blow them all out) and “Marlena’s Curtain Call” played in the park across the street.

Conway and Healy-London know how special all of this is. They are doing what they can to honor Marlena’s legacy, including displaying that life-size, $900 Santa from Macy’s at the end of the bar, right underneath the rainbow flag.

“We tried not to tarnish the spirit of Marlena’s and carry it on in our own way,” says Healy-London. “Marlena is a phenomenal person. One in a million.”

As for how all of those Santas spend their time in the offseason?

“We ship them off to the North Pole after Christmas,” says Conway, with a smile. “It’s heavily guarded.”

Shanna Farrell is an interviewer at UC Berkeley’s Oral History Center, where she specializes in contemporary cocktail culture. She is the author of “Bay Area Cocktails: A History of Culture, Community and Craft.” Email: food@sfchronicle.com