Just how much of a sense of history should a dive bar retain?

This can be a hazardous proposition. Ignore the fans who kept you in business, and they may drift away. Stay too fixated on a long-gone era, and you’ll become a mustn’t-touch set piece.

Three bartenders who have worked at North Beach’s Columbus Cafe for almost 30 years between them have decided to grapple with nostalgia on their own terms. On Feb. 1, the co-workers — Will De Vault, Ben Morrison and Beka Woods-Kennedy — became co-owners of the 84-year-old bar.

They know what it means to buy this chunk of city history. De Vault, Morrison and Woods-Kennedy — who formed a company called North Beach Pals LLC — are not the first bar employees to save a beloved San Francisco institution. In 2014, seven employees and friends took over the Uptown bar after owner Scott Ellsworth died, and in 2017, an 18-person collective of employees and regulars formed in order to buy the Stud, whose owner was moving to Hawaii after a rent hike.

Even as other old bars in the city close — Portals Tavern, the Gangway, the Lexington — these employee handovers suggest that there’s still room in San Francisco for the unique communities that exist within its constellation of dive bars.

Columbus Cafe has belonged to Paul and Joe Marino, a father-son longshoremen duo, for the past 15 years. “Joe’s looking to retire — he’s about to turn 80,” says Woods-Kennedy. “Paul’s got a family now. So basically they wanted the legacy of a longshoreman bar to go on.”

The only real difference between a longshoreman bar and a regular dive baris its location near the port, De Vault says, adding that he hopes Columbus can continue attracting the city’s remaining dock workers — the union local isn’t far away. Another qualifier: “selling as many cheap drinks as we can get away with selling and still earn a living.”

The idea of the longshoreman bar is quintessential North Beach, a neighborhood that embraces its working-class, industrial past as much as its Italian heritage. So Columbus’ new owners will keep things largely the same, including the Sailor Jerry mermaid theme and framed black-and-white photos (many taken by Joe Marino) of an active waterfront.

De Vault, Morrison and Woods-Kennedy are also dedicated to keeping alive the assertively friendly spirit of Columbus Cafe. It’s a place that’s always felt wholly North Beach without drowning in either Beat-era nostalgia or the meltwater from artisanal ice cubes.

“We wanted this bar to not become another cocktail bar with suspenders and 17-step cocktails that you pay $20 for,” Woods-Kennedy says.

Unsurprisingly, most of the longtime patrons are beer drinkers, she adds, although some prefer wine. This is North Beach, and wine-focused Belle Cora is right across the street. Does Columbus have a good wine list?

“Nope,” Woods-Kennedy says. “We said blue-collar!”

De Vault has been working on securing legacy-business status for rent-stabilization purposes, and his research into who owned the bar and when revealed that it originally opened on Columbus Avenue, around the block. (Columbus Cafe is not named for Christopher Columbus, who’s fallen into serious disfavor these days.)

In the 1940s, the bar moved to its current location, run by the founder’s son and later his wife, who sold it to a guy named Giovanni, who sold it to the Marinos in the early 2000s. Over the decades, it’s had a lot of regulars.

“The heiress from the Woolworth’s fortune used to come here,” De Vault says, referring to the lovelorn Barbara Hutton, who had seven husbands. “There’s some tragic story about how she lived and died, but she would get soused here with some of her beaus. She was a baroness who lived all over. As far as celebrities coming here, that was the biggest one I could find.”

Hutton was hardly a longshoreman, it’s true. The pool players and rocker types who populate the bar most days aren’t longshoremen, either.

De Vault admits there can be tension between the punks and the longshoremen sometimes. “We typically have to temper our own desire to play more metal and punk rock music with the crowd that we have to deal with,” says De Vault, who also teaches college English composition classes.

These days, there’s a tight community to the workers behind North Beach’s nightlife haunts, with employees of the Northstar Cafe and the Boardroom and the other half-dozen dives all traveling together, spending holidays with each other, and heading out to New Year’s Day rave Breakfast of Champions as a group at 6 a.m.

“Most of our regulars are either in the industry or spend enough time in bars and restaurants to qualify,” Woods-Kennedy says. “When you walk in the door, you know 25 to 30% of the people every day of the week, which is nice.” Columbus Cafe hosted Thanksgiving this year, and almost 50 people came.

Some of Columbus’ relationships with its neighbors are even more directly complementary. Belle Cora has good wine but no hard liquor license, so patrons cross Green Street for a stiff drink at Columbus. Sotto Mare can have long waits, so people pop into Columbus for a drink until their table opens up. North Beach’s dives occasionally organize themed pub crawls with up to eight stops, spreading the love around.

But the most encouraging development may be the return of Columbus Cafe’s 2-for-1 tokens, which fell out of circulation over the last couple years in a move that De Vault calls “ill-advised.”

The tokens are basically poker chips with custom designs, many bearing the Fernet Branca globe-and-eagle logo; Columbus claims it was once the No. 2 consumer of San Francisco’s favorite amaro. You’d get a token when you ordered a drink during happy hour, and it was good for another free drink. They were such a hit that people have held onto them for 10 years or more.

Like any good numismatists, the new owners of Columbus Cafe can identify tokens by the era in which they were circulated. But they’re pretty lenient about redeeming tokens issued before they took ownership.

“If you bring in your really old chips, you get a discount off of draft beer — like a dollar or two,” Morrison says, but maybe not a fully free drink.

Then, like weathered $1 bills, the tokens leave circulation, but they’re still being put to use.

“I’m making an art piece,” De Vault says. “I might use it to do a bar top or some sort of artistic installation.” He has about 10 pounds of them.

From here out, you can redeem a token for a beer from one of Columbus Cafe’s two dozen taps. The beer selection rotates, featuring mostly local breweries with an emphasis on sours. A fresh set of beer-and-shot specials should be coming down the pike, which is hardly surprising for a classic dive.

What may perturb a grizzled day-drinker is the sight of cans of Truly. “You almost have to have it,” Woods-Kennedy says of the hard seltzer brand. But “we don’t have White Claw. I refuse.”

Columbus Cafe’s print-lined walls are set to get a bit of reorganizing, and the pool league is hopefully returning, but the major change is down below the main bar. There’s a special-events-only basement so underused that many regulars don’t even know it exists. The basement is set to get new lighting, wallpaper and furniture for parties, plus a spiffy new bar. The team is keeping mum on most specifics for fear of jeopardizing any future permits, but the idea is for a “sunken speakeasy” with a sexy vibe and a projection screen.

Still no suspenders, though. Any changes to Columbus Cafe have to fit with a vibe that has endured through the ages.

One of the coolest things about the bar: “Nobody leaves,” Woods-Kennedy says. “You come back four or five years later, the odds are you’re going to know the bartender.”

Columbus Cafe: 2 p.m.-2 a.m. Monday-Friday; noon-2a.m. Saturday-Sunday. 562 Green St., S.F. 415-274-2599 or www.columbuscafesf.com

Peter Lawrence Kane is a journalist and the communications manager for San Francisco Pride, and a former editor of SF Weekly. Twitter: @WannaCyber Email: food@sfchronicle.com