I’ve started looking for a place to move. The other day my landlord posted a notice on my door announcing that my rent is getting jacked up next month. The question is: Los Angeles or Oakland? I’m not sure, but staying here is illogical. Across from my room is another door plastered with eviction notices and Do Not Enter paperwork. And now there’s this other news that 21 Club, this fucking second home to me that I love so dearly, is closing too.

It reminds me of when I first moved into my luxurious Tenderloin efficiency early last year and decided to celebrate by visiting Frank at 21 Club. If you’ve never been, 21 Club is a dive on the corner of Turk and Taylor, an infamous intersection that San Francisco Chronicle columnist C.W. Nevius aptly described as “the most important street corner in San Francisco…go to Turk and Taylor if you want to buy drugs, get panhandled or run the risk of getting shot.” (That didn’t stop Esquire from naming the bar one of the best in America in 2008, however).

I met Frank in 2007 when I was working on a story about the TL for the Chronicle, and ever since I’ve come in several times a week. Back then I was an aspiring writer able to afford my own drinks, which I paid for in twenties — and I’d tip well. I loved Frank’s company and his stories about back in the day when all the Chronicle writers used to drink themselves to oblivion in his bar. The times have changed for me. I’m struggling now and nowhere near where I once was, and Frank somehow knows this. Maybe it’s because I no longer pay for my drinks in twenties but in ones and fives, and sometimes Frank lets me have a couple more drinks than I should. I’ve never told him this, but I plan to repay him once I get my shit together.

Anyway, last year, during my celebratory visit — my first since returning to the neighborhood — it was like I’d never left. Everything was the same. As usual, Frank bartended while all the regulars sat by themselves waiting for death. The jukebox was silent. I asked Frank what was up with his establishment not having one of those historical plaques outside — the building I now lived in had one, after all. Why not his? Frank shrugged it off as if to say “whatever, who cares,” and before I even asked he handed me a shot of whiskey and a bottled light beer, my usual.

One of the pleasures of 21 Club has always been sitting by the window where I can watch the lurid pageant of Turk and Taylor. It’s more entertaining than anything on TV since I never know what I’m going to see — a street brawl, a head-on collision, a homeless guy stretched on a hospital bed pedaling himself along. Sometimes I see people running away from something, people checking every parked car for an unlocked door, women selling hard drugs out of their vaginas, and street hookers of every variation prowling the drag and freshening their makeup.

On the opposite corner is Club 65, which at one time was a pretty seedy dive itself — more or less a drug dealers’ bar. On that night in 2014, it was still boarded up and vacant just as it had been when I left the neighborhood. Next to it is a convenience store. Sometimes the regulars at 21 Club would walk over there and buy a frozen dinner for Frank to heat up in the microwave behind the bar. The store was closed though and all boarded up like Club 65. “What happened there?” I asked Frank.

He told me that a couple of investors bought the place and planned to put in a gourmet food joint, similar to the ones that even then were popping up all along Market Street.

“There?” I gasped. “They’re going to put one of those there?!”

And suddenly it all came into focus. All the historical markers blasted onto buildings, the recently removed parking meters, the police finally posting officers on 24/7 watch along Turk and Taylor, the boarded-up businesses and the new ones slated to take their place — gentrification, here we come.

“Holy shit,” I said to Frank, “This whole neighborhood is going to change.”

I gazed at everyone seated around me at the bar. They’re all going to be gone one day too, I thought, we all are, but then I blurred my eyes and tried to envision the new cast of regulars who would take their place. I pictured them as well dressed people who could afford the luxury of $12 cocktails. They were unrecognizable to me, and when I looked at all the little knickknacks Frank had collected over the years and proudly displayed behind his bar, I suddenly felt terrified. I didn’t like what I was envisioning and tried to unblur my eyes as quickly as possible, tried to un-imagine all of it.

It was hard to do.

It turns out my vision was eerily prescient. When I heard the news this weekend about 21 Club closing, I immediately paid Frank a visit. He’s talked about selling his bar for quite some time, but it’s a shock that he actually did it. The bar has a sad, funereal atmosphere now, and it’s obvious the news has spread among the patrons. When I asked Frank about what happened he told me he didn’t want to talk about it. He seemed down, as if there had been a death in the family. When he brought my drinks, he set them on the bar and shrugged. Then he threw up his arms and said with a sad smile, “Well, I guess I’m leaving town now too.”

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h/t Inside Scoop SF

Top photo courtesy of Mobilus In Mobili/Flickr. Body photo courtesy of throgers/Flickr.