I recently told you where the famous eat in this city, and how gloriously un-fancy it gets: Adele stood in the brunch line at Zazie like she'd never heard of a reservation. Zendaya gets her scones at a worker-owned co-op.
You wanted to know where they drink, so this is the after-dark map: not bottle service for tech founders, but pop stars at piano bars, Netflix leads on leather-bar patios, and one bona fide kissing booth. Here is where they've gone when the show was over and the night wasn't.
I should note this is almost a Pride month story; the famous people who most like to drink in SF are, unsurprisingly, the LGBTQ+ community and its allies.
Where Famous People Drink in San Francisco
Sam Smith & Kim Petras | Lookout
Castro: 3600 16th St, at Market.
lookoutsf.com
In spring 2026, Smith wrapped a 20-night residency at the newly reopened Castro Theatre; the city was so smitten the mayor declared a Sam Smith Day. On closing night they pulled Kim Petras onstage for "Unholy," and then the two of them simply walked a few blocks to Lookout for an impromptu afterparty. Petras didn't even change; she swept into the bar still in her stage dress, same bag on her arm. The owner confirmed the whole thing. That is the platonic celebrity night out in this city: no entourage clearing a private room, just two of the biggest queer pop stars alive deciding the evening needed one more drink, in a Castro bar, with the rest of us.
Jake Shears | Q Bar
Castro: 456 Castro St.
qbar-sf.com
Valentine's week, 2013. The Scissor Sisters frontman turned up at Booty Call Wednesdays, an OG party from that era, complete with a broken-hearts kissing booth in the back. And it wasn't a tourist drop-in; a couple of years earlier Shears had been in town writing the music for the Tales of the City musical at A.C.T., so he was practically a local with a keyboard. Q Bar has its own survival story, too: it went dark after a 2019 fire and didn't reopen until November 2024. The bar is back, and the photos remain.
Robin Williams & Whoopi Goldberg | Hotel Utah Saloon
SoMa: 500 4th St, at Bryant.
hotelutah.com
Before the Oscars, before any of it, this 1908 saloon's open mic was a launchpad. Williams and Goldberg both worked that little stage on the way up, and local lore swears even Marilyn Monroe drank here once upon a time. Williams stayed a San Francisco fixture for life; people kept spotting him around town, at Giants games and comedy rooms, long after he could have drunk anywhere on earth and chose to do it here. The Hotel Utah is where you remember that every legend was once just a nervous person with five minutes and a beer.
Anthony Bourdain | Li Po Cocktail Lounge
Chinatown: Li Po, 916 Grant Ave.
Yelp
And Mr. Bing's
Chinatown + North Beach border: 201 Columbus Ave.
Yelp
Bourdain wasn't from here, but he drank here like he was. He put both of these on his San Francisco dive list, and when Mr. Bing's looked like it might close in 2016, he mourned it out loud; the bar is now an official Legacy Business partly on the strength of that grief. Li Po, all red grotto glow and a famously lethal Chinese mai tai, has barely changed since 1937 and is one of the last ghosts of Chinatown's old nightclub era. Mr. Bing's counted heavyweight champ Jack Dempsey as a regular decades before a celebrity chef turned it into a pilgrimage. Order the strong one. Tony would want you to.
Margaret Cho | The EndUp
SoMa: 401 6th St, at Harrison.
theendupsf.com
Cho is San Francisco to the bone. She grew up on Haight Street among the drag queens and the burnouts, and her dad ran a gay bookstore on Polk where Armistead Maupin once did a signing. So catching her out at the EndUp, the SoMa institution that's been running since 1973, isn't a celebrity gracing the scene. It's the scene's own kid coming home. The only real surprise would be if she'd never turned up at all.
Saul Sugarman
Brian J. Smith | SF Eagle
SoMa: 398 12th St.
sf-eagle.com
When the Wachowskis filmed Sense8 here, the cast fanned out into the city's queer nightlife the same way the show itself did. I know because Brian J. Smith, who played Will, came to one of my own events at the SF Eagle. It was back when the SF Gaymer nights I co-produced reached critical mass in the 2010s. Smith was not yet officially out of the closet, but not really in it, either. I remember him tweeting about IML Chicago at the time. So this is Smith playing Guitar Hero at my event in 2016.
The Eagle has been the city's leather-and-Levi's cornerstone since 1981, a designated city landmark with a heated patio, the kind of place where a Netflix lead can nurse a beer and nobody loses their composure, which is exactly why he could.
Darren Criss | Underground SF
Lower Haight: 424 Haight St, at Webster.
undergroundsf.com
It was the summer of 2017 and the party was Hell'a Tight. Darren Criss was still coming off all that Glee fame, and he stopped in I guess to see drag queen Lindsay Slowhands. Listen I interviewed her about the whole thing but don't remember the details. Slowhands puts on a fantastic party, though, and Criss is a queer ally. I love this unhinged post from Tom + Lorenzo who got mad because he wore a Christian Siriano gown. I totally understand the argument but also, come on, who will you attack next? Kathy Griffin, stop telling gay jokes! Lol.
The Rooms That Collect Them
Some bars don't have a celebrity. They have a guest list.
Tosca Café | North Beach
242 Columbus Ave.
toscacafe-sf.com
The old-guard counterweight, open since 1919 and built for collecting famous people at the bar rather than honoring a single one. The house "cappuccino" is brandy and ganache and exactly zero espresso, which tells you the priorities. The roster runs deep and weird: Bono, LeBron James, Hunter S. Thompson, Francis Ford Coppola, and Sean Penn have all bellied up here. Ask the staff about the upstairs bullet-hole story involving Penn and Kid Rock; they will tell you, because telling you is half of what Tosca is for.
SF Oasis | SoMa
298 11th St, at Folsom.
sfoasis.com
The drag mothership, opened New Year's 2015 by the late Heklina and D'Arcy Drollinger, now the city's first Drag Laureate. Its stage has held Cher and Jane Fonda; RuPaul, Lil Nas X, Doja Cat, and Cindy Wilson of the B-52's have all come through. Yes, most of those are engagements rather than someone wandering in for a vodka soda, but that's the whole point of Oasis: it is the room big enough and queer enough that the famous come to it. It nearly went dark at the end of 2025 before a last-minute donor rescue, which only makes the roster more precious. If this map has a beating heart, it lives here.
Reported and verified in spring 2026. A few of these nights I watched happen myself; the rest are on the record. And yes, before you ask: I still don't do sportsball, so I have no idea where the Warriors drink.
Saul Sugarman is editor-in-chief and owner of The Bold Italic.
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Further reading on this topic
Saul Sugarman
