Cocktails & nightlife
By Davy Carren
Imagine it: You’re whisked away to an elegant Art Deco hall where a jazz trio is wailing away on a stage while you sit at an oblong marble table with gilt bell lamps, sipping War Years cocktails bathed in the amber glow of sunburst chandeliers.
The bartenders are wearing bowties. Flowering sconce lights smolder from bronze stems high on the walls. Even the bathrooms are swanky, with chevron tile, fan motif wallpaper, and lavish golden soap- and paper towel-dispensers. The hardwood of the dance floor is beckoning.
This is the newly-opened Dawn Club in downtown San Francisco, tucked in an alley-like street called Annie just to the rear of the Palace Hotel.
The Dawn Club emerged like a phoenix rising from the ashes of downtown’s “doom loop” paranoia. It’s made for buzzy headlines as a bid to save the neighborhood, and they put it right on their sign:
They have their own fanciful takes on classic cocktails — including low-proof and zero-proof ones for the dry crowd — a wide variety of world-spanning spirit flights, craft beer and wine, and the most extensive bottle list for 2-ounce pours (think rare bourbons and scotches that are old enough to vote) you’ll probably ever come across.
Dawn Club owner Brian Sheehy is also the founder and CEO of Future Bars, so you’re likely to note this new space for his prohibition-era and speakeasy touches from other popular favorites like Bourbon & Branch and Local Edition.
He calls these rare old bottles his “rainy day fund,” and is extremely pleased that he’s finally got a chance to tap into it here at Dawn Club. Those bottles of hundred-dollar-plus pours are hidden behind the handcrafted hanging bar’s glasswork’s ember-bright streaks, out of sight but definitely not out of mind.
Mr. Sheehy joined me at the bar, letting me explore Dawn Club’s exquisite confines before their 5 p.m. opening time. They’ve only been at it for two weeks, with more of a “soft opening” feel to things still lingering. I admire the huge wall of liquor, and beverage director Jayson Wilde explains:
“We start with the darker stuff in the middle and it works its way out to the lighter tones,” he tells me. “It’s sectional: the best bottles are the highest, of course, and the scotches go by regions out towards the bourbons and the rums,” eventually giving way to the vodkas at the very end. It’s an elaborate way of showcasing the liquor, and I am struck by just how vast their selection is; there’s even a library-esque rolling ladder to get to the higher shelves.
The bartenders are given a special guide to help them locate the booze, like a Dewey Decimal System for alcohol. It’s mesmerizing.
The Monadnock building survived the 1906 earthquake, and still has the dynamite scars in its foundation to show where they failed to knock it down trying to save The Mint and The Palace during the subsequent fire. The Dawn Club’s first iteration opened here in 1933, just in time for San Francisco’s Great Jazz Revival, and soon it was the heartbeat of the local jazz scene, featuring such acts as the Lu Watters’ Yerba Buena Jazz Band. But after some tax difficulties the club was closed in 1946.
In its new incarnation, it’s a fancy club — but not too fancy. “Most people who come in here make the effort to dress up, but we do not have a prescribed dress code,” Sheehy tells me. This feels right. The Dawn Club is drawing its crowd from those who are allured by having an exceptional experience when they have a night out, who are intentional in their planning.
Reservations are a big part of Dawn Club’s business model. You can reserve seats for an allotted amount of time, usually from 1–2 hours, and be guaranteed a place to drink and listen to jazz on the bistre brown banquettes beneath the giant windows or at a table on the main floor, which holds only about 80 guests at a time. There’s a small charge on each reservation that goes straight to the bands, which makes sure there is live music every night on the Dawn Club’s stage. The bands go from 8 p.m. until midnight. They’re going to have an outdoor seating area opening up in a few months, with bands playing out there, too.
Back at the bar, I’m swimming in ambiance.
“We’re always searching for that elusive amber glow,” Sheehy says over cocktails. “It’s more of a pumpkin shade now, with the LEDs, but we’re getting closer. I want this place to gleam like the flame of a candle.”
Everything takes on a golden hue as I sip my Lion’s Mane — 1792 Small Batch Bourbon, Lime, Demerara, Pimento Dram — made by bar manager Owen Lee, who’s an expert at putting the fine finishing touches on their eclectic array of prohibition-era inspired cocktails.
Then there’s the double creme, chocolaty, espresso-based Grasshopper that’s in a frosty Nick & Nora glass and all mint cream on top; the Clover Leaf for those who prefer their gin with tart fruit and egg whites; and the zero-proof “fruit salad in a glass” called the Sauternes Cobbler. All these drinks are $20 each.
As I left Dawn Club, people were swarming down Market and piling into the Montgomery Bart station. I wanted to tell them to slow down, to stay a while, and maybe pay a visit to this fabulous new place called Dawn Club that had once existed well before any of them were born. Jazz bands and swanky cocktails. It’s right there. I swear! Just around the corner from all the commotion, a magical anachronsitic respite from all the texting and scrolling and screen tapping that have come to define the empty spaces in our lives.
// Dawn Club. 10 Annie St., San Francisco. Wednesday-Saturday 5 p.m.-2 a.m.
Davy Carren is an Oakland-based writer.
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