The Saloon, North Beach.

The bar the firefighters saved.

The Saloon opened in 1861, fifteen years before the city had a sewer system. The room is two storeys: a long ground floor bar and a small upstairs balcony that has not been used as anything but storage since 1937. The Saloon predates the Cliff House, the Palace Hotel, and the Embarcadero. It survived the 1906 earthquake and fire because the volunteer firefighters who had been drinking there refused to let the building burn. They formed a bucket brigade with the bar's whisky bottles full of water from a horse trough and saved a single block of Grant Avenue.

The room is dim, narrow, and smells of 164 years of beer and a small kitchen that closed in 1972. The original mahogany bar runs along the right wall. The floor is original tile, cracked in seven places. The 1906 firefighter scorch marks are still visible on the ceiling beam above the bar. The bar refuses to paint over them.

Why this matters. The Saloon is the rare bar with a documented role in San Francisco municipal history. It is also, today, the most reliable blues bar in California, with live music five nights a week and no cover charge.

The 1906 firefighter scorch marks.

Above the bar, on the original ceiling beam roughly six feet east of the back-bar mirror, three dark scorch marks remain visible. They are the marks left by burning embers that landed on the beam during the 1906 fire and were extinguished by the bucket brigade. The bar has documented the marks in three independent historical surveys. The wood beneath the scorch marks is original 1861 redwood.

The scorch marks have been offered to two museums for relocation: the SF Historical Society in 1979 and the Smithsonian's San Francisco Earthquake exhibit in 2006. The bar refused both. The marks are part of the building. If you sit at the third stool from the door and look up, you can see them clearly under the dim bar lighting. The bartenders will point them out if asked.

Anchor Steam, Powers, and the bar's house bourbon.

• Anchor Steam: seven dollars draft. The local lager. The bartenders pour it without asking.
• Powers Irish: ten dollars. The bar has poured Powers since the 1880s, when the original owner was an Irish immigrant from Cork.
• The Saloon Bourbon: nine dollars. A house pour from a local Sonoma distillery, custom blended for the bar since 2008.
• Coors: six dollars a bottle. The cheapest legitimate beer at the bar.
• The thing nobody knows: the bar pours a small Pisco from a bottle that has been on the shelf for over thirty years, four dollars a half-shot. Ask for "the old Pisco." The bartender will look at you and pour from a Peruvian bottle that may be older than your house.

Thursday at 9pm. The blues night.

The Saloon opens at noon every day and closes at 2am. Live blues runs Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday from 9:30pm. Thursday at 9pm is the blues night to plan around: the regular Thursday band has played the slot for fifteen years, the bar is at 70% capacity, the Anchor Steam is fresh.

The peak hour is Saturday between 10pm and 1am, when the bar is at full capacity, the dance floor is busy, and the band rotates between three Bay Area blues acts. Avoid Saturday before 9:30pm; the early hour gets the post-dinner tourist trickle.

The Sunday and Monday nights are the slowest. The bar is open and pouring, but there is no live music, and the regulars drink slowly with the Sunday papers. If you want to sit at the third stool from the door and study the scorch marks, Sunday at 3pm is the time.

Why the music is the bar.

The Saloon hosts a rotating lineup of approximately eight Bay Area blues acts. The acts have not changed substantially in twenty years. The Tuesday and Wednesday slots are reserved for two specific bands that have played those nights since 2008. The Thursday slot rotates through three bands. The Friday and Saturday slots feature the senior local blues bands.

The bar pays the musicians a guarantee plus tips. The cover charge is zero, but a tip jar circulates between sets. The bar regards itself as a music venue first and a bar second. The bartenders pour fast during sets and slow during the breaks, allowing the room to focus on the music. This is the only blues bar in San Francisco where you can hear the band at the bar.

Forty dollars per person, blues night.

Plan for thirty-five to fifty dollars per person for a four-hour blues-night visit. Three Anchor Steams at seven, two Powers shots at ten, twenty percent tip, plus a five-dollar tip-jar contribution to the band. A pair of friends drinks for eighty dollars total, which includes the band tips.

Cards are accepted. Cash is preferred for the tip jar. The bartender pool includes the door staff who manage the small dance floor. Two dollars per drink in cash on the bar is the local norm.

The Bay Area blues regulars and the North Beach Italian-American holdouts.

The Saloon draws three populations. The first: the Bay Area blues fan rotation, perhaps forty regulars who appear weekly across the five-night blues schedule. The second: a small contingent of long-tenure North Beach Italian-American residents who have drunk at the Saloon since the 1970s and treat the early afternoon hour as their reading time. The third: the literary tourist contingent overflow from Vesuvio Cafe one block north.

You will not find a tech crowd at the Saloon. The bar has refused Wi-Fi installation, a credit-card minimum waiver, and a craft cocktail program. The blues, the scorch marks, and the Anchor Steam are the operating principles.

How not to be the worst person at the Saloon.

• Do not request specific blues songs from the band. The bands play what they play. Tip the jar instead.
• Do not photograph the scorch marks with flash. The redwood is fragile and sensitive.
• Do not stand on the small dance floor during a song's slow opening. The dance floor is for the song's groove, not for camera angles.
• Do not order a craft cocktail. The bartenders will pour what is on the menu and they will pour it fast.
• Do not bring more than four to a Saturday after 10pm. The bar is at capacity and your group will block the dance floor.
• Do not ask the bartender to "play something fun" between sets. The bar's between-set music is curated by the bartender on shift and is part of the bar's identity.
• Do not, ever, complain about the volume of the band. The bar is a music venue. The volume is the volume.

Tony's, Vesuvio, the Saloon, Specs.

The classic North Beach blues night: pizza at Tony's Pizza Napoletana on Stockton at 6pm. Espresso at Vesuvio Cafe at 8pm. Walk one block south on Grant to the Saloon at 9pm for the Thursday blues band. End at Specs Twelve Adler half a block north at midnight for one final Anchor Steam.

For more bars in the area, see our San Francisco city guide, the live music bars guide, and the North Beach hidden gems list.

Yes. California's most reliable blues bar.