“Have we ever actually met in person?” Tom asked me after sitting down at my table in Casements’ back patio. We spent the first few minutes trying to figure out just how we were connected.
Casements is on Mission Street between 19th and 20th streets. It’s one of those bars that, every time I go there, I ask myself, “why don’t I come here more often?” The atmosphere is casual and eclectic. The interior feels like the living room at a housing co-op just before a party; the back patio, nicely spacious with a variety of casual seating options, has murals painted along the fence and feels like the yard of your cool artist friend. If I’m annoyed by their use of a QR code to access the menu back there, I also have to admit that Casements’ website is a cut above the standard, using the flexibility provided by digital environments to offer more information about the drinks than you usually get. Each cocktail includes a picture, and if the ingredients include a more obscure liquor, Casements’ menu is likely to have a quick line explaining what it is.
It’s a gorgeous night to sit outside and drink. And, for some reason, Casements wasn’t busy, so it felt like we had the run of the place. I’d ordered a Queen Mab (poitín, coffee liquor, arangiu orange liqueur, cold brew, maple cream, $14), and it was about the best use I could imagine the Irish moonshine being put to. After he arrived, Tom ordered a Dublin Mule (Irish whiskey, lime, ginger beer, $13), and he would keep drinking those all night. I can’t blame him — a good mule can hit the spot — but Casements’ cocktail list is interesting and worth exploring.
We’d known of each other for a long time, from back in the days when Tom was on BART’s board of directors and I was doing real journalism covering local government and policy. I might even have interviewed him back then … I honestly can’t remember … but the more we thought about it, the less convinced we were that we’d ever really met. We’d almost met maybe eight years ago when we were both involved in a successful effort to get the city to significantly reduce billboards … but no, not only didn’t we meet back then, we didn’t even know the other was involved in that effort. We just found that out tonight, when Tom mentioned he was consulted on that project and I said, “so was I!”
The closest we can come to figuring out how we eventually connected is: “San Francisco’s a small town.” We appear to be Facebook friends because we both somehow got added to someone’s discussion group about Metamodernism which, in turn, happened because we were both briefly involved in an attempt by the Noisebridge hackerspace to create a philosophy guild in late 2019 … or something like that.
This is how people meet in 21st century San Francisco, right? That and sex parties? And homeless encampments?
Tom is a man of many interests, but all of his roads lead to urban policy, and so we quickly got into a discussion about how the changing real-estate landscape of San Francisco might be used to support local art movements. There’s so much that could be done with all this space! Artist housing, workshop spaces, new performance spaces, “third spaces” where people gather casually just to socialize among peers; underground artists desperately need a “clubhouse” that’s near BART.
Imagine taking a few floors of an abandoned department store and turning it into a series of open artists’ workshops, a performance space, and a coffee house/bar aimed at artists … there would always be something to see, and you’d have people constantly coming through and creating things, and this would pull more people into the area, the way artists always do.
All of this, Tom said, might be possible if current trends continue. But no one in real estate is seriously willing to talk about it yet. “Right now, there’s a clinging hope that this is just a blip, and everything will right itself and go back to normal in six to nine months,” he said. Until investors are convinced that this is the new reality, they are going to continue to cling to empty offices.
The server, who reminded me of an artist I used to know who waited tables to pay for her paint and canvas, stopped by to ask if we wanted another round. We definitely did, and this time I ordered a Hurricane Laughter (Irish whiskey, fassionola, citrus, salt, $14). Not ALL the drinks at Casements have an Irish whiskey base, but it’s definitely a recurring theme. Casements is an Irish bar that looks like an alternative San Francisco space.
I almost asked her whether she is, in fact, an artist. For some reason I was hesitant, which is too bad, because she’s utterly delightful. Days later, I still want to know. But since I didn’t, we went back from the personal to policy.
“We really benefited from the simplification of processes that happened during the pandemic,” Tom said. “At that point, we were under the emergency order, the usual systems were paralyzed, and so you could do just about anything that the health department looked at and said, ‘that makes sense.’ Outdoor dining, slow streets, expedited parklets, more safe events in public spaces, it was much easier, and it worked. I hope we learn something from that.”
We probably won’t. For all that San Francisco prides itself on being progressive and innovative, Tom and I agreed, there is a strong sense of self-satisfaction in the city that prevents it from actually solving problems. In some ways, we’re a victim of our own success. “Cities in the Rust Belt will try anything, because they’re desperate,” Tom said. “We’re not that desperate yet,”
“We don’t know we’re that desperate yet,” I interjected.
“Yes! And so we keep falling back into this complacent mentality of ‘well, this is how we do things,’ where nobody’s actually responsible for coming up with a solution.” In most places, success has many parents and failure is an orphan. In San Francisco, success and failure are both equally represented on the same advisory committee.
“It’s not that we don’t know what to do,” Tom said. “We generally know which approaches work, and it’s not that the government doesn’t have the smarts to understand that. The civil service, at every level, is filled with very smart people, sometimes brilliant. It can be a pleasure, honestly, to talk with them. But the systems we’ve created have too many agendas and aren’t aligned with values.” We’re drowning in the result.
As the server gave us the bill, Tom introduced me to the concept of the “loveable building.” If you want to design a building that is really sustainable, you have to make it beautiful. Because buildings that people don’t respond to, or worse yet loathe, tend to get torn down and replaced after 30 or 40 years, no matter how efficient or environmentally certified they are, whereas buildings that are beautiful, that people in the city love, tend to stay around for 140 years or longer before they have any significant changes made.
“It’s not complicated,” he said. “Build beautiful buildings, build places people love, and let them use them, and everything works better. If you don’t, you perpetuate problems, and gradually make them worse. But beauty isn’t something governments know how to wrap their minds around.”
A moment later, our waitress apologized: The system for the handheld devices that read our credit cards and settle our bills had gone offline. She couldn’t close us out.
“Oh, we can pay inside,” Tom said.
“It’s down everywhere,” she said.
“Oh.” Tom considered. “I can pay cash.”
“No, it doesn’t matter, I can’t process anything.”
“Not even cash? Okay … ”
“It should be back up in 5 minutes,” she said.
“Ah, I think we can find something to keep talking about for five more minutes.”
After all, what’s’ the rush to leave a friend’s cool backyard? Five minutes later, we asked her to pretend the system isn’t back online yet so we can get five minutes more. It was very metamodern.
Remembrance of things past:
Distillations: Crystal clear at Casements
“My husband cannot stand crystal people,” “Leslie” told me. “He’s sweet, kind, caring, open-minded … but if he meets someone who starts off about the healing power of rose quartz or whatever, he’s not going to be able to be polite. He’s just not. I don’t have many crystal people in my life, but the…
