Uptown, the dive bar and legacy business at 17th and Capp streets founded a day after Christmas in 1984, will close in early January, one of its owners said today.
The bar, at 200 Capp St., has struggled to make ends meet since the pandemic. Bolstered at first by an assortment of public monies — $200,000 in federal pandemic loans here, $10,000 in state funds there, and “other little grants” — the bar has since run out of runway. “Sales are way down, expenses are way up,” said Shae Green, one of seven worker-owners of the bar.
Since 2020, the pandemic loans have dried up, the rent has stayed high, and the customers have not returned. The bar will close when its lease is up in early January.
“I’m a savvy businesswoman,” said Green, a one-time bartender at Uptown who, along with five colleagues and a friend of the then-owner, purchased the bar in 2015 after founder Scott Ellsworth unexpectedly died. But “there’s no more miracle money left,” she said, “and sales just never got back to the pre-pandemic levels.”
Green, who began as a bartender in 2006, said that the pandemic was a death in phases. First, bars were closed entirely, then allowed to reopen, if they served food. “So, we would take food orders to fulfill the city’s regulations, and our staff would run over to Sycamore, pick up food, and come back,” she said.
It was undignified, Green said, and emblematic of a “slow phase of reopening” that never brought sufficient customers back. “On some weekends, early evenings, it’s empty.”
The bar paid $11,000 in rent every month since March 2020, “except for the equivalent of a month and a half,” even when it was entirely closed. “There were times when we were paying full rent with zero income.”
Uptown bar, at 17th and Capp streets, is closing after 39 years in the Mission. Nov. 2, 2023. Photo by Junyao Yan. 
Uptown bar, at 17th and Capp streets, is closing after 39 years in the Mission. Nov. 2, 2023. Photo by Junyao Yan. 
Uptown bar, at 17th and Capp streets, is closing after 39 years in the Mission. Nov. 2, 2023. Photo by Junyao Yan. 
Uptown bar, at 17th and Capp streets, is closing after 39 years in the Mission. Nov. 2, 2023. Photo by Junyao Yan. 
Uptown bar, at 17th and Capp streets, is closing after 39 years in the Mission. Nov. 2, 2023. Photo by Junyao Yan. 
Uptown bar, at 17th and Capp streets, is closing after 39 years in the Mission. Nov. 2, 2023. Photo by Junyao Yan.
Ellsworth founded Uptown in 1984, four years after he moved to San Francisco from Chicago. He was, reportedly, an Oxford-trained English and philosophy expert.
He was stubbornly attached to the dive bar aesthetic — “He refused to change the artwork, which is so bad it has now become great,” read a 2014 obituary, “It took a lot of convincing for him to get rid of the puke-covered couches, or put toilet paper in the ladies’ room” — an atmosphere that his successors embraced: The bar had cheap drinks, dim lights, and few frills. Its pool room was the first thing to bounce back after the pandemic, Green said, and regulars favored the “homey and welcoming” ambience.
“The furniture is the kind you’d feel great about getting off Craigslist for no money, and comfortable,” wrote Mission Local bar columnist Benjamin Wachs in 2019. “As the Mission changed around it, Uptown remained a downscale ’80s bar: a place where people from the neighborhood, who seemed like they could somehow afford to live here waiting tables or painting houses while they worked on their bands or their machine art, would all hang out.”
“Sitting at the bar, I look to my right and there’s some 25-year-old kids having some drinks, and to my left is Dale, one of our regulars who, by now, is 75 or older,” said Green, “and then maybe you’d have a group in one of the booths playing a board game.”
“It’s a bunch of misfits,” Green added. “We’re not the cool kids, but people love to gather and meet new neighbors and friends.”
Uptown received legacy business status in 2019, unlocking some city money, but not enough to make a material difference. The bar is just the latest longtime establishment to fall victim to a post-pandemic malaise: The Wooden Nickel, another dive at 15th and Folsom streets, closed earlier this year, and eateries Gracias Madre, West of Pecos and Rosamunde have all shuttered or announced their pending closures in the last few months.
For her part, Green said she was most thankful to the regulars who supported the bar over the years — “it’s not the physical space that makes it, it’s all the people that have come through in 39 years: They’re Uptown, we’re Uptown” — and hoped that, until closing day, people would bid farewell in style.
“I think the next two months are going to be a party.”
The Uptown is heaven on earth. Always welcoming, never pretentious, always Mission. This is even more heartbreaking than losing Rosamunde.
I loved this place. This was my bar when I was lucky enough to live in the Mission. I met my husband here. The best bar to be a regular at. You were so loved <3
From too far away, I raise my glass to Scott, his island for square pegs and misfit toys, and the ghosts of good times and vanished friends. Adios to a sliver of San Francisco’s soul. Please take care of Scott’s trees out front.
this is so sad! thanks for everything uptown. it’s so telling that many of the people mourning, here and on IG, are people who have had to move away from SF. the uptown’s customer base has scattered to the four winds because SF wasn’t hospitable.
I used to live around the corner and always enjoyed a drink or two there in the days of youth. Back in the 90’s the bathroom had a blue lightbulb and was consequently rather dark. When I mentioned it to the bartender he said “we keep it that way so the junkies can’t see their veins and will go elsewhere to shoot up.” Some things never change.
Rents still just too damn expensive. It’s driven out a lot of fun folks out of SF, and shutting down businesses that makes SF interesting.
Had some wild times there in the 90s, but the reality is that to keep the places you loved open, you need to visit and spend money at them regularly.
$10k/mo rent? For this space? Good luck finding someone to pay that for a space like this. A dive bar is about the only thing that could fit there without serious renovation. Something tells me the owner of this place is going to look to sell and/or have the thing torn down and sold to developers.
Yeah, really preposterous rent. I can think of another nearby bar that’s about 3-4 times bigger and pays the same rent. And 17th and Capp provides no foot traffic. I wonder if the owner has thought ahead to what’s next, but NO one is ever going to pay that for that space. If I were them, I’d be begging the Uptown to stay at, say, $6k. You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone . . .
What will it take for these landlords to stop charging 2019 rent in a 2023 world?
a revolution