The original Muddy Waters Coffee House, which has sat near the corner of 16th and Valencia streets for 34 years, is up for sale for $75,000, according to a Craigslist listing posted earlier this month.
“Lots of potential, popular cafe with locals and tourists … business owners ready to retire,” reads the listing, which also noted a prime location on Valencia Street with “heavy foot traffic.”
The owners’ daughter confirmed the sale, but said she was not sure why her parents are selling the cafe at 521 Valencia St. The coffee shop’s owners, Hisham and Elham Massarweh, could not be immediately reached for comment.
Najat Echchoukairi, who has worked at the cafe for 20 years, said she did not know about the sale. She said she could not speak for the owners, but that she wouldn’t be surprised if they decided to sell the business.
In an interview with Mission Local in December, Echchoukairi said she feared the owners would be forced to close, because business had slowed considerably.
Muddy Waters relied on construction workers who would drive by, park, get their coffee and be on their way, she said. But the parking spaces outside of the cafe are now reserved for six-wheeled delivery vehicles.
On Thursday at around noon, only one person was sitting in the cafe. Virginia Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own” and a copy of Sunday’s New York Times sat on the bookshelf near the register, unread.
Muddy Waters used to be a community hub for discussions of politics, poetry and issues that affected San Francisco in the ’90s, cafe co-owner Hisham Massarweh said in a 2018 interview. That changed around the time of the recession in 2008, Echchoukairi said, when regulars stopped coming.
The new customers, she said at the time, “don’t even talk to me to ask how I am. They just ask for their coffee. They are in their own world.”
But at the time, she still tried to make the place a community space it once was, striking up conversations with new and old customers alike. When a customer was short a few dollars or could not afford their coffee, she told them they could pay later.
Muddy Waters suffered an ATM theft last year, after which the coffee shop had to move its ATM away from the entrance, to the back of the store.
The Massarwehs closed the cafe’s other location near the corner of 24th and Valencia streets in 2021 after 27 years on the site, due to a failed rent negotiation. That cafe remains empty.
A shame. The shop is a victim of both the bike lane, because of reduced parking, but also our post-pandemic society, in which we have lost our ability and desire to talk to people in person.
It’s tempting to think that the bike line has reduced foot traffic, and plenty of angry merchants will still say it, but the numbers don’t support it having been the cause.
Foot traffic is down city wide, not just where the new (and unfortunate) bike lane is, and started long before the bike lane.
Muddy waters was one of the last spots in SF that felt like it had the soul of what the city once embodied and could have been. Najat is such a wonderful person and gives the shop the warmth that it has. She deserves to be met with that warmth in return.
muddy waters reminded me of santa cruz hippy vibe where you could just relax and hang out and maybe run into a familiar face. perhaps a new owner will update the place to welcome in a new crowd or mix the old and new to create something different. good luck and thank you for hosting a space that seemed to be a business but where making money was not prioritized over making community.
Th city should buy it and give out free coffee and donuts . Could provide job training but not for free . Pay good wages with benefits and teach skills .
Wow that’s really cheap! I’m sure a buyer will come forward.
Muddy Waters serves a strong cup, and is one of the last vestiges of the Mission from before it was swamped by docile, bland, unimaginitive, bobo-slurping, phone-staring, gentrifiying and conforming cookie-cutter coder cretins. You can’t pay by app at MWs, so they’ll be down the street, waiting in line, staring at their phones…
Sorry that business hadn’t been working out. However, the truth is that there are a plethora of other coffee places in the Mission that have taken out all the oxygen for Muddy Waters.
Carlin, Albanico, Four Barrel, Mannys, Linea, Ritual…. List goes on and on. I think it was becoming harder for Muddy Waters to stand out in that competition. Wish their owners all the best.