Serial evictor who dispatched Uptown bar gets earful at fiery meeting

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When the historic watering hole Uptown closed its doors in January after 39 years, the community mourned: Longtime bar workers remembered the spot as a queer refuge after the shuttering of lesbian bar Lexington Club in 2015. Its owners bemoaned the post-pandemic dearth of customers, which cratered as expenses continued to rise. One reader wrote, “The Uptown is heaven on earth.”

But for the bar’s landlord, that mourning period was short. Building owner Kaushik Dattani promptly submitted plans in February to open a new bar named Kiitos in the same location, and the community’s sadness turned to anger. 

On Saturday afternoon, dozens of Uptown community members confronted the Mission landlord and serial evictor at a heated community meeting, held at Mission Station and mandated by the city’s planning department. The crowd of about 40 vocalized its concerns with the future of the legacy bar at 200 Capp St.

At the front of the station’s community room, behind a folding table and a stack of overflowing binders, Dattani sat, his feet planted wide on the cool ceramic tiles and his face impassive; his lawyer was beside him. 

He opened the meeting with a nod of gratitude, thanking the cramped room of several dozen fuming community members for showing up. The space buzzed. 

Attendees repeatedly questioned Dattani’s bona fides to run a bar in a neighborhood where he has evicted dozens of tenants. Tymmy-Jane, the Uptown’s former manager, who declined to give a last name, said Dattani’s newest venture is an affront after a history of displacement. Several individuals at the forum referred to Dattani as a “slumlord.” 

Throughout the forum, tensions rose and Dattani’s charm was tested. When one former Uptown patron mentioned Dattani’s history of neighborhood evictions, the landlord refused to answer, saying it was unrelated to the meeting’s purpose. In response, the crowd erupted, shouting “Your character matters!” Dattani said he disagreed. 

Dattani was dressed in athleisure — black sneakers, a black fitness T-shirt, and gray sweatpants — with flashes of gold from a watch and a pendant with a golden coin. 

At some point, Dattani spotted a man at the back of the room, who was filming the forum on his phone. Interrupting a former bartender’s line of questioning about a rent hike on Uptown, Dattani pointed and ordered the man to stop filming. There had been no agreement that the meeting would be private. 

“What are you afraid of, Kaushik?” Shae Green, one of Uptown’s co-owners, shouted from the crowd. Dattani said he was not afraid of anything. 

“He has made my life so difficult over the last four years. We stayed open for a couple years just for the community. We weren’t making any money,” Green said after the forum. “But this man beat us down.”

Due to Uptown’s status as a legacy business, Dattani must obtain an authorization from the city’s planning commission to open a new business in the space. The city’s planning department has asked Dattani to provide evidence of “outreach to stakeholders and neighborhood groups,” hence Saturday’s meeting. 

Green said she doubted he would have hosted them if the city had not required it. She said she and Uptown co-owner Ken Cohen got wind of the Saturday meeting through several indirect channels, but not from Dattani himself. 

“When it comes down to it, Kaushik isn’t operating like a community-minded individual,” Green said after the meeting. “He’s aggressive. He wants to win.”

“I don’t believe the landlord is communicating to the community with transparency,” added Chris Keegan, who began bartending at Uptown in the 1990s. “Not to mention with the community’s best interests at heart.”

The Uptown’s owners said the bar’s 2019 lease was the result of a bad-faith negotiation, and was far higher than reasonable. Dattani said the cost of rent was fair and market-rate.

This dispute opened a hatch to a discussion about the bar’s basement storage space, and a tactic Dattani used to justify the cost of rent. Dattani demanded rent for a 622-square-foot basement to be calculated as a “usable space,” charging $3 to $4 per square foot, rather than the $1 per square foot typically charged for storage space. 

“That argument you put forward,” Cohen explained at the forum. “That’s how we ended up in this position.”

When Dattani challenged him, asking what the basement was used for, the crowd exploded.

“Liquor. Beer. Bar storage. I know you wouldn’t know,” one audience member quipped. This gave way to several scattered comments about Dattani’s ability to run his own bar.  

In the five years leading up to Uptown’s closure, Green said the bar was marked by Covid-19, “disingenuous negotiations,” and several profitless years of business.

“He wasn’t interested in keeping us there,” Green said of Dattani. “He wasn’t interested in the 39 years of community that we had built there. That doesn’t matter to him.”

A few Uptown regulars also spoke up, not to weigh in on Dattani’s future plans for  the space, but to plead for Uptown’s future. In response to one request for him to re-enter negotiations with Uptown owners, lowering the rent, Dattani refused. 

“The deal was cut already,” he said. “It’s not going to change.”

On that score, Dattani may be correct: Ultimately, Green and Cohen said their goal is to ensure the zoning requirements are enforced, and that the community has the opportunity to weigh in. But it is unclear whether they will be able to do anything to stop Dattani’s plans. 

According to the city planning department, in order to replace Uptown, Kiito’s must fulfill three of four requirements: Preserve the existing storefront, recognize Uptown’s contributions to the history of the Mission, promote “neighborhood-serving” businesses that grow workforce opportunities for the community, and promote community involvement and respond to community input.

It is up to the planning commission to determine if Dattani has met those requirements.

After the meeting, a group of people connected to the Uptown lingered outside of the station. Keegan said Dattani made his blood boil. Tymmy-Jane said her hands were sweating throughout. 

They said the closure of Uptown did not exist in a vacuum, and spoke about other bars, galleries, and restaurants across San Francisco that have shuttered in recent years. Dattani, for his part, was also the landlord of Revolution Cafe, a Mission mainstay for 15 years that shuttered in 2021 after he declined to renew the cafe’s lease.

“It’s just indicative of how a good thing will be forced out with a potential promise of more money,” Tymmy-Jane said. “Today was to show that you don’t force your way into community or force community out to then replace it.”