The Castro Street Fair may be awash in to-go cocktails this year, as the SF Board of Supervisors just made the Castro the latest neighborhood to get “entertainment zone” privileges where bars can sell open containers to festival revelers.
San Francisco has thus far approved three “entertainment zones,” that is, designated street areas where bars and restaurants can sell to-go beer, wine, and cocktails to the partiers at street fairs and festivals if the event shuts down the streets to cars. These are generally pretty small areas.
The Front Street entertainment zone is just one block of the Financial District, the one at Chase Center covers just that Thrive City area and a few individual downtown blocks, and the Cole Valley entertainment zone covers only four blocks.
But Supervisor Rafael Mandelman proposed an entertainment zone in the Castro that would give to-go cocktail privileges to 17 whole blocks of the Castro District. And on Tuesday, the SF Board of Supervisors unanimously passed that new Castro District entertainment zone.
The dimensions of the new Castro entertainment zone are seen above, and boy does it cover a whole lot of restaurants and bars. The zone extends on Market Street from Church Street to Collingwood Street (eligible bars include Blackbird, Beaux, Hi Tops, The Cafe, The Lookout, and upcoming women's sports bar Rikki's) and 18th Street from Diamond to Sanchez Streets (Lobby Bar, Toad Hall, Badlands, The Edge, Midnight Sun, Moby Dick, The Mix, and Last Call). It also has the stretch of 14th Street between Landers and Belcher streets (Churchill and Last Rites), and Church Street between 14th and 15th streets (the Pilsner Inn).
The board passed the new entertainment zone unanimously, and with no discussion. But the Castro Community Benefit District sure had something to say in their letter to the supervisors urging them to approve this.
“Currently, alcohol sales during a street fair go to an outside, hired vendor,” that group wrote in a March 1 letter. “The entertainment zone designation allows bars and restaurants in the zone to benefit from the special event. Instead of an outside vendor, street fair participants will be able to walk into any bar in the footprint, purchase a drink and walk outside with it, still being part of the outdoor party.”
That said, boozy revelers cannot take that drink outside the “red lines” of the entertainment zone. And again, this can only happen during designated street fair events where the streets are closed to cars, like the Castro Street Fair — a fair which tends not to span all these many blocks.
There are several other SF entertainment zones coming in the pipeline. Supervisor Stephen Sherrill has proposed to add that designation to part of Union Street, and just on Monday, Mayor Lurie moved to add five new entertainment zones: a five-block stretch of Valencia Street, Pier 39, a block of Ellis Street, a block of Folsom Street, and Yerba Buena Lane.
Image: Ah-Sa C via Yelp
