SFist: Cafe Flore Closing?

michelle51

Tue, 04 Dec 2007 15:33:05 -0800

The issues being most fought over are serving alcohol for 2 more hours and also allowing a dj to shepherd the music until 2am. 24/7 is actually less contentious and only applies to serving food anyway. Cafe Flore does not have permission to be a club (louder+dancing)or a bar (drunker+louder). Cafe Flore business permit requires food to be served and, of course, to obey the noise ordinance. Cafe Flore was sold in the past 5 years. That means a much bigger mortgage than it used to have, higher taxes, workman's comp fees as if it was a brand new business, and on top of that an increasingly tight economy. The restaurant business is always a fight to stay alive. Cafe Flore being sold if it can't pay its own way is not unrealistic. The owner has already looked at selling Flore, but everyone has wanted to change it into a soulless clone. So he is looking for other ways of keeping Cafe Flore a neighborhood institution. Going back to City Planning to ask for the conditions to be dropped now that the trial period is over is no easy task (hard liquor was added to Flore's alcohol license 3 years ago and a trial period with conditions was imposed). And lastly, sure it looks busy during weekend brunch. The rest of the week it is an extended livingroom for the neighborhood. One latte per hour per table while someone surfs the web does not keep the staff paid but it sure is nice to have Cafe Flore around. Serving drinks later and serving food to the bar close crowd will enable the wonderful lazy afternoons.

chada

Mon, 03 Dec 2007 16:42:47 -0800

Who can say whether Cafe Flore is in any financial straits except for the owner(s) and there is a front page article in the BAR this week with quotes from the owner about their financial difficulties. What concerns me is the NIMBY's moving into the Castro, straight or not, objecting to the way the Castro has always been. WHY DID YOU MOVE THERE!!! The Cafe is getting crap about noise levels that haven't changed in years (yes I know about the hip hop night issues, which I think is nixed), Baghdad Cafe's hours have been reduced because of neighbors, local stores get complaints about certain items in store windows. Honestly, don't move next to the airport if you don't like the sound of airplanes!

HeatherB

Mon, 03 Dec 2007 15:42:16 -0800

Oh please. Cafe Flore isn't in any danger, except from its own colossal ego. That place is packed constantly. What this means is that they can't turn into an all-night disco. On their fliers around the hood (because I'm one of the "cranky homos," though at 33 hardly old, who doesn't need another bar belching drunk, screaming people who crash into cars into the neighborhood at all hours) they say they want the same treatment as Orphan Andy's, which, hello, that place is tiny. Cafe Flore is big and pretentious. I say, if they want to take all their toys and go home if they don't get their way, fine with me. I can live without it. I'm sure some other less obnoxious venue will just come in to take its place.

aj

Mon, 03 Dec 2007 15:38:53 -0800

Oh honey please. Do you think that the always packed, city landmark, Cafe Flore is really going to **close** just because they can't get an all night food and amplified music license? I just don't buy it. People raise a grass roots ruckus over *everything* in SF - how much is real? A lot less than the consultants get paid for, that's for sure. Now it might be nice to have all night food = god knows SF is the city that always sleeps - but this campaign makes me a lot less sympathetic.

Dan Berkes

Mon, 03 Dec 2007 14:26:53 -0800

Ah, Cafe Whore, Cafe Hairdo. What would the Castro be without it.

mariconsoy

Mon, 03 Dec 2007 14:01:51 -0800

I think the issues is not the "de-clubing" of SF but the fact that the owner wants not only to extend the bar hours frm mignight to 2 [which to me is OK] BUT to go 24x7 and to have amplified music. You don't have to be a cranky old homo not to want that near you, so I can understand why the people who live on Noe etc getting freaked. Where does the owner live BTW, on a nice quiet street in Marin?

mattymatt

Mon, 03 Dec 2007 13:51:34 -0800

I can't say I'd miss it -- expensive and always too crowded. Not to mention, a suburb-style one-story building isn't a terribly smart or dense use of space.