There's a move afoot to help save one of San Francisco's famed bars, the John Barleycorn on 1500 California Street. Apparently, after forty years or so of business, the new owner of the property wants it gone and won't even talk about renewing the new lease. A web site has been put up to help fight the power. ...

Heading to the SF neighborhood that unrightly generates a mix of anxiety and anticipation in those that rarely leave their own comfort zone, we made a point to dip into a piece of Lower Haight avant-garde that goes to show that speculative creativity and drinking might actually go hand in hand. Noc Noc is the establishment. At 557 Haight (between Fillmore and Steiner) some industrious folks have created a room to satisfy your inner Flintstone,......

Rock grotto at the back of the bar young men and women lurked and shouted into each other's poor choice of haircuts. Virgin Mary candles lit tiny sparkles on the grotto's façade and the crowd grew, eerily placing together rocker dudes, hipster youngins, girlie-girls and too-dirty-to-be-out-on-a-Friday-night drunks each consuming cheap-ass drinks from plastic cups. For the love of God, $1 wells and PBRs till 9? Yes, sometimes we feel blest to live in this drinky-crow kind of town. ...

His taste for botanically inspired bars perpetually unfulfilled, SFist Nico gets back to the business of cultivating a healthy buzz. So, bonus points for a place that allows you to contemplate that which enriches the mind as you sit and systematically execute brain cells. Yes, we can appreciate an establishment that fills its space with distractions to make you forget that several of your vital organs are screaming for mercy. To wit, many a liver......

Feeling the prevailing motif of the All Hallows Eve, SFist Nico implores you all to turn the lights down for God's sake! Halloween is a special time. Not only is it perfect for carousing in purely ridiculous get-ups (when else can you go out of the house with a giant penis on your head?), one can also dabble in the dark arts and no one seems to care. We here at the SFist love a......

5:50 Show up. See empty bar. Regret not researching choice of happy hour locations. Buy first of two expensive drinks and lament our penchant for alcohol. Consider taking up a new hobby so we could at least save some money for once. 5:59 Buy second of two expensive drinks, wonder where all the people who drink at this bar are, also where are our friends supposedly meeting us there. 6:12 Friends show up. They wonder where all the people are. ...

Few things are more annoying than a government that touts a righteous altruism then acts in ways that brazenly contradict it, and then seeing the news media deliberately let them get away with it. When the world's sole superpower toys around with foreign nations as if they were little army men on a map, they must stymie their opposition with duplicity and mistruths, which is exactly what the Bush Administration has done. ...

Keeping some distance this week from his personal history-- it's better to forget-- SFist Nico goes rummaging through a red-lit version of Hell he really likes. Good Lord Almighty, we can barely remember anything. Maybe it's something in the food, maybe we're trying jam too much information into our tiny little brains, or, heaven forbid, we're just getting old, but whatever it is, we're pretty good at forgetting things: names, appointments, awesome bands from the......

Always looking to balance his chi, Barrespondent SFist Nico braves the panicked drivers of Hayes Valley and hits up a bar in line with his Kundalini. Ok, we're ashamed to say we are a bit of a new-ageist. Sometimes, even in the middle of a noisy drinking establishment we can feel the ebb and flow of the natural forces of the universe. Sure, it may just be the cheap Tequila talking but we know when......

Taking a break from getting elbowed in the face this week, SFist Nico opens up a can of whoops-ass and finds himself in North Beach to pass his drinky hours. So, um. We really want to like North Beach. It's got its fancy European panache, a tribe of passport-holding Italians and you can get a real cup of espresso, but sadly there are some that come and sully the mistiness we harbor towards it. Seriously,......

Barrespondent Nico loves an unsubstantiated claim. Truly. Given that the Bermuda Triangle, the Loch Ness Monster and Area 51 remain a major part of his raison d'être one would think he runs out for the new edition of the Weekly World News at first light. Which is not entirely untrue. We feel the world would be much a less interesting place without the simple pleasure of freaks and cryptozoology. Take Sasquatch for example. Perpetually bashful,......

Always looking ahead to a post-Apocalyptic future, SFist Nico, Barrespondent-de-doom, hides out from wayward radiation this week. While we hardly expect the destruction of mankind, there is a twittering voice in our heads that says we can't be far from it. Come on, we read headlines. So in lieu of riding the pessimist's waterslide, we went out in search of a bomb-safe place to kick back and take pleasure in what reassures us most, drink.......

Attempting to recall who it was that said obsession wasn't cute, SFist Nico, your Barrespondent-on-the-scene, gets his answer tenfold this week. Knowing very little about why people obsess over the things they do, this tongue-thick reporter believes the owl isn't a bad choice when you come right down to it. We've always had a bit of thing for the wide-eyed, rat-eating, bird of prey. Maybe it's because of the old Tootsie Roll Pop mascot (three......

Eyes always peeled, nose always to the grindstone, corpus madidus Nico has noticed a disturbing trend in our fair city recently: a resurgence of the mustache. Odious as it may be, its staunch defenders will say a little mustache can't hurt you (make you question their prevailing wisdom perhaps, but no actual bloodshed). Anyway, they will argue there's nothing wrong with a little hair on the lip. Not only are they de rigueur in Hollywood,......

And they hae taen his very heart's blood, And drank it round and round; And still the more and more they drank, Their joy did more abound. ~ From The Ballad of John Barleycorn by Robert Burns circa 1782 Barrespondent-in-training Nico believes that taking out your bloodlust on an ancient spirit whose only crime is ending up in a glass on the end of the bar is a bit atrocious. But who are we to......