The Stud stepped forward toward getting a liquor license at their new Folsom near Seventh Street location Tuesday, as the SF Board of Supervisors endorsed granting a liquor license to the reborn incarnation of The Stud.
It’s been nearly four long years since SF’s oldest, ostensibly surviving queer bar The Stud closed its doors permanently at its 36-year home at Ninth and Harrison streets (a location that has since been tagged with graffiti every Pride Weekend since). But we learned in August that new owners the Stud Collective, a co-op that formed to preserve the venue when previous owner Michael McElhaney said he was shutting the place down in 2016, had found a new location a few blocks away to reopen a new reborn, resurrected incarnation of The Stud.
The Stud Collective confirmed this news a couple weeks later, announcing “We found a new home!” on September 4. The Stud Collective said publicly that the “new spot that will open by the end of winter.” But in the words of The Stud Collective, “It’s not cheap to turn a straight sports bar into a fabulous drag bar,” and there are plenty of obstacles and hurdles to clear before that happens.
But The Stud cleared a significant one of those hurdles on Tuesday. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors gave their endorsement to a liquor license application for the new Stud location, an endorsement which “recommends that the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control issue the license.”
To be clear, this is not final approval for The Stud’s new liquor license. The Stud’s application with the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control still shows this as a pending application. But without this City Hall endorsement, that application would have had little hope of being passed.
The Stud is applying for a Type 48 liquor license, which allows for “the sale of beer, wine, and distilled spirits for consumption on the premises where sold,” and to-go sales for beer and wine, but not liquor. Minors would not be allowed to enter the premises, but The Stud would not be required to serve food.
The Stud you remember (unless you partied there in the 1980s) was at Ninth and Harrison streets, and it had been hanging by a thread with short-term leases there from 2016 to its 2020 closure. The new location is 1123 Folsom Street (near Seventh Street), is currently the pop-up Holly Jolly Holiday Bar at Trademark, and most recently was a Golden Girls Kitchen pop-up and the aforementioned “straight sports bar” Trademark.
But it’s a homecoming of sorts for The Stud to return to Folsom Street, as the new location is just five blocks from The Stud’s original location at 1535 Folsom Street, where the bar operated from 1966 to 1987.
The Stud Collective still has many remaining obstacles to reopen the venue, and is operating a crowdfunding campaign to reopen The Stud. And hey, since it’s Giving Tuesday, might be a great time to consider contributing.
Related: The Stud Owners Confirm Reopening at New Location on Folsom Street [SFist]
Image: Kevin Y. via Yelp
