friends and family
The east bay has long been a place to go out and catch great live music and visit your favorite dives, but lately it’s been adding new cocktail bars with world class mixologists and unique experiences like Japanese listening bar Bar Shiru, which you know I adore.
This fall, a badass all-female team is working to open a new spot in the ever-evolving Uptown neighborhood called Friends and Family. The bar is run by Bay Area-native Blake Cole, of revered restaurants like Hopscotch, Doña Tomás, and Tosca. Plus collaborator, Oakland-native Kimberly Rosselle from east bay favs Flora & Fauna and Comal, who also has opening credits at two of SF’s best cocktail bars - Bon Voyage and Trick Dog (which you should know for their innovative cocktails and wildly creative menus). But why stop there? My #1 staple of a bar worth going to is great food - so chef Christa Chase joins the group from line-out-the-door Tartine Manufactory to lead the menu.
The team is running a kickstarter campaign to get the bar over the line - with all sorts of fun goodies, like specialized cocktail kits, private dinner parties for five to forty of your closest friends - and an invitation to their much awaited opening party.
The owner says they are working to build “someplace intimate, inviting, surprising and unpretentious. Someplace where you can take your date or catch up with your best friend— feeling confident in not only the ethos and ethics that ground it, but in the space itself. In the energy of the people working, and in the vibe of the room.”
You’ll soon be able to find them at 468 25th Street in Uptown. In the meantime, check out their kickstarter and help them get the doors open.
A few more things:
Mid-Bay Did you know they’re building a bunch of homes on Yerba Buena island? Its technically San Francisco jurisdiction, but still east of the city proper in between the old and new sections of the Bay Bridge. As Curbed notes “Whereas adjacent Treasure Island is flat, manmade, and haunted by anxiety about radioactive leavings from the former Navy base, Yerba Buena Island is a smaller, natural space with less baggage.” With spectacular views, this new Mid-Bay locale just might take off. And hopefully more east bay ferry service to follow.
I read this powerful article in the Atlantic about two brothers from Oakland and their journeys through life. The men grew up in the same home, under the same circumstances, yet one brother went to an Ivy League school, the other to prison. As the author and Yale graduate Akintunde Ahmad writes “People look at my story and applaud me and wonder what I did to “beat the odds.” I wish they were more curious about why my brother did not. I wish they would ask, “What trap lay before this talented, bright boy so that he was bound to fall into it?” I wish they would see how difficult it is to grow up a black man in America.”
Have friends in the east bay? Forward this along. Or else just read about more places to eat and drink