![]() “That was a godsend, because we were able to send the landlord something,” she said. She got lucky, she said, with an accommodating landlord and a small Paycheck Protection Program loan. Lea Suzuki/The ChronicleĪfter sending her employees home on March 16, 2020, De Marco told them to file for unemployment, and she began collecting unemployment herself. Under her stewardship, it’s a little less dark and a little less sweaty, but she still hosts DJs and other live performances, including drag shows.īartender Krystal Gragg makes a drink at the Rumpus Room on its first day of reopening. “It was a dark, sweaty DJ place,” she said. ![]() De Marco remembers coming here when it was the Matador, while she was a college student. Before it was the Rumpus Room, it was known as the Showdown, the Matador, the Arrow, Club Charleston and other names. Unlike some old-school dives where ordering a manhattan might be met with an exasperated stare, the Rumpus Room can mix a proper drink.ĭe Marco opened the Rumpus Room in 2018, stepping into a long line of bars that had occupied this space since at least the 1930s. The tap handles have always included a local wine and a house-made Moscow Mule. In addition to dive bar staples like PBR, Tecate and Miller High Life, the Rumpus Room serves local craft beers like Ghost Town IPA, Moonlight Death & Taxes and Scrimshaw Pilsner. “They’ve got good mezcal, good Tequila and they make a great cocktail,” said Parra. Regulars describe the Rumpus Room as a classy dive bar. So there was a sense of triumph in getting the Rumpus Room up and running again on Tuesday - triumph not just for De Marco and her staff, but for the larger community of San Francisco dive bars, whose survival had begun to feel threatened even before the pandemic due to ever-higher rents, staffing challenges and the encroachment of upscale craft-cocktail lounges. Regular customer Erk Parra (left) of S.F., Rumpus Room owner Roxzann De Marco and bartender Krystal Gragg celebrate the bar’s reopening with a Tequila toast. And with a capacity of 49, the bar is so small that owner Roxzann De Marco said it didn’t make sense to reopen until she could do it at full capacity. The Rumpus Room was in a particularly difficult spot: It can’t serve food, so couldn’t offer takeout cocktails or open for in-person service until recently. During the past year and a half, dozens of bars and restaurants in San Francisco have permanently shuttered, unable to withstand the financial strain of temporarily closing. That the Rumpus Room would eventually see this day was not a given. Being back now, sitting at the bar among his friends, felt like a relief. “I kind of assumed everything would close forever,” he said. Roxzann De Marco, owner The Rumpus Room, talks about the re-opening of The Rumpus Room, which had been closed since March 16,2020, on it’s first day back open on Tuesday, July 6, 2021. When he moved to Las Vegas, Amaral had worried that some of his favorite San Francisco establishments might not make it. “We may not have all worked in the same industry or had much in common, but we all loved it here.” “We all became involuntarily connected,” he said of the community that had formed within the bar. He’d flown back to San Francisco just for the Rumpus Room’s reopening day. Mike Amaral, a longtime regular, moved from the Bay Area to Las Vegas in May. Tuesday was his first time being inside a bar without a mask since the pandemic began. It was his after-work drinking spot about four times a week, he said. He’d started coming to this bar when it was under its previous ownership, known as the Showdown, since his office was just around the corner. “It’s my home away from home,” said Erik Parra, who had ordered a beer and a mezcal shot. Beyond the bar, a spinning disco ball was providing sparkly flashes inside the dim, red-lit room, a dark oasis from the bright afternoon sun outside. Outside, on Sixth Street in SoMa, it might have looked like a regular Tuesday afternoon, but inside the Rumpus Room, it was a full-on celebration - marking the first time this beloved dive bar was reopening since the original COVID-19 shutdown on March 16, 2020.īy 3:30 p.m., a dozen or so people had populated bar seats. ![]() They raised their pints of West Coast IPAs to toast the occasion. Old friends embraced, seeing each other for the first time in almost 16 months. Lea Suzuki/The Chronicle Show More Show Less Rumpus Room owner Roxzann De Marco updates the sign at the bar on its reopening day in S.F. ![]() ![]() Lea Suzuki/The Chronicle Show More Show Less 3 of3 Mike Amaral (right) of Las Vegas and friend Owen Cadigan of Oakland share a welcoming hug at the Rumpus Room reopening in S.F. Lea Suzuki/The Chronicle Show More Show Less 2 of3 Roxzann De Marco (center), owner of The Rumpus Room, watches as regulars Chris Harrison (right) of San Francisco and Peter Smith (left) of San Francisco share a toast as they sit at the bar on its reopening day. ![]()
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