That Would Be In Brooklyn
, A grand conspiracy behind reality as we know it, a fact so bizarre it will blow your entire mind: There are not one but two San Francisco-themed bars in Park Slope. What’s more, they are both on Fourth Avenue. I went out looking for places that were idiosyncratically Brooklyn and instead discovered a bizarre fixation on my hometown. I find this at once excessive and excessively awesome. Why did this happen? What does it mean? And how can a bar be “San Francisco-themed” (without being a gay bar)?Pacific Standard predates Mission Dolores by about three years. The bartender informed me that it’s not so much a San Francisco-themed bar as a Cal Bears-themed bar (sorry, but—same thing, dude). Cal, for those not in the know, is short for University of California Berkeley, and the bar does indeed feel like a Berkeley campus bar—except that it’s conspicuously devoid of anyone not several years past graduation age. The place boasts enough accoutrements to slake the homesickness of the recently relocated—including Bay Area brews, pub snacks straight out of SF, and It’s-Its, the more attractive, San Franciscan cousin of the ice cream sandwich.
