I’ve added more dates to the calendar for my SF Bar and Cocktail History Tours. I’m doing the tour every Saturday. 

Can’t make a Saturday afternoon? I can do private tours most anytime- reach out. 

On the tour, which begins in San Francisco’s Financial District and end in North Beach, you’ll learn: 

Learn about shanghaiing, sailors, bars inside boats, Emperor Norton and Barbary Coast saloons, the Bank Exchange and the Pisco Punch, earthquake whiskey and drag royalty, the influence of vermouth and grand hotel bars, Cocktail Bill Boothby and the House of Shields, The So Different and “pretty waiter girls,” slummers’ tours and tropical drinks. The tour ends at a 1907 saloon that upholds the traditions and décor of an earlier era of cocktails in San Francisco – and we’ll share a drink together there!

Information and tickets are here. 

I was trolling the dollar store for things to freeze into ice cubes, as I do, and found these large fluorescent ants. 

I froze them into ice cubes using my Clearly Frozen tray. Then I shined a blacklight on them. They look awesome, even better in a glass with a drink. 

There is a video of that here on my YouTube channel. 

For more fun tips, check out The Ice Book. 

There’s a new exhibit at the Transamerica Pyramid from a time capsule buried 50 years ago. I checked it out. 

The building was completed in 1972- the time capsule is from 1974. Before that, from 1853-1959, it was the Montgomery Block that hosted the Bank Exchange Saloon. The Bank Exchange was the home of the Pisco Punch, the most famous cocktail in SF from roughly 1870-1920. Duncan Nicol, mentioned in the pictures, was the proprietor of the Bank Exchange in its later decades, and the person who popularized the Pisco Punch. He took his secret recipe to his grave.  

I’ve left these images purposefully crappy to encourage you to go see it yourself!