{"id":9209,"date":"2024-12-07T14:21:24","date_gmt":"2024-12-07T14:21:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/a-classic-dive-bar-holds-out-against-the-tide\/"},"modified":"2024-12-07T14:21:24","modified_gmt":"2024-12-07T14:21:24","slug":"a-classic-dive-bar-holds-out-against-the-tide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/?p=9209","title":{"rendered":"A Classic Dive Bar Holds Out Against the Tide"},"content":{"rendered":"
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It\u2019s got a lot of what\u2019s great about a bar. It\u2019s cozy and inviting (its name, Vieni Vieni, means “come come”), small and narrow, 15 or 20 barstools, no tables, so it\u2019s easy to talk to the people who apparently know each other and seem happy to welcome you in. Drinks are reasonably cheap \u2014 $6 to $7 for a beer, $7 to $10 for a shot or mixed drink \u2014 though not quite as cheap as they used to be. More about that later.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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It does not have a lot of what\u2019s bad about a bar. No live entertainment to make conversation difficult. (There’s a jukebox instead.) No \u201cdrink menu\u201d list of complicated concoctions with stupid names. Only two TVs. It\u2019s the kind of place your dad took you when you were a kid if you were lucky.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Dominique Buoni \u2014 behind the bar \u2014 and her sister Donna.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Dominique Buoni was luckier than most. Her father not only took her to Vieni Vieni, in what used to be the Italian section of San Francisco. He owned the place, having bought it in 1965 from another Italian guy who had run it as a beatnik bar, selling wine out of big bottles. When dad retired in 1992, Dominique took over.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI got it because I was the oldest of us eight kids,\u201d says Dominique, now 54. \u201cI was going to run it with my oldest brother, but he died in a motorcycle accident, that same year.\u201d For a long time Dominique earned a living for herself and her two kids. But then two things happened.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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One was Covid, from which the business and the North Beach neighborhood \u2014 linked for so long \u2014 still have not recovered. \u201cLook,\u201d says Dominique, pointing out the window to the corner of Stockton and Columbus. \u201cThe foot traffic hasn\u2019t come back.\u201d But the second thing was worse.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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San Francisco was taken over by a new generation, people who actually want drink menus, and live entertainment and lots of huge TVs. They also took over the apartments, driving out many neighborhood bar denizens.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Some of those bars started taking on the trappings new customers wanted and replacing the old bartenders. But Dominique found \u201cthe more things you change and the more things you add, the more complicated it gets. And the place doesn\u2019t necessarily become a better place.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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So except for finally adding a buck to the drink prices a few weeks ago, only to end up offsetting it a little with a $12 beer and call shot special, and deciding to accept credit cards even though they can cause more problems than they solve, she has been trying to hold steady, true to her dad\u2019s ideals.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201c<\/span>They call this place a dive bar now. And for a long time that hurt my feelings. But, you know, I\u2019m proud of that now because a dive bar, to a lot of people, has come to mean a place where they can be themselves and feel wanted and know they\u2019ll be taken care of. Now when they call this a dive bar, I embrace it.<\/span><\/span>\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Dominque Buoni<\/span>, owner, Vieni Vieni<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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She\u2019s paying the price.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Driving in from more than 40 miles away, where she finally had to move to find an affordable place for the family to live, she has had good days, when \u201cit\u2019s wall to wall\u201d and she\u2019s able to pay the rent and her suppliers and to make the payroll for her five bartenders who work a few hours each.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“Thank God the landlord has been fair and reasonable,” she says, noting that others have refused to renew leases, only too happy to see their properties redecorated and transformed.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But there have been days when, after last call, there\u2019s been $45 in the register, and the bottom line, Dominique says, is that “I’m going through my inheritance and my savings.”<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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On a recent Thursday afternoon at 5, she had three customers. Around the corner, a place with young bartenders and \u201ccraft cocktails\u201d was packed. Meanwhile, a headline in the San Francisco Chronicle was announcing \u2014 as though it was good news \u2014 that a nearby “100-year-old dive bar space is reopening with a snazzy new cocktail bar” (offering a $13 number made with rhum agricole, sour lime, condensed milk and “a bit of pie crust”).<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“They call this place a dive bar now,” she says. “And for a long time that hurt my feelings. But, you know, I\u2019m proud of that now because a dive bar, to a lot of people, has come to mean a place where they can be themselves and feel wanted and know they\u2019ll be taken care of. Now when they call this a dive bar, I embrace it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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She recalled a longtime regular, a retired museum staff member, who recently died, alone, in his 80s. \u201cHe\u2019d hit a few rough patches where he was between checks, out of money for a while, and he knew he could always come in here. I\u2019m not sure that would have been the same at a lot of these newer places. But we\u2019d keep track of what he owed and he always kept his promises.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In any case, Dominique still has no plans to turn Vieni Vieni into something it\u2019s not. And she\u2019s still optimistic that she won\u2019t have to.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThere was a big neighborhood festival that wasn\u2019t the money maker I was hoping for. And the city has a \u2018legacy business program\u2019 to help out old places like this, but it takes three months for them to even look at your application. Still, Columbus Day is coming. I\u2019ve got high hopes hanging on that.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Track all the money you make<\/span><\/p>\n

See the ins and outs of your cash, cards, and bank accounts at a glance.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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She’s also enjoying good word-of-mouth from bartenders and waiters in the area who, no longer all that comfortable at their own places of employment, have been coming in and recommending Vieni Vieni to their friends. She’s hoping all that will continue to grow.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Meanwhile, she looks out the window again, waiting for the customers to come.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cWhen I was a kid,\u201d she remembers, \u201cI loved bars like this, where the older people would drink. They were the ones with the great stories, who\u2019d done all these great things we hoped we\u2019d get to do someday. We loved those people and they loved us back and we all took care of each other. Nobody in those places was ever alone.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s got a lot of what\u2019s great about a bar. It\u2019s cozy and inviting (its name, Vieni Vieni, means “come come”), small and narrow, 15 or 20 barstools, no tables, so it\u2019s easy to talk to the people who apparently know each other and seem happy to welcome you in. Drinks are reasonably cheap \u2014<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9210,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rank_math_lock_modified_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[195],"tags":[3473,3471,3472,2517,3474],"class_list":{"0":"post-9209","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-bar","9":"tag-classic","10":"tag-dive","11":"tag-holds","12":"tag-tide"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9209\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}