Slow Drawls, Bar Crawls & Tech Falls: My SF in the 90s by Cindy Lundin Mesaros

Golden Gate Park, early 1990s Photo by Jennifer Blot

Drafty Edwardian flats in the fog where the wind blew indoors through closed windows that I tried to seal up with plastic wrap and duct tape. Irish bars in the Richmond District with fresh arrivals from overseas crowded on barstools. Late brunches of orange waffles with powdered sugar on Clement Street. Long afternoons spent walking across The City exploring consignment stores. The tart and smooth taste of Tommy’s margaritas in the Outer Richmond. 

Growing up in Santa Cruz County, the big city of San Francisco was my idea of a magical place. A high school classmate took my friend Lisa to dinner on a date, and my best friend, Jen, and I tagged along in the back seat for the journey up Highway 1. We went to Scott’s Seafood, where Lisa got to order anything she wanted, and Jen and I had side salads because it was all we could afford. 

I would move closer to The City a couple of years later, when I attended U.C. Berkeley. I graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1991 while living in a high-rise apartment in Albany, and took a job in Point Richmond, less than 10 minutes away. When that job ended, I found a new one in SF at a nonprofit (via the Chronicle classifieds) in early 1992 on then-called Army Street in SF. It was my ticket to escape the suburbs. 

It was 1992. My New Jersey transplant boyfriend, Mike (whom I met at the Catalyst in Santa Cruz when his band came through town and who soon after gamely moved to the Bay Area  for me) and I packed up our one bedroom in Albany, loaded our belongings into a rented van and headed into The City. We landed in a flat in the Inner Richmond at 10th and Cabrillo — a neighborhood I knew because Jen lived there. She was Herb Caen’s assistant up until his death, and she personified San Francisco for me. 

It felt like my life started for real the day I moved across the Bay Bridge. We settled into our big two-bedroom flat, with a swinging door to the master bedroom with a fireplace. Mike spent much of his time on the road; I was 24, living mostly alone, and living comfortably on a nonprofit salary in a city that was still affordable.

Jen and I would spend long weekend days walking through Golden Gate Park to brunch on 9th Avenue in the Inner Sunset, then traverse back across The City on foot to wander up Sacramento Street’s  consignment shops. Heading back to Geary Boulevard, we’d meander until we got to Tommy’s Mexican in the Outer Richmond, where we’d find a seat at the tiny bar and relish the scene:  Our friend Julio would give us samples of top-shelf tequilas and regale us with stories while the young staff showed us their newly-carved (by themselves!) tattoos. There were no windows, time crawled, and the tequila hidden inside fresh-squeezed lime juice made us forget our troubles — troubles only a 20-something could feel so deeply.

I made $32,000 a year, which seemed like a fortune at the time. We spent our evenings on Clement Street, having dinner at Giorgio’s Pizza (salad dressing on the side to avoid smearing our lipstick) then hitting the various Irish bars where the singles among us looked for local talent. I couldn't understand the thick accents, but I was a good wingwoman. We made friends with a cover band with a weekly slot at Ireland’s 32, and got to know their regulars. One of them worked at a mattress store on Geary, which we affectionately nicknamed “Ed’s Beds.” We’d join him on his work shifts,  spend foggy afternoons lying on the mattresses for sale, discussing life and love. Or we’d venture downtown to the DNA Lounge to see the M-80s ply their retro catalog to an audience that seemed to be primarily bachelorette parties. In the mornings, we’d have bagels with cream cheese and raspberry jam at the Toy Boat Dessert Cafe served by affable Jesse, the owner, then we’d curl up slightly hungover in our favorite booth by the side door. 

Churchill’s at 6th & Clement was our local. The bartender, Teresa, took an interest in me. One late night post-shift, she asked me to accompany her on a job interview downtown at another bar, and called her cabdriver friend to give us a lift. We flew down Bush Street going way over the speed limit. The driver had one hand on the wheel while his taxi caught air as it flew past the timed lights, all the while facing the backseat and doing lines with Teresa as we headed to this most unorthodox of job interviews.

One night at the Last Day Saloon, also on Clement, we made friends with a Texan named Kenney, who was the drummer for Chris Isaak’s band and who served as the unofficial mayor of the neighborhood. We attended house parties at his flat in the Inner Richmond, including one memorable night post-party giving a ride to a comic of some local fame a few blocks to the Holy City Zoo. I spent the three-block journey uncomfortably fending off his advances. When I complained to Kenney about not being warned about the comedian’s aggressiveness, he said in his slow drawl, “Cindy, us sex symbols have got to learn to take care of ourselves.”

I left our drafty flat in 1994 to move to Chicago for grad school at Northwestern. We had an epic going-away party, and today I have fuzzy memories of a woman slow dancing in our spare bedroom/music room, while her dance partner, our friend Guy, lifted her wig (worn just for the occasion) up and down on her head. A dude who looked like a small angry rooster got locked in the water closet and the door bowed outward as he tried to force his way out. At the end of the night, I attempted to retrieve a friend’s coat from the spare room, but couldn’t dislodge it from underneath my cousin’s Colombian jewelry-designer-friend, who was locked in a passionate embrace with a party guest he had met that night. 

After I graduated from Northwestern, I moved back to the neighborhood. The City was changing. I took a corporate job, where I lasted a year before I jumped ship to a tech startup. I commuted to Mountain View, where we’d package up software on floppy disks to send through the mail. My friend group swelled to include brilliant and awkward engineers, and it turned out that they loved margaritas at Tommy’s, too.

This second stint in San Francisco was more hedonistic. My friends and I were starting to make money. It’s possible we were becoming the assholes who were ruining the City, although it didn't feel that way because we had a history with the place. 

My co-worker Michelle’s boyfriend started a recruiting agency out of his bedroom on Masonic with his roommate Michael, making big bucks placing engineers. Four of us gathered at their apartment one night to travel downtown to a party. When we realized parking would be impossible, we made a quick decision to ride on the back of the guys’ motorcycles. I hiked my skirt up to my waist and flew down Geary on the back of the bike. On the way home, we stopped off at The Stud, dancing until the wee hours, then returned to their place and watched the sun rise, while seeing what would happen if we huffed nitrous out of a can. (Michael later moved to an illegal penthouse unit on the roof of a Financial District building downtown, where we had to wander through deserted offices to get to the entrance … but that’s another story.)

Jen & Cindy, mid 90s, Tiburon

Mike and I got married at Land’s End in 1996 and held our reception at the House of Shields downtown,which used to be a speakeasy with a tunnel to the Palace Hotel during prohibition. In the early days of our marriage, I studied improv at Fort Mason, sharing extreme vulnerability with strangers who became friends. I also took voiceover classes and went on auditions. Mike began playing in a side project band with a major league ballplayer, so we added visiting ballplayers to our crew. One memorable night in San Francisco, I entertained half the starting rotation for the Cleveland Indians at Specs and Vesuvio’s in North Beach. 

The City was awash in new money, some of it lining our pockets. I joined a digital music startup and became part of Audio Alley, which was insufferable on the outside, and the best of all times on the inside. I made many close friends there, all of us realizing our dreams of working in music through the wave of technology sweeping The City. Il Pirata, a bar at the base of Potrero Hill, was the site of many after-work events and shows and where we’d discuss our latest Spinal Tap promotion for Rolling Stone magazine. We were the title sponsor of SXSW one year, hiring the White Stripes to play our party off the back of a truck at a slushy drink place in Austin. 

Stern Grove, turn of the century

We lived high until we didn’t. It all crashed down in 2001, when the party ended. My friend group all got laid off in the same month, with extended periods of unemployment spent playing trivia at the Pig & Whistle on Geary. Those fortunate enough dispersed to “real” jobs, if we could find them. We had to grow up quickly. I helped start a company during the downturn, bought a house in Forest Knolls — an unknown neighborhood west of Twin Peaks tucked beneath the Sutro Tower ⸺ and began raising a family. We eventually fled The City for the East Bay, from whence we came, in search of good public schools. 

Now that phase of my life is done and I look back toward San Francisco, wondering if the City I remembered would still be as welcoming for this next phase of life. I like to think so. 

Cindy Lundin Mesaros is a guitarist and singer in the band, The Ultra Sounds and a super cool woman I bump into at all the best shows! Follow her insta here.