Fly

"Come have a drink with us."
"I can't, I'm poor and work tomorrow," I reply.
"You can play Altered Beast on the MAME cabinet."
".........you had me at Altered Beast."

San Francisco drinkers, meet MAME. MAME is reliable, she's dependable, and she brings the fun. MAME is a classy dame. She's also an arcade cabinet with a hundred free emulated arcade games. MAME lives in Fly, Fly is a bar. So we have the Fly bar, and the MAME cabinet, and a happy writer. Because Fly is quite frankly a nice place to be.

If I never actually went in there, I'd discount Fly as another trendy hipster/Marina douchebag hive of scum and villainy, totally not the place yours truly would go to. But then I'd miss out on a pretty good watering hole, and sometimes I need a good watering like a chia pet. For lack of a better description, Fly really is where you'd expect trendy hipster people to go, it's got the ambient lighting, kitschy-ironic-post modern-modern art on the walls, and that clean scandanavian ikea-ish interior decorating. It's fairly big and modern but it's not pretentious like other places. The bartenders are friendly, and pour with a heavy hand; good for that nice buzz, bad for when last call comes along and you find yourself outside in the Transexual Transylvania part of the Tendernob. Yes, Fly is located smack dab in the zerg spawning bed of Tranny hookers. My first few times there I thought it was a trick of the lights against the window, or that someone put a roofie in my drink, but sure enough as it got later in the evening, the groups of young people walking outside started to transform and give way to square jaws, man hands, and fishnet stockings and feathered boas. Of course that has nothing to do with how Fly is as a business. The food itself is pretty damn tasty blend of traditional pub food and californian fusion and the pizzas do a good job of staving off hangover status. But the real gem is MAME in the backroom. Something about being able to drink, eat, and play Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for free in a bar makes it sound way cooler than doing it in a dorm room or a house.

Fly is located on the corner of Sutter and Larkin in the Tendernob border of Nob Hill and the Tenderloin. Expect lack of parking, drunk hipsters, and be careful of developing beer goggles, there are trannies everywhere at night.