You’re a little bit drunk, a little bit nostalgic and hoping for a memory of the amazing night you’re having with friends. Why not take home a souvenir in the form of a rum barrel mug or delicately curved snifter from one of San Francisco’s incredible bars?
The temptation can be irresistible.
The theft of signature glassware is an ongoing problem at the city’s nightlife venues, creating all sorts of downstream consequences, like higher drink prices, steep deposits, increasingly boring drinking vessels and even the removal of some specialty cocktails from the menu altogether. In particular, tiki bars—where fanciful cocktails often come in their own novelty glassware—have borne the brunt of sticky-fingered drinkers.
Stealing has been a continuous issue at the Alameda tiki bar Forbidden Island, where a puffer fish-shaped mug for the Fugu cocktail is a prime candidate for getting pinched. Even though the bar now requires an ID to purchase the drink, people have left behind their cards and found other workarounds. If any more get stolen, owner Michael Thanos told The Standard, he’ll have to take the drink off the menu.
“It will be one less cool thing we have to offer,” he said, noting that the limited stock makes the vintage mugs effectively irreplaceable.
At the Tonga Room—the Fairmont Hotel’s tiki-themed bar where it rains inside—longtime bartender Josh Hernandez has seen people drinking at the bar with a mug hanging out of their pocket, not even trying to hide it.
“It’s part of the business,” he said. “People pay for a drink and think they get to take the glass.”
About a month ago, the Tonga Room switched to using clear barware instead of the more traditional ceramic tikiware, a move that Hernandez said has drastically cut down on theft. While some of those translucent glasses have pirate-like elements—a mai tai glass with a skull etched in the bottom, a mug shaped like a rum barrel—it’s not quite the same as drinking from the more fanciful options, which has always been part of the tiki experience.
Selling signature glassware is another means of cutting down on theft. At Buena Vista Café, a popular tourist destination near Fisherman’s Wharf, the restaurant’s famous Irish Coffee is served in specific snifters made by Libby glassware. Whether purchased, broken or stolen outright, the bar goes through 6,000 to 10,000 of the $9 glasses every year.
At one point, when Libby temporarily stopped manufacturing them, Buena Vista had the whole world’s stock in its possession, according to general manager Larry Silva.
“If we didn’t sell the glasses, they would walk away like crazy,” Silva said.
Yet selling glassware hasn’t worked for everyone. At the Christmas-themed Miracle pop-up at Pacific Cocktail Haven, the walls are positively lined with merchandise—yet people help themselves to mugs for egg nog or that depict a T. rex in a Santa suit.
Miracle has taken to imploring people on Instagram: “please do not Steal our glassware, we need it so everyone can enjoy it.”
The Christmas-themed pop-up didn’t even open up on SantaCon, said bartender Lane McCormack, because the owners knew it would become a thieving free-for-all.
People don’t only steal glassware, either. Smuggler’s Cove general manager Christopher Ward said customers walk off with everything from plates to toilet paper.
“When a cocktail costs $18, it ain’t just the booze in it,” he said, noting that the constant theft ends up driving up drink prices.
And at Forbidden Island, someone recently snatched a velvet painting that was screwed into the wall.
“Unless it’s nailed down, it’s going to walk,” Thanos said, then quickly corrected himself, remembering the velvet painting.
Yet what is perhaps the most renowned San Francisco tiki-bar infraction, jumping into the pool at the Tonga Room, is at an all-time low. While it used to happen every weekend—the high was six people in one night, Hernandez said—it’s now only once every four months or so. The solution? A $1,000 fine, enforced by blocking the bar’s only exit until the naughty bathers pony up.
There’s another effective deterrent to an unauthorized swim, too.
“People forget what San Francisco weather is like,” Hernandez said. “It’s really cold going out there sopping wet.”