It’s Halloween, which means thousands of partiers, both gay and straight, will descend on the city’s LGBTQ+ venues for a night of costumed revelry. Where they won’t be going is Ginger’s (opens in new tab), a downtown basement venue known for its craft cocktails and drag performances.
As of Friday, the bar is closed — or, to be more specific, on “indefinite hiatus,” according to owner Brian Sheehy. The spiritual successor to a 1970s-era bar of the same name, Ginger’s opened in 2017, closed in 2020, and reopened in June 2024.
Sheehy, CEO of nightlife hospitality group Future Bars, told (opens in new tab) SFGate that Ginger’s was losing money every month. However, a week ago he told The Standard that it was doing better than ever.
It turns out, both were true. Ginger’s had been on a path toward profitability but was operating at a loss. Additionally, Amelia Long left as GM, and Sheehy has been unable to fill the vacancy. “It’s a very demanding position,” he says. “They need to bartend, have management experience, and book the performers.”
He’s had few applicants who possess that unique skill set, and there’s no one at the company who can take over on an interim basis. The result: The bar’s last day of business was Thursday. “If a miracle happens, and somebody comes out of the woodwork, we will reopen again,” Sheehy said.
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The closure comes a week after Future Bars opened Long Weekend, a three-story Cuban bar in North Beach that will change to a different concept in nine months. Sheehy was clear that no such pivot is in the works for Ginger’s, which will operate from now on essentially as a special-events venue, with several private parties booked through December.
Throughout the 2010s and into the 2020s, San Francisco witnessed the closure of one LGBTQ+ space after another: Castro icon Harvey’s, Mission lesbian bar The Lexington Club, working-class Tenderloin dive The Gangway. This year has seen something of a reversal of fortune, with women’s sports bar Rikki’s in the Castro and “straight-friendly” queer bar Mary’s on Haight among the year’s notable openings.
As for Ginger’s, Sheehy strikes a defiant note. Patrons “might be upset seeing that it’s closing, but if those people made more effort to support Ginger’s, it would have helped,” he said.