Geary Club

A five star jukebox. Serves ice cold Coors Banquet from an ice cold cooler. Lighting perfected. Geary Club is one of the finest joints on the strip.

Lilian makes the Geary Club what it is!
It’s folks like Amanda B who really should not bother coming to the Geary Club but head up the street to Rye.
Leave this one to the locals!

For all of you «out of towners» and haters… you really should not come to this bar. There is a a reason it is called a «local dive bar:

After you have spent all your money in the city and are down to your last dollar you can probably still afford to get a drink at this little spot. I spent a week in SF and found this place on the last night and it felt like home.

I love you Geary Club! Lillian is a gem and I always have a great time here. We talk memories of Hungary and Germany whenever I stop by. She has been working this place for years and is generous with the jukebox money! Do not talk on your cell phone in here or Lillian will let you know what she thinks about that. Real jukebox! Salty bartendresses. A great place to come and drink alone since you will always make a new friend from the neighborhood. This place is old school and increasingly rare in the rapidly sterilizing bay area. Respect!

i like this place, it’s a real slice of life. A teeny tiny slice of life ;)

I’ve been coming here since 1980. The Geary Club does not is not a dedicated follower of fashion. Check it out.

pretty damn awesome like something you will find in Wisconsin or the up. grandmas serving with attitude for 40 years. jukebox. thrills. get told its time to go if you don’t order enough and clog up the bar.

I took off my clothes and wore a tutu for more free drinks than I or anybody with me needed. Great times!

This place is a shithole… but that’s why its good. If you don’t get that then you’re probably a douche.
One of the last real dive bars in the area.

Stumbled upon this gem! We came in because it literally just said bar on the outside and was a small little door. amazing dive bar with real people and an inviting vibe. Both bartenders were great and made me feel at home.

This place is not the worst, but it’s pretty close. The reason it’s a two and not a one is because a) the entertainment value of watching Lillian, the bartender, is pretty fantastic and b) the juke box.
That being said, Lillian is almost always drunk and kind of a jerk. We tried ordering a bourbon neat eight times from her before we have up and converted it to a gin and tonic.
It also has some weird clientele. Watch your bag and your back.
Go here if you want your patience tried and your drinks cheap. Stay away if you want anything else.
The good: cheap drinks.
The bad: the fear of looking Lillian in the eye. You think she has snakes for hair and you may turn into stone. Your move.

My Old Man loved this place. I come here to Honor him. Old American Rock and Roll Dive Bar!

I don’t recall how or why everything went down the way it did that night but, I was with Drew A and friends when we came in. Read his review for a more accurate description as he remembers far more than I do about this divey gem.
Yes the bartender was schmammered and she did arm wrestle most members of our party but, the thing I love her for most is that $ 20 for the juke box. No touch tunes here, you flip the album covers looking for your favorite jams like back in old days… or at least the 90’s. From this point on I was dead set on creating the most epic playlist to ever be heard at Geary Club and Judging by the fact that $ 20 in that bad boy got us something like 400 songs, they’re likely still jamming to our groups musical stylings as we speak… I hope you like Van Morrison.
We all had a blast here and if it wasn’t for photo evidence I may have told you it never happened. Instead, it did happen and I don’t regret one song I played on that juke box no matter what you say.
Pro Tip: If you want to die… order shots! She might as well have handed us each a bottle to suck down.

This place is a total sh*thole and that’s why I love it.
You: «How can you love such a sh*thole?»
Me: «Cheap drinks and an awesome bartender»
What makes an awesome bartender? (in a dive bar)…
–She gave me $ 20 to put in the jukebox, (which is like 250 songs there), then quickly sassed all of our selections
–She was missing for the first five minutes we were there
–She was hammered
–She arm wrestled several members of our party
–She served shots that were just ginormous
–She laughed with us… and at us
With the other patrons being cool with our shenanigans and a cute little library book exchange in the back, how can you not love this place?! Oh, you like nice things. Right. Yes, well, carry on then. Like a cheap drink at midnight and a fun place to goof? Come on over.

If there was such a thing as a Dive-​Bar convention, I suppose Geary Club would be the Belle o’ the Ball. Also — I wonder where it would be held? Atlantic City? Reno? Jacksonville, FL? I’m not exactly sure what it would look like, but I know it would smell of: Stale beer, old cigarette smoke, farts, and lord only knows what else.
Oh sure. There are divier dive bars (like, where you think you might get murdered by the guy ranting to himself in the corner — eh hmm… looking your way Jonell’s), and there are certainly seedier joints. This is a dive bar’s dive bar. On the one hand, Super Divey. On the other hand, actually pretty classy as dive bars go. I was told to come here on a recommendation while I was at Ha-​Ra Club. Sure enough, it’s a good thing I got the tip, because I would NEVER have found it otherwise. You know a bar can stand on it’s own two legs if it does NOTHING to be noticed.
What you’ll find:
1. Bottled Beer only (for beer — they have the hooch) — Which is fine, because they have Icey-​Cold Mueller Light bottles. (is best beer — taste a-ok’s, no filling … thanks to my Russian friend for that assist)
2. Bartenders who think short-​term bartending gigs are at least two decades. A few nice ladies — although, I suspect you need to go at least for five years before you are considered Geary Club Elite.
3. Neighborhood patrons. This is a nice classic gem nestled against the back-​drop on impending gentrification.
4. A guy who calls himself «Evil Robert». I didn’t think he was that evil. …just saying.
5. A bar that is open Ear-​lie in the Morning.
6. A stuffed Tiger-​Head. Named… wait for it… Tony.

This bar has all the triple D’s (and not in the Guy Fieri way); it’s dark, depressing, and dank. The $ 3.75 well drinks make this place kind of bearable, but it’s certainly no place you’d take a date or go to unwind after a day at the office. This joint is pretty much a locals only dive for those with more gray hairs than not and it’s got a stuffed tiger head on the wall and a bartender that looks like a former tweaker. The door is almost purposefully unmarked to keep the curious out, so look for it half way between Leavenworth and Hyde real carefully. Our hero would kindly recommend passing it by for some other much better dives in the area.
PROS:
— Cheap drinks.
CONS:
— Small place.
— Depressing ambiance.
— Not much of a lively crowd.

Popped in last night on for my friend’s birthday since we’ve heard this place called a hidden gem. The clearly completely fucked up bartender asked for our ID’s. Quick to draw, I handed my ID first. Assuming she’d take a look and hand it back, I reached my hand out to get it back and the woman literally slapped my hand and slurred it would take a minute.
15 seconds after running all five of our IDs, she insisted she hadn’t run them all. We mentioned that she did get all of them and started to pull them back out when she began screaming at us to get out of the bar.
We will not be going back. If you want a dive in the TL try Whiskey Thieves or High Tide.

Went here last night with my girlfriend. decent dive bar, just not much going on. The bartender was a tiny middle aged woman that seemed tweaked out. She was frequently mumbling incomprehensible phrases.
The drinks were decently priced, probably a little more expensive than I would like a dive bar to serve, but hey, it’s sf. As for the taste of the drinks, spend the extra dollar or two and DON’T GET THE WELL drinks. My girlfriend ordered a rum and coke and it was terrible.

«The introverts’ bar» was one fellow-patron’s description. The Geary Club is a special place, dissimilar from the other bars in the Tendernob. Here people are quite friendly, but not at all outgoing or pushy-«friendly». Sit for a while, think, nurse your (cheap) drink — and when you actually have something to say, say it. This bar is much quieter than most; but the conversations much better.
Here you will hear the sound of people speaking standard American English, tho not always with an American accent. There’s none of the hideous Stanford-​drawl of the Marina douches, nor the equally hideous Norcal-​snark of the Mission iClones; nor any incomprehensible ghettobabble; nor the crazy bum-​gibberish endemic to the TL. It’s a subtle thing, but the sound of a place contributes a great deal to its character. At the Geary one rarely hears the grating tones of pretension, snobbery, or willful idiocy.
The volume on the (fairly decent, and appropriate olde-​timey) juke box is kept low. The bartenders can control it, but flat out refuse to turn it up loud. The clock on the wall is set to Network Standard Time, none of that imaginary Bar Time bullshit. There’s no sign on the door, and there’s a tiger head named «Tony» mounted over the bar. The bartenders are all older women, one of them notable as a cougar, all decent & polite people.
The patrons are a pretty broad cross section of the City. Taxi drivers, laborers, ad men, programmers, students, artists. anyone who loves cheap beer and good company. Natives, immigrants, economic refugees from the flyover side by side.
Not to say it’s a perfect place. There is only one variety of wine, some pink girlie stuff I don’t want to drink. A cheap red wine would be greatly appreciated, if management is listening. Beer selection is not huge, but at least a bit eccentric. They serve Coors — not Coors Light like everywhere else, just plain old Coors.