The High Tide Lounge

Looking for a dive bar with great service and a hugely interesting «clientele»? Then look no further than High Tide. I intentionally stay within walking distance of High Tide as it is always on my list of must visits when I’m in SFO. Inexpensive drinks, great beer selection and an awesome bartender makes this a real neighborhood gem

I’m scuba Steven when it comes to Diver bar cruising… And this is establishment is very well equipped to give you what you need. Good poors of Barton gin and Thai bartenders that you can barely understand… Money speaks all languages… Take care of them and they will take care of you :) Ling Ling My Friend Friend…

May favorite bar on Geary Street in SF. Total dive bars with a great combination of locals and visitors. The bartenders are friendly and atmosphere is great! Be sure to stop in here if in the area!

Internet jukebox, strong drinks, pool table.
Thank you Unilocal for telling me that this review is shorter than most. I’ll just keep typing until that notification goes away.
Someone outside has a blow off valve.
Yesssss. My review is now long enough. Happy Sunday!

Talk about rude. I walked in with friends for the first time visiting this place. First, she accused me of using a fake ID… really? I showed her two different forms of ID. I ordered a vodka soda. Whatever was given to me was very sweet so I took my drink to the bar and politely asked for a vodka soda. The bartendress scoffed at me and loudly asserted, «NO — your ordered ginger soda.» And I said, «No, I said vodka soda please». She said, «NO, you said ginger soda». A bit shocked at this terrible customer service I said, «I never order a ginger-​anything so I know the word didn’t come out of my mouth. Can I have a vodka soda?» She refused. Honestly, what I should have pointed out was the obvious language barrier with a server that didn’t understand or speak English well. How terribly rude for an establishment to argue with patrons when they are in the wrong. This bitch sucks.

For a drive bar, the drinks are not cheap, and best not order anything other than shots and beer there as I highly suspect that they water down their gin and vodka there.

This is a great dive bar with a great jukebox. There is nothing fancy or pretentious about this place and that’s what’s part of its charm.
The bartenders are very sweet and welcoming. I love the dollar bills plastered all over the walls. Check this place out ! You won’t be disappointed.

Before I gave up the barfly life, I use to go there all the time. As long as you keep drinking and dole out more dole. Some people get too moralistic about this kind of life, it might be called meaningless after some time. When your clock stops, it’s end time. This was my hangout and dive. Then some of the hostesses got a little bit too snappy during conversations, then I brained out completely from this life. But bars/​dives are fun until it finally ends. One advice, guys. Don’t try to marry off the hostess. But I always admired that painting on the wall, it’s been there forever.

Bartender Yuki thinks all female bar tenders are like «Asian hostess». She doesn’t know what a bartender in America is. If you’re married to an American you shouldn’t act like a hostess, even in an Asian bar… if you wanna judge REAL female bartenders from a REAL American bar. Never coming back here! No industry love. Do they even know what «industry» means? If you call yourself a hostess, go back to your crap snack bar in ibaraki.

Situation
— A friend of mine wanted to go here for his birthday (after a few bars)
Pros
— They serve beer and alcohol
— High prices considering it’s a lower end bar
Cons
— The bartenders added the shots they took to our order
— The place is just okay

The bar is decent. There are one dollars bills everywhere on the ceiling and the wall. The bartenders are nice. A drunk man tried to nail a bartender and talked crap to her. I think that s not a review but just wanna share a story.

Gotta love this dive. I must say that next time i venture out here to frisco I gotta hit this local watering hole. CHEERS!!! Went to my usual Frisco go to bar (chelsea place), met a local Kat that brought me, and my fam bam here to this dive and let me say… CHEEEEERS! THIS BAR IS MENT FOR THE ROUGH NECKS. STINKEN CHUMPS, STEER CLEAR!

very weird place. never seen so many intense people staring at a tv, yet seeming so disconnected. the drinks were way to small for the price. felt very weird there. and not because it was dirty.

Typical dive bar.
Cocktails were a little pricey, in my opinion, and the pours not too impressive. Crowd seemed to be mostly locals and didn’t seem very welcoming to outsiders. I felt a bit out of place there at the bar, so we retreated to one of the rear rooms where a pool table was. The place was a little dirty, but not out of the norm for a dive. Just didn’t fit in with the vibe. After one drink we left. Female bartender was nice, though.

What an unprofessional bar this was. It was weird since I read the good reviews, but maybe this bartender was new or had a bad day.
Right when we got there, our table ordered drinks. Only but about 10 minutes later the bartender started yelling at the whole table behind the counter, that this isn’t a restaurant and we need to buy more drinks now. Some of the people in the group were driving and weren’t drinking. The bar was empty anyways and only had about 3 people sitting at the main counter, which it seemed like she was trying to impress and make laugh. She was also ordering the table around and constantly yelling out random things. It seemed like she was drunk on the job, but still this was unacceptable behavior. If you’re going to be drunk on the job, hold it together. When we finally got up to leave because the girls got fed up with her, she yelled even more and commanded us to come back and order drinks.
We originally went here for the pool table. Instead of this bar, go to the Wreck Room for games and a much more chill environment, where bartenders don’t go crazy and yell at you.

I always struggle to rate dive bars — it’s like, I had a ton of fun here, and I would totally come back next time I’m in SF (mostly to see if the Happy New Year banner is still up), but it’s still a dive bar!
High Tide made me a little nostalgic for English pubs, in the sense that I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a number of 60+ men glued to their barstools and scowling at the «youths.» …I guess this makes most English pubs dive bars *revelation!*
From the topless art behind the counter, to the countless $ 1 bills plastered to the ceiling, to the bizarre mish mash of cooking equipment behind the bar, this place was a weird treat. The friendly and sassy bartender was an added bonus you don’t always get in dive bars. They also actually have a very respectable selection of booze, surprisingly!
A fun and quirky place to spend a little time, just probably not a whole evening!

The High Tide is a dive bar in the true sense. I can’t decide how I feel about this little joint. But time tells me that I keep coming back here, year after year. What’s the draw? Is it the filthy bathrooms? The overpriced booze? The mish-​mash décor? The oddest selection of music ever compiled in a playlist? It must be a mix of those things, plus the bartenders, who don’t seem to fit in to this joint. At all.
I guess it shouldn’t come as a surprise to me that everyone I bring to this bar enjoys it a lot. I mean, you can sort of just do whatever you want here. It’s a place that, for those of us who constantly have to be «on» can just turn off and enjoy ourselves.
And maybe, just maybe, this place makes me miss Carl at the Ha Ra just a little bit more every time.

Loud ass trance/​house music at a dive?! Yea, I was kinda bewildered by that, especially since the only people in there on a quiet evening was an old, rocker lookin’ dude and the bartender. As it turned out, the old dude was trying to impress the bartender with his music savviness. Did it work, not sure, didn’t stay long enough.
But $ 7 call drinks really ain’t that bad since anywhere else you go in the area will usually sport a $ 10/​drink pricetag. 2 drinks is all one really should do here, but we stuck around for number 3 cuz after the onslaught of house music, the old dude switched over to old school AC/​DC. And very few things go together, like Bön Scott AC/​DC and whisky (drink du jour), so we indulged in the extra drink. Yea, that’s what I thought, rocker old dude, you ain’t foolin’ anybody with your House music. *scoffs*

Coming back to the city after a wedding weekend event in Napa and this is exactly the spot a few of the East Coast friends and I needed. Decent beers on tap for a reasonable price, a jukebox that offered comfortable tunes that allowed for conversations, and a small crowd that was friendly enough to join in on a joke but also bow out appropriately. Of course, it was a Sunday night, but the small TVs that offered a baseball game and football game were a good touch.
Cash only!
This is definitely a good choice to kick it at if you are around the area and looking for a relaxes dive bar scene.

Now, if you’re going to come here, you have to be a little like Adam S. and appreciate the art of the dive-​bar. Why are dive-​bars great? …well, they’re not. Why are they good? … You can come in, pretension-​free, grab some drinks and relax. This is an adequate, if average at best, spot.
Things you want in a dive-​bar: Cheap drinks. Not here. Entertaining bartenders who bring a lot of local color to the table. Ehhh… Some sort of amusing, although harmless drama. Haven’t seen it. Good sight-​lines to the TV’s to catch a game. Not so much.
Things you don’t want in a dive-​bar: Murder. No murder here. Crazy (not in the good way) people. It’s been a pretty good crowd. Indifferent service. Actually, they do fine, although it’s nothing special.
So perfectly adequate, but nothing special. The one thing, to me, that elevates this from 2-​stars to 3-​stars is that it has a kind of kitschy, old-​school décor that endears itself. There is also a cool tradition of tricking-​out your dollar bill and stapling it to the ceiling. Check out the pics. (I’m convinced that these end up in someone’s pocket eventually, since I haven’t found a couple of my dollars from past trips.)
It’s worth a try. It’s also not a bad spot if you are returning from the Union Square area and want to catch a drink or use the bathroom on the way over to Polk Street.