San Francisco

Lime recalls the swinging '60s, with pink-tinted windows, shiny white plastic furniture, and an aggressively (sometimes annoyingly) hip gay clientele. Cocktails...more

The city's only true piano bar, Martuni's draws an always-animated crowd of mostly male bon vivants, ranging in age from 20s to 60s and clad in everything from...more

Evoking a nuclear fallout shelter, a Dr. Seuss illustration, and a Martian cocktail lounge all in one, Noc Noc may have the strangest interior of any bar you've...more

A cool place to mingle with local Vespa-riding hipsters, the slightly grimy Orbit Room features a pressed-tin ceiling, an Art Deco facade, and rose-colored cone...more

The Powerhouse holds a torch for the old-school gay-bar standard of hard drinks and heavy stares. Though not particularly big, the space has two levels. The...more

The Redwood Room, at the Clift Hotel, can be a pickup joint, popular with rich businessmen and bottle blondes, but it also blazes with splendor. With its...more

Tucked in an alleyway off Columbus Avenue, near the storied City Lights bookstore, this North Beach saloon is at once a dive bar and a museum of oddities....more

An average night's entertainment at Supperclub might include an aerialist, a python-festooned exotic dancer, and a couple of women in cat costumes prowling...more

Lovers of kitsch will relish the Fairmont's faux-Polynesian bar, its entrance guarded by a stern-faced totem. Inside, there's a dance floor made from an actual...more

Truck pulls mellow gay guys and gals off the beaten Castro path. It's an easygoing place, with cheap micheladas, burgers, and fries and free shots at the start...more