Come for the striking taoist imagery, stay for the beer
The Barbary Coast Ranger’s deadfall of the week is: Li Po.
Li Po is what a Chinatown bar should look and feel like, so it’s all the more amazing that it actually exists in San Francisco’s Chinatown. It’s a little seedy, a little exotic, and, even though half the juke box is Chinese songs, Patsy Cline was playing when sweetie and I walked in.
Li Po is actually the name of a famous Chinese Poet. I’m not sure if the bar is actually named after him, but it seems likely since Li Po was “. . . best known for the extravagant imagination and striking Taoist imagery in his poetry, as well as for his great love for liquor.” [Thanks Wikipedia!]
The interior is perfect: old Chinese themed murals, faded under a thick film of nicotine from the days before cancer scared us, huge lazy Chinese lantern lamp shades that look like hot air balloons that dropped in and have been promising to float away after ‘just one more beer’ for the last 30 years, and an impressive Buddha shrine in the corner. There’s an area of red vinyl booths in the back that give the area an incongruous look, like you’re in a swank, 1930’s Shanghai Denny’s.
You may walk in and find a tourist asleep with his head on the bar, as we did, but locals wander in too. Li Po is dark all the time and has a the required arcane path to the restroom that feels like they white washed the old route to the opium den downstairs.
