Aunt Charlie's Lounge
Gay bar · Tenderloin
133 Turk St, San Francisco, CA 94102
Highlights
Eclectic dive bar with cheap drinks & classic drag shows
Eclectic dive bar with cheap drinks & classic drag shows
"This is a beautifully bedraggled, dive-y drag bar in the Tenderloin where experienced, mostly queer drinkers gather for the kind of shows that repel bachelorette parties. Aunt Charlies, established 1987, is a downright institution, and one of San Francisco’s few LGBT joints outside of the Castro. Celebrate it in all its gritty glory." - Lena Park
"The last queer bar in a neighborhood once bursting with them, Aunt Charlie’s is living history. Directly across the street from what was once Compton’s Cafeteria, the site of the 1966 uprising by Black trans women that helped launch the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement, it’s also an unfailingly working-class hangout with quintessential Tenderloin characters and impossibly strong, impossibly cheap drinks. A carpeted dive narrow enough that you can touch the bar with one hand and the opposite wall with the other, it’s home to the Hot Boxxx Girls, a troupe of older drag performers who, as well as the Tubesteak Connection, DJ Bus Station John’s re-created disco and SF’s longest-running gay party." - ricky rodriguez, peter astrid kane
"The grandaddy (great aunt?) of queer bars in the Tenderloin, Aunt Charlie’s plays host to a rotating cast of hip kids and neighborhood bar flys, as well as tourists from all over who catch wind of the rag-tag and very old-school weekend drag show, the Hot Boxxx Girls. Thursday nights are for disco, specifically the vintage DJ stylings of Bus Station John’s Tubesteak Connection, which still draws a young and cruisy crowd. It’s a well-worn place that feels authentically San Francisco, and like a window into the gay dive bars that used to dot every neighborhood in the city but are now mostly gone. The drinks here, given the pedigree and likely cheap rent, are some of the cheapest in town." - Paolo Bicchieri
"The last queer bar in a neighborhood once bursting with them, Aunt Charlie’s is living history. Directly across the street from what was once Compton’s Cafeteria, the site of the 1966 uprising by Black trans women that helped launch the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement, it’s also an unfailingly working-class hangout with quintessential Tenderloin characters and impossibly strong, impossibly cheap drinks. A carpeted dive narrow enough that you can touch the bar with one hand and the opposite wall with the other, it’s home to the Hot Boxxx Girls, a troupe of older drag performers who, as well as the Tubesteak Connection, DJ Bus Station John’s re-created disco and S.F.’s longest-running gay party." - Peter-Astrid Kane
"The last gay bar in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood is reported to be in grave danger of closing permanently amid pandemic pressures." - Amanda Kludt
