Wanugee N.
Yelp
With a name like Lush Lounge, this place sounds like a Vegas bottle service joint with hotties in their hoochie mini-dresses, with velvet seating, sheer drapes, and a jammed disco dance floor of sweating young bodies with Polynesian armband tattoos and tramp stamps. It is not this at all.
Lush starts off the evening with a nice vibe, mature and comfy, with a casual ambiance to meet up with friends to imbibe a few and catch up with friends and their latest drama or gossip. It isn't crowded early, and the drinks are reasonable, like $8 call and $7 well.
The long single bar is to the left, there is a large picture window in front which is open on nice days to the street, with tables and chairs there and around the edges of the room. There is an upstairs mezzanine section for the overflow or private function crowd, but there isn't any table service that I could see. It is step up to the bar and order.
There are plenty of helpful bartenders, so the wait is never long. They offer a blackboard of specialty concoctions like most hip bars in SF do nowadays, but they aren't bogging down the bartenders with 5 minute prep time drinks with crushed fruits, shaken and never stirred girlie combos, mortar and pestle veggies, and a dab of bitters.
Lush Lounge is part of the Polk Street corridor of nightlife spots, where on weekends, particularly after 11 PM, the streets fill up with young revelers looking for a good party time. After 11pm here, the vibe changes from comfy and friendly to young hotties, single ready to mingle, and a line forms almost exactly at the strike of 11.
It isn't like the dance clubs in the TenderNob, since there is no dance floor here, and you can easily talk over the music, unlike most clubs, or even some bars like Rickhouse on Kearny. If you don't like the vibe (or change in vibe) here, you can just walk down the street to another spot on the Polk corridor.
Decades ago, Polk Street used to be famously Gay, before it was castrated by the Castro. You'll still see the occasional cross dresser and trannies in the lower Polk, which is an area that used to also have male prostitutes. But up here on the upper Polk area, it is Hetero, with the young Marina crowd migrating up as the evening wears on, and they tire of Buffy and Bif (or should I say Mitt?) named lawyers in the Marina spots.
During fleet week, there were groups of the Few, the Proud, the first in battle, roaming the bars in uniform, prowling for friend, not enemy. We applauded them and befriended them, thanking them for their service. I think they were looking for girls, but since the repeal of don't ask, don't tell, anything is game on Polk Street. I didn't ask, and they didn't tell.
