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Memories of Weird Nights at Soon to be Closed 21 Club

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Apparently the 21 Club is closing. Ain’t that some shit? That is the last bar in the world I would’ve thought would hit the chopping block, mainly because it’s at the corner of “rob someone” and “stab someone”.

I wrote about the 21 Club in my book Broke-Ass Stuart’s Guide to Living Cheaply in San Francisco. It was a fun and weird night. I guess there’s no better time to share it than now.

21 Club: 98 Turk @ Taylor

It was around 1am and I’d been out researching Tenderloin bars since roughly 10:30pm; needless to say I was pretty drunk. Despite this, I was not prepared to look out the window and see a middle aged Asian guy with orange, battery powered, glowing/blinking glasses, who was waving a wand crowned with an equally luminescent snow-globe type thing. He was also pushing around three huge duffle bags, on a cart, each filled with more glowing/blinking toys. I’m pretty sure the guy had accidentally stepped through a wormhole and was actually from another dimension. Just when I said “Who the hell in the Tenderloin is gonna buy that shit” Kenny walked in with his own pair of glasses and a wand. The Loin is a strange fucking place at night and Club 21 is a great spot to meet some of its most interesting characters.

RIP 21 Club.

What are your 21 Club memories? Leave them in the comments

photo from soapbox despot

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Broke-Ass Stuart - Editor In Cheap

Broke-Ass Stuart - Editor In Cheap

Stuart Schuffman, aka Broke-Ass Stuart, is a travel writer, poet, TV host, activist, and general shit-stirrer. His website BrokeAssStuart.com is one of the most influential arts & culture sites in the San Francisco Bay Area and his freelance writing has been featured in Lonely Planet, Conde Nast Traveler, The Bold Italic, Geek.com and too many other outlets to remember. His weekly column, Broke-Ass City, appears every other Thursday in the San Francisco Examiner. Stuart’s writing has been translated into four languages. In 2011 Stuart created and hosted the travel show Young, Broke, and Beautiful on IFC and in 2015 he ran for Mayor of San Francisco and got nearly 20k votes.

He's been called "an Underground legend": SF Chronicle, "an SF cult hero":SF Bay Guardian, and "the chief of cheap": Time Out New York.