The Haunted History of The Rite Spot in The Mission

Back in the Days…is a column about the weird and wonderful history of bars, houses, and spaces in the Bay Area. These histories will often involve ghosts. It will also involve those still living who remember what has been and want the wonderful character of the city to continue to thrive.

Photo by Robby Virus on Flickr

San Francisco is an ever changing city.

It is a city literally built on shifting sands and even old garbage. Half of downtown is built on what used to be open bay water. An 1818 merchant ship was found beneath a skyscraper back in 2006 during excavations for a new building and provides some evidence of those gold rushers and sadly, exploited immigrant workers, who came and went with scarce a trace except in striving, suffering, and story. What they built and how they lived was mostly destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and resulting fire. With such uncertainty of edifice and even of population, San Francisco is notorious for being a place where people come to find their possibility of “becoming”. And after having found it or not, also tend to depart rather quickly, often leaving little evidence that they were ever here. It is not surprising that long term residents hold on tenaciously to any little bit of history, they honor that which has remained.

What most prominently holds that history are the city’s bars. Bars are also a shifting landscape, no one night ever existing in quite the same way again and the people come and the people go but the memories linger, particularly if the building still exists. There is one bar, though having slightly changed over the decades, which has withstood the ravages of time and remains as a beacon of what was and what still is.

I am, of course, talking about the Rite Spot.

You might walk by it on a sunny morning and have no idea that inside the ground floor building – that almost looks like it could be a place where you could hide out from a nuclear attack – lives a wild, winsome, and funky place that has existed for almost a hundred years. But come 5pm when the doors are thrown wide and an old neon sign lights up inviting people in, a wonderful world opens full of music, love, and the delicious redolence of yesteryear.

Says Dave Mihaly, jazz musician extraordinaire who has long played on that stage, “It is a free will zone that continues to be a meeting place for all manner of beings, like Rick’s place in ‘Casablanca’ but with a fiery matriarchal chain of command, mixed genre music and the mythic keystone of a saloon piano, it’s one of those places that blurs the territory between dive and shrine”.

Since the 90’s, the Rite Spot has been run by women. Thus, the fiery matriarchal command referenced by Mihaly. Of particular note was Annie Southworth who was a force at the bar and in the city. On the day she died, I heard her knock on the office door, (the office door is just that, it leads into the office with no exit and so a knock could only be of the spectral kind. A little hello from the afterworld). That’s not unusual as the bar is notoriously haunted. I’ve heard tell that there is a shadowy woman that can appear near the bathroom. Many have seen her. I didn’t want to hear about it when I first started working there. Opening up the bar by myself in those early days, I didn’t want to have my imagination invoked as I was already scared to walk to the bathroom until the waitress arrived.

Almost every old bar is haunted or at least, reported to be haunted. However, what is much more fun is to speculate from whence came the ghost.

An old breakfast menu from The Rite Spot’s history

Behind the bar lives an original menu that offers breakfast for $3.25. The menu, though likely from a later date hints back to 1957 when dock workers would come by for a meal after a long day’s work. For those not in the know, a dock worker’s day starts at around 3am where the skies are still dark and masts clank, workers shout and sweat, bales are heaved in the gloom of sea fog, all while most of the world is still asleep. A dock worker’s day is usually done around noon and so a hearty repast is needed and perhaps a dram of whiskey too. Functioning ostensibly as a diner, it was likely in the 50’s that the old wooden bar was covered in the yellow formica that still exists to this day. 

The place is much older than that though. In fact, research provided by Robby Virus of Project Pimento who combed through city records revealed that the building has been there since at least 1927. The Rite Spot, though not named that yet, was probably an actual speakeasy back during prohibition, perhaps even built specifically to be a speakeasy. Thus the bunker style edifice, and potentially the reason why a shadowy lady haunts the hallway leading to the bathrooms.

The 1920’s was a roiling, rollicking time in San Francisco’s history. It could even be considered to have been the city’s hey day, earning the fond moniker of being “Sin City”. Brothels proliferated and the madams of those brothels were not only notorious but were also often local celebrities. One madam, Sally Standford, even became the Mayor of Sausalito. Gambling dens thrived in basements and on corners from Chinatown to 6th street, rival newspapers fought to have the biggest headlines, and gun battles in newspaper offices were scandalous but not surprising. Back in 1880, The young founder of the Chronicle, Charles De Young tried to shoot down the Mayor’s son but then was gunned down while in his offices. By the 1920’s, William Randolph Hearst had come in dominating the newspaper industry and more gun battles ensued amongst rival newspapers. Meanwhile up the hill to the South existed a jail for wayward boys and girls that is now the site of City College.

City records photograph, 1927. The building referenced is on the left at the corner of 17th street and Folsom. Research courtesy of Robby Virus.

That the Rite Spot may have existed as a bar during that era makes perfect sense. Still resonant amongst the red painted walls where white table clothes glow with candle light, is the spirit of a wild and welcoming joie de vivre. Anything could happen and it often does. People feel it when they come in though they don’t often know why. But feel it they certainly do. Part of what evokes that feeling is the amazing music that has poured out from the stage floor to the street since the 80’s.

Then, the music was more punk oriented. Evidence of the underground. The Mission District was rougher back in those days, a kind of wild west landscape where many buildings were boarded up and the surrounding streets were rather lawless. Though customers have told me about those days and their good memories of them, little factual information exists about the owners who turned an old diner into a small music venue. The evidence that remains is mostly encased in an odd painting that lives prominently behind the bar and above the old cash register.

In that painting are naked people, a version of Mickey Mouse and Captain Hook, the unknown artist existing in the corner of the canvas. One customer told me about seeing a similar style painting at a garage sale and so the artist may be one Eric Schultz. He may have also just been one of many striving artists during that time who made friends with the owners of a venue and they bought his painting, but he hasn’t been heard from since. Just another part of the wave of people that come and go in this shifting city. He and that painting will forever remain a mystery but the new matriarch of the Rite Spot, Christina Hu, helped to foster an art show based on that painting and behind the bar is the great work of stained glass artist Kerbi Urbanowski. Yet, the actual painting will still remain as one of the many mysteries that are part of the charming mystique of a place that keeps people coming back again and again and again.

In 1990, the building and the bar, lock, stock and barrel, was bought by a Chinese/Tawainese family who kept everything intact including the saloon piano and the character of the place. Sure, the plumbing was repaired, the electrical wiring brought up to code, the kitchen made modern but most meaningfully, a new generation was invited to sing their songs and sidle up to an old bar stool to enjoy being amongst the energy of all those who have sat there before and make it their own.

And so, if you are walking down 17th st. on an early afternoon and don’t happen to notice an unassuming building on a corner please come back when the doors are open wide and much magic ensues in that place of wonder and indeed, a sustained survival where so much has passed by the wayside. We need these places holding our history more than ever now.

Misery Index. Comedy show. 2015. There was also a great comedy show entitled Resistance is Fertile not featured here but was equally as loved.