Changes Coming to Beloved Sports Bar The Final Final
The Final Final, a longtime San Francisco sports bar, is changing hands for the first time in over forty years. Snagged from Google street view because I wrote this at night.
The Final Final had already been sold when my partner and I first visited last month. It’s a treat, going to a straight bar once in a while. We know the city’s gay bars top to bottom. Sometimes it feels nice to be new. The Final Final is a time capsule of San Francisco sports memorabilia. It’s the kind of bar that chain restaurants fail to mimic with their disparate tchotchkes. Here, there is cohesion, simplicity, tradition. The kind of thing I would normally run from. We stopped in for just one beer and ended up staying over two hours.
2990 Baker Street has been a bar for ninety years, as per The Chronicle. Half its lifetime it has been the Final Final, opening in 1978 under the stewardship of Mr. Arnie Prien. With sons Cory, Michael and Elliott, he kept the business in the family, but the 81-year-old is ready to retire. The bar’s new owners do not want to change the bar’s name or look. It seems they recognized what makes The Final Final a draw, and why it works. I doubt it would have lasted in the aggressively competitive market that is San Francisco if its formula wasn’t special.
Entering the sports bar instantly took me back to a childhood friend’s dad’s trophy room. Half den, half monument to the glory days. Team portraits, wood paneling. Though California hasn’t permitted smoking in bars since at least 1998, you can faintly smell the nicotine. Beyond the three-sided bartop, past the pair of pool tables, we set our belongings in the barrel-backed wooden chairs against the wall.
“Game?” my partner asked.
“You’re on.”
Preserving a legacy
Mr. Prien’s bar at the intersection of Baker and Lombard Streets in Cow Hollow is famous in its own right. Fittingly, the NBA shot a commercial there for the 2016 finals. Clint Eastwood filmed part of his movie Hereafter (2010) starring Matt Damon at The Final Final after being a frequent patron. Many star athletes have patronized the bar, including Joe DiMaggio, Klay Thompson, and Tim Lincecum.
I’ll admit, I had to look up Thompson and Lincecum. I know as much about sports as I do about cars and women—I would be a terrible straight man.
My partner whooped my ass in the first round. I was so proud! As the son of an alcoholic, raised in the pool halls of rural Kansas, billiards runs in my veins.
“Round two?” I proposed.
“Deal.”
The city desperately needs unpretentiousness. That’s why The Final Final will still sport sports memorabilia, provide pool tables, and keep its legendary moniker. Arnie Prien sold the place to a basketball fan, after all. Robert Lemons, director of basketball operations for the Sacramento Kings, partnered with financial advisor Joe Wallace to buy the bar. The business partners have a good track record among the city’s sports barflies. They took over The Bus Stop back in 2021, maintaining the 121-year-old bar’s aesthetic to the relief of its fans. In San Francisco where the turnover rate is discouragingly fast, it’s nice to know what ought to stay the same.
A legend lives on
“We have a soft spot for Cow Hollow and San Francisco institutions like Bus Stop and The Final Final. The same folks have been patronizing these bars for decades and we want to keep these institutions thriving by providing the same experience, just slightly upgraded,” Wallace told Grant Marek of SFGATE.
The Final Final will remain open during renovations. Swing by and say goodbye to Arnie and his sons, and that charming old floor-length urinal.
I won round two, in case you were wondering.
Howdy! My name is Katy Atchison and I'm an Associate Editor for Broke-Ass Stuart.
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