198 Church Street
San Francisco, California 94114

Status: Straight/Mixed Bar

Previously: Bar on Church; The Transfer

History

Summary

Name	Dates of Operation
Churchill	2011 – present
The Bar on Church	2009 – 2011
The Transfer	198? – 2008

Details

The bar at 198 Church Street was a pub since the 1940s once known as Dudley’s. It became The Transfer sometime in the 1980s. It was a bit of a dive bar at the northern edge of the Castro with a clientele that was a brackish mix of gays and straights.

In the mid to late 2000s, Greg Bronstein and other investors who also owned the Bar on Castro, Lime, and the Detour acquired the bar. They brought in club promoters to throw special events like Joshua J’s Big Top and Culture Whores’ Attention Deficit Disco, turning the Transfer into more of an alternative gay scene.

Bronstein reportedly tried to unload the Transfer in early 2008, but the sale fell through. Then in mid-2008, when he learned that he would be unable to renew the Bar on Castro’s lease at 456 Castro Street, he cancelled his contracts with club promoters and closed the Transfer for remodeling with the plan of moving the BOC to the Transfer.

On January 20, 2009 Bronstein reopened operations at the Transfer’s location with a celebration for Barack Obama’s inauguration, renaming it the Bar on Church in order to keep the BOC branding he had built. Some of the parties he had at the Bar on Castro stayed at the old venue, like Joshua J and Juanita More’s Booty Call Wednesdays, while others like his Monday night 80s music night with 80 cent Cosmos moved to the Bar on Church.

But it didn’t last long. About a year or so later, some of the booth seating had been ripped out to create more floor space, but the spots where the booths had been ripped out still had exposed bolts and remained unpainted. One patron described the vibe as “post-apocalyptic.”

In November of 2010, the San Francisco Entertainment Commission put the BOC and seven other unrelated bars on a “watch list” for a variety of violations. Collectively, the eight spots were cited for sound violations, repeated incidences of violence, security policy violations, blocking the sidewalk, and in one case, operating an unlicensed pool table. It’s unclear from press accounts which of these issues the BOC violated.

Bronstein and his investors sold the bar in December of 2010 to new owners Mike Goebel, Darin Brunson, and Anthony Healy-London, who also own Bloodhound in SOMA and Double Dutch in the Mission. The new owners put in for a new liquor license and began plans for a complete revamp, though the bar continued to operate as the Bar on Church for a short time. The BOC officially closed for remodeling and rebranding in January of 2011.

They reopened in June of 2011 as Churchill, named after Winston Churchill (though clearly playing off of the Church Street location), using vintage military materials and photos to create a sort of World War II vibe. The upstairs space, once a marijuana dispensary, was remodeled to become a private events space called the Office.

In 2013, Churchill co-owner Anthony Healy-London and two other investors uninvolved with Churchill bought the Hayes Valley gay bar Marlena’s from Absolute Empress XXV of San Francisco, Marlena the Magnificent, and her business partner, Janice Buxton. The new bar is called Brass Tacks.

Sources

Alburger, Carolyn, “Bloodhound Guys’ New Castro Bar Will Be Called Churchill,” San Francisco Eater, April 27, 2011.

Alburger, Carolyn, “Take A Look At Churchill, Opening Today in the Castro,” San Francisco Eater, June 1, 2011.

Bajko, Matthew S., “Castro area medical cannabis dispensary wins approval,” Bay Area Reporter, February 3, 2011.

Bajko, Matthew S., “New year brings Castro bar changes,” Bay Area Reporter, January 8, 2009.

Bajko, Matthew S., “Political Notebook: SF gays celebrate Obama’s swearing in,” Bay Area Reporter, January 22, 2009.

Barmann, Jay, “Another Gay Bar Bites the Dust: Goodbye Deco Lounge,” SFist, November 7, 2012.

Barmann, Jay, “The Bar on Church Changing Hands, Joins the Bloodhound/Double Dutch Empire,” Grub Street SF, December 7, 2010.

Barmann, Jay, “Two Castro Gay Bars Officially Close: The Edge and the Bar on Church,” Grub Street SF, January 25, 2011.

Brass Tacks on Yelp, accessed September 26, 2014.

Leyland, Winston, Out in the Castro: Desire, Promise, Activism, Leyland Publications, 2002, ISBN 0-943595-88-6.

Paulo, “The Shutter: Breezy’s, Laurel’s, Bar on Castro, More,” San Francisco Eater, January 19, 2009.

Uncle Donald’s Castro Street Worth, Katie, “City nightclubs put on ‘watch list,’” San Francisco Examiner, November 16, 2010.

Location

2344 Market Street, San Francisco