Name: What happens if your bar doesn’t fit in CA’s reopening plan? Smuggler’s Cove doesn’t know
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What happens if your bar doesn’t fit in CA’s reopening plan? Smuggler’s Cove doesn’t know

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San Francisco’s Smuggler’s Cove has the largest rum selection in the country.It has multiple “Best Bars in America” nods from the likes of Esquire, Playboy and Food + Wine.And it has an unparalleled movie set-caliber interior filled with waterfalls, boat parts and mermaid carvings.What it doesn’t have, though, is any idea of whether it’ll ever be able to open again.“I like to think of myself as a reasonably responsible owner, but I certainly never thought I’d need 12 months of rent and to pay for the staff’s Kaiser policies for a year,” says owner Martin Cate. “I did save as much as I could anticipating things like plumbing emergencies or electrical failures or equipment failures, but that’s all pretty much gone by now.”Its story is a familiar one as the pandemic has worn on.Smuggler's Cove received a $150,000 Payment Protection Program loan it can’t spend. Because it has a space it can’t reopen (and thus can't pay employees, which it has to do to make the PPP loan forgivable). Because it’s a bar, doesn’t offer food (which is required by the state for to-go service) and, even if it did, has no way to survive recouping something like 20% of its revenue on take-away cocktails.“I’ll tell you, the sense of frustration and fatigue of bar owners I speak to, we’re all just exhausted,” says Cate, who takes the deepest for breaths before answering questions.Cate now spends hours upon hours reading legal briefs from hospitality law firms, watching webinars on “industry trends” (are there any?) and doing an endless parade of Zoom calls with everyone from his 11-person furloughed staff to long-time members of the bar’s Rum Club.He runs through best- and worst-case scenarios in his head, which is constantly racing as he’s turned to meditation and CBD to cope with the sometimes-overwhelming anxiety.Best case:“If in a magical world, if it looks like trials are going well, that we see vaccines coming and it looks like there will be rollouts in December, and then it takes six months to get them to everyone, I can use that PPP money knowing there will be some normalcy by July 2021,” he says. “I can take a shot at spending this money because it would be worth it.”Worst case:“I think worst case, if it looks like it’ll be years, I’m not a young man anymore. It’ll be a question of thinking of the end game here. I’d like to say I’m not going to throw everything away, or take out a second mortgage, but the reality is, I don’t know if I can let it go. It’s very important to me; I’m emotionally invested in the staff and guests. You can try to talk about walking away, but walking away is not something I can scarcely contemplate right now. We’re very fortunate we’re not at that point yet, but there’s a sense within the bar ownership community that the fear is setting in pretty profoundly for a lot of people,” Cate says, as his worst case starts to bleed over into his present case.“We’re all so scared,” he continues. “Bar owners think we’re important to the fabric of the city, and I do think we’re a key part to what makes a city special, these third places -- we’re not work, not home; it’s a space where people can come together, make communities and bond. It’s a rare thing today to find a place for people to form a community as adults. Oftentimes to form a community, you do it in school and growing up -- places where we’re forced together -- but to find places where you want to go … I’m going to break into the ‘Cheers’ theme song in a minute here … those places, though, I think are really vital to the fabric of a community, they’re part of what brings us together.”For a place like Smuggler’s Cove, it feels like there are also even fewer options. For one, Cate’s intricately fashioned, 11-year-old watering hole isn’t exactly relocatable (“you don’t just pop out the interior and reinstall it in a new space,” he says). For two, his staff isn’t as easily replaceable -- he’s celebrated the 10-year anniversaries of several bartenders during the pandemic, all of whom are vital to what makes Smuggler’s, well, Smuggler’s. And for three, Cate won’t even consider doing anything other than being a bar owner -- he’s actually also a co-owner of Whitechapel in San Francisco, Hale Pele in Portland, and False Idol in San Diego, plus a partner in Lost Lake in Chicago.Cate, who worked in transportation logistics before getting into the hospitality world, says he floundered professionally before becoming a bar owner.“It was the greatest relief of my life, there was a sense of ‘that’s it, I finally feel it, it feels right.’ Part of my anxiety is, I don’t want to reconsider right now. I found something that means the world to me -- taking care of people, putting smiles on guests’ faces -- I don’t want to have to reconsider what I’ve felt so much joy in doing.”But he also knows there’s a potentially long, dark road ahead to make it out the other side of this.“I expect to see more of a bloodbath in the next couple of months. I think that’ll also focus more public attention on the plight,” he says. “ is not that long. I think it’s going to start getting a lot worse soon.”More deep breaths from Cate, and then a deep sigh before he answers one last question: What do you say to your bar patrons -- the people who’ve grown to love Smuggler’s Cove over the last decade plus, the people who want to see you make it -- what do you tell them?“That’s a tough question. I don’t want to get caught in a guarantee, a ‘don’t worry we’ll be back.’ I’d tell them: Just remember us, all of us in this city. One of the reasons you moved to San Francisco is you knew this was a world-class center for arts and entertainment. You moved to a city with history, with character, with style, not because you want to look at a screen all day, but because you want to be part of this city,” he says.“Please remember us, all of us, we’re trying to come through on the other side, and we’d love to see your faces the minute we can. Emotionally, this is really hard, bartenders are feeling really sad about missing regulars, missing familiar faces, and it’s starting to really get to them. They’re really anxious to get to them. But we do feel like we are, and will again be, an important part of your life’s journey.”Smuggler's Cove is located at 650 Gough St in the Fillmore. You can support their staff fundraiser .Grant Marek is the Editorial Director of SFGATE. Email: grant.marek@sfgate.com | Twitter: @grant_marek

San Francisco’s Smuggler’s Cove has the largest rum selection in the country.It has multiple “Best Bars in America” nods from the likes of Esquire, Playboy and Food + Wine.And it has an unparalleled movie set-caliber interior filled with waterfalls, boat parts and mermaid carvings.What it doesn’t have, though, is any idea of whether it’ll ever be able to open again.“I like to think of myself as a reasonably responsible owner, but I certainly never thought I’d need 12 months of rent and to pay for the staff’s Kaiser policies for a year,” says owner Martin Cate. “I did save as much as I could...

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Grant Marek

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What happens if your bar doesn’t fit in CA’s reopening plan? Smuggler’s Cove doesn’t know

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