Glen Park After Dark Runs Through a 100-Year-Old Room on Diamond Street

In 2024 a burst water main closed Glen Park Station for two months. When the bar reopened, Janet Tarlov, president of the Glen Park Merchants Association, told SFGATE that the merchants were "very relieved that it is open again and that post 8 p.m., it's not just dead on the street." She was describing two months when the Village had no evening at all.

Glen Park Station turned 100 on October 17. It is the only bar of any kind in Glen Park, according to the same SFGATE story. If you live here, you probably know the 28 stools. The centennial is a good time to look at the thing you might take for granted. Most of the Village's nightlife happens in two small rooms, and for most of the past century one of them has been run by people who mainly wanted to keep it from changing.

A building that came from somewhere else

The bar's history begins with a move. A retrospective from the Glen Park Association says the building came to its spot in 1926 from "some other unknown part of the City." The owner then was Joe Veloni, who lived upstairs and raised nine kids in a three-bedroom apartment.

Since 1926 fell during Prohibition, the speakeasy story was bound to follow. In it, a coffee shop up front sat behind a dividing door, and a secret knock got the right customers into the back. The Association's retrospective calls this "rumor," and that's the right word for it. According to SFGATE, by 1935 the place was Glen Tavern. The current owners believe it became Glen Park Station in the late 1970s, a few years after BART opened its Glen Park station in 1973. So the bar was named after the station, which most people forget.

Look at the gaps in that table. The bar has passed between owners only a few times, and each new owner made a point of changing very little.

The owners who mostly left it alone

The Association's retrospective says Coulter and Lecour changed almost nothing after buying the bar in 1990, "except to clean it up a bit and paint the walls." They did set rules. Bartenders wore shirts and ties. The bar had zero tolerance for drugs and for fighting, no matter who threw the first punch. Even with the big game on, they called it "an upscale neighborhood bar."

The 2021 handoff is where the centennial almost didn't happen in the same form. In the SFGATE story, Shane Ryan says that once word got out that Lecour planned to sell, "the whole neighborhood was scared that somebody with more money than sense would come in and try to turn it into a swanky cocktail bar." Ryan had tended bar there for years. His partner, Sean Kelly, grew up hiding under the bar's tall tables while his father and uncle drank there. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that Kelly beat "a slew of other bidders" and that his goal as co-owner is "Don't let it change too much."

Kelly described the room's purpose to SFGATE this way:

"It's like an adult rec center in a way where you have scientists and plumbers and electricians hanging out that maybe never would otherwise. It's like every walk of life."

He told the Chronicle more briefly: "We're like the neighborhood's living room." The regulars back that up. The Chronicle reported that when several of them organized a bar crawl to New York City in 2019, 32 people came along.

The bar also has a working role in the Village's business life. Tarlov co-owned Canyon Market across the street until it sold in December 2022. SFGATE reported that Kelly and Ryan invited her to hold store staff meetings in the back room, and later merchants association meetings too. Some of the Village's daytime decisions get made in its nighttime room.

The second room that stays lit

Glen Park Station isn't the only place open after dark, and the other one is just as odd. At Bird & Beckett Books & Records, the Chronicle reported, owner Eric Whittington lives in the building and "pushes the rolling bookshelves to the back most evenings so he can host jazz concerts and poetry readings."

Daytime Glen Park has plenty of options: the Chronicle lists Critter Fritters, the Cheese Boutique and several long-standing cafés in the two blocks around Diamond and Chenery. After dark, it comes down to a short list of doors, and that's why a two-month closure in 2024 hit the whole Village.

In October, the walks started and ended at the bar

This fall showed how the city now uses that short list. Walktober, a citywide walking celebration led by the Crosstown Trail, ran more than 40 guided walks across San Francisco. The Glen Park Association called Glen Park Station a starting and ending point where walkers could get a drink. Several of the walks used both rooms:

• October 6: The Crosstown Trail Pub Crawl started at Glen Park Station.
• October 24: "Truly Terrific: Tiled to Tiled Stairway Walk," co-led by Renee Berger of Glen Park Beautiful, visited five tiled stairways and finished at Glen Park Station.
• October 27: Bird & Beckett hosted a seated talk by the author of Stairway Walks in San Francisco, with a presentation on how more than 900 city stairways were mapped.
• October 31: Glen Park Gravel covered some of the city's oldest dirt paths, with Glen Park Neighborhoods History Project founder Evelyn Rose adding history along the way.

The Association also noted that walkers stopped at Bird & Beckett for Crosstown Trail swag. When the city planned an evening in Glen Park, it sent people to the same two rooms.

Where the evenings go from here

If the centennial makes you want to spend more evenings in the Village, the Bird & Beckett calendar gives you plenty of reasons to walk down Diamond between now and mid-December:

1. Thursday, November 19: Walker Brents III continues his almost-monthly talk series on poetry, mythology, folklore and philosophy, which he has run for more than two decades. Free, donations welcome.
2. Friday, November 20: Guitarist Scott Foster's third-Friday set with his changing cast of collaborators, $20.
3. Thanksgiving weekend, November 27 and 28: Two nights of music with Macy Blackman, Snakebite, Bing Nathan, Jim Peterson, Joe Kyle Jr., Larry Vann and Scott Foster.
4. December 2 through 5: An Esmail Rahimian book event, the first-Thursday poets on December 3, Paul Mehling's group on December 4 and Roopa Mahadevan's group on December 5.
5. December 12 and 13: Fog City Groove on Saturday, then Lynne Maes' group and Ella Dair on Sunday.
6. December 17: Walker Brents III returns for another talk.

Glen Park Station is at 2816 Diamond Street, with La Corneta Taqueria next door. SFGATE described ordering a super burrito there and taking it to a stool at the bar. The bar pours Guinness, a shot and a beer, a local draft, or "a classic cocktail if you ask nicely." The black-and-white photos still cover nearly every wall.

The block around the bar is getting new paint

Downtown Glen Park is also about to look a bit different around both rooms. At the Glen Park Association's fall quarterly meeting on October 20, the group reported that Glen Park Beautiful has an Avenue Greenlight grant for a mural on the patio fence next to Pono and a refreshed "welcome to Glen Park" sign. A few blocks away, the Association's own $25,000 Avenue Greenlight grant will pay for murals and planters on the Arlington Slow Street, at corners where state law now bans parking. SFMTA is setting the dimensions of what can be painted. Artist Dahlia Gustafson, who grew up on Arlington, will design the corners using neighborhood feedback. Abdul at Cuppa supplied free froyo for the meeting.

After dark, the Village still comes down to a 28-stool bar from 1926 and a bookstore with its shelves pushed against the back wall.

If you have a Glen Park Station story, maybe a first pint, a 49ers game or a parent who drank there before you, send it my way. And if you're thinking about how life around the Village fits your next chapter, Stephanie LeBeau would love to walk Diamond Street with you.