Pop’s Bar

I agree 100% with Adam S’ review from November 2014. Change is «good», as everyone either adapts or rejects and sides form.
Old Pop’s was the definition of a dive bar. New Pop’s retains some character and adds more options to the equation. I’m sure the fact I’m writing a review for Pop’s in itself is ironic to the owners.
I don’t mind either way, as Pop’s is my soon-​to-​be-​go-​to neighborhood (quite the hyphenation) bar. Just keep games on the TV’s and relatively cheap booze flowing. And photo booths are always fun.

I lived right around the corner from this place and I normally would it give 5 stars but I had a bad experience a couple months ago, the review is a bit late. So at night time the bartender and bouncer are amazing! I would usually go in here alone and they would play dice with me and always so attentive so I feel bad giving such a bad review as the guy bartender (i forget his name as I moved away from the area so its been about 6 months) and bouncer are just so nice. I had 2 friends visiting from out of town so I thought we could just walk down 24^th street and go to dive bars and eat tacos on the way, fun right?
Well I said we were going to go to my local bar first and it was around 4 pm and there were about 6 other people in the bar so not busy. So we sat at a table and then got up to go to the bar to order our drinks. There was a women bartender who was very hipster, young girl with glasses who saw myself and my friends waiting at the bar to order drinks. Well she was in the middle of a conversation and so we just waited, no big deal. Anyways, my two friends were just talking and one went to the bathroom and came back and I thought she was maybe trying to end the convo to get us our drinks but no, this went on for 10 minutes. Finally, she looked over at us and then went and got another person a drink. Wow, just wow. my 2 friends were like «this is your favorite bar?» and I told them that I had never seen this girl before and she blatantly didn’t take our order and she had this air of superiority about her and for being a dive bar it was really strange. It was weird because the bar was empty and I was with my 2 best friends who are visiting so we were all in a cheery mood so we were ok with waiting as we had nowhere to go but after we waited and waited we finally left, we walked out and she never stopped her convo but just glanced up at us with a smirk. I have no idea why, we were not rude to her, actually we never even talked to her. She glanced at us twice walking out which was strange?

Divey and fun, I found this place because I was seeing an SF Sketchfest show across the street at the Brava Theater. Ended up having drinks at Pop’s before and after the show.

I liked it more when it felt like a meth bar. Not that I’m into meth, but it felt like a more interesting experience when it was a shit hole. They took out the pinball machines & changed the bloody mary recipe post-​remodel. Now it gets a resounding meh from me.

Pops is a good spot, saw some good live music here on sat night and the crowd is a lot less hipster than other bars nearby, good spot, strong drinks.

Chill spot… great for a quick drink. Most all goers are local so the vibe is chill. Pop in if your in the area.

Went here for Motown Mondays with some homies two weeks ago and had a pretty solid time. It was’t very packed but that didn’t bother me given it was Monday and we were there to just chill and listen to the music. The bar is sick and extends like an «L» in the room with a dance floor on the far side and a booth behind that. The group in the booth at the far end of the bar was probably the most hipster collection of people you could imagine, mustaches and all. The beer they had on tap was unique and added a nice twist to what you normally find in SF. It’s cash only which is kind of annoying but so is everywhere else in the mission so not knocking them. Bar tender was chill as well. It’s a solid dive bar, no complaints from my experience.

I ended up at Pop’s Bar late on a Friday night a couple weeks back, arriving just in time for a drink before closing. The place was fun, not too busy with an easy ambiance and friendly service. I guess it’s a dive bar? But like a nice dive bar for young San Francisco professionals. Craft beer, photo booth, white people.
I was already pretty tired/​tanked when we arrived, so I just had a beer and took some photo booth pictures as a nightcap. It was great! Drank a Deschutes Armory XPA and the photo booth pictures were appropriately ridiculous. I don’t know that I’d seek out/​recognize Pop’s Bar again, but I had a good time here and would recommend it for a drink in the Mission.

Man! I need to get to this side of the mission more often. bartender was super nice, great selection of beers, porn in the bathroom, photo booth and they let you bring burritos in!

All fancy now and less bro. I kinda miss the bro, though. Was that poetic? The bartender I had Sunday made me a tequila press and it was so awesome I had like 4. HAMMERTIME!

This place is amazing! Had to wait for a prescription to get filled so I wandered around the neighborhood with an almost dead battery on my phone. Came in here and asked the SUPER nice bartender if there was wifi, she said yes and told me there’s USB ports in front of the stools. so perfect. Then she poured me a cerveza and let me know there’s this delicious spicy mix they put on the rim. It was epic. I’m definitely coming back with friends.

This a real hipster bar. Tons of kids dancing all over the floor. And I spotted a few people of a more mature age. Kudos for the creative mixed drinks. I didn’t get one because they are so pricey. Stuck with a stoat beer for $ 6 vs. $ 12 cocktail.
Really fun bathroom with all the R rated pictures all over the walls. Oooolala! Men with mustache handles wearing only that. LOL. Super retro. I heard the men’s bathroom has a bunch of women on their wall. My gay friend wasn’t into that.
Music can get super loud here. Great once the booze kicks in. For me I wasn’t on that level. So I just danced standing.

Sometimes the sports vibe is more than I like. Sometimes it’s not as artsy as I imagine myself and my neighborhood to be. And yet it is always welcoming and always has the comforting vibe of a local dive bar, my favorite kind.

This review is based on me stopping in one afternoon to catch the end of a Giants game while on a Sunday walk past the joint. Of course it is one of the few times I only have a couple bucks cash on me (cash only!) so had to use the in-​house ATM and between that and my own bank’s withdrawal fees, I’m sure I spent as much on fees than on my beer. But not matter. I enjoyed the half dozen mellow clientele and the general look and feel of the place. I’d like to think I could make Pop’s a regular every-​other-​Saturday-​night place of mine but I don’t think I would really last too long None the less, I enjoyed and hope to visit again soon.

Decided to visit a bunch of places we have never been before while in the city for our anniversary. Great bar, good atmosphere, lovely ladies room. Fair drink prices, perfect neighborhood bar.

I highly recommend the Marge Simpson! It’s basically a margarita made with Jalapeño infused tequila with Tajin on the rim instead of salt. Our bartender Nick gave us a shot to taste the tequila and it was absolutely fantastic.

Chill bar with a small dance floor. Pleasant staff.

To quote another who put it better: new Pop’s is like gazing into the face of a beloved old friend who’s had a bunch of drastic, awful plastic surgery done. Just heartbreaking through and through. My previous review was entirely for old Pop’s, and none of that remains. I wish they’d just given the new bar a new name, so I wasn’t constantly reminded of a different place that’s long gone.
The drinks are now overpriced, there’s a bunch of hacky «look at our history, look how long we’ve been here, it’s so long, we swear!» stuff on the walls, the live music is deeply cheesy, and the community that had formed around the place is entirely scattered. Best of luck to new Pop’s, but I’ll never go back.

Good drinks at great prices. The menu is constantly changing, but that just makes it more interesting.

I was going to say Pop’s Bar has a dingier and grittier feel to it when I realized that it was fairly recently renovated so I can only imagine how much more «authentic» it must have felt before.
This is a quintessentially unapologetic dive bar. You do real drinking here. It’s not the fanciest of environments but it feels comfortable. Even more so with a pint in hand and some good conversation. We definitely weren’t the regulars when we popped in but it never felt awkward as we drank a couple of rounds. Pretty reasonable prices too.
In a city that is changing on a dime before our eyes, I’m glad that stalwarts like Pop’s remain to remind us of its eclectic history.

I imagine that there are some polarized opinions when it comes to the newly renovated Pop’s. In San Francisco, and especially in The Mission, the debate over gentrification is practically as heated as debates about religion in the 1500’s. Granted, we don’t see much burning at the stake, but you rarely find opinions that are not pretty set on one side or the other. Most will either welcome the changes to Pop’s or despise them.
«Pop’s, Before»: I came exactly one time. It was 12:30pm on a Saturday. I was a bit hung-​over (Maybe a bit more than a bit) and had to use the bathroom. Those were the only reasons I stopped in: Hangover Remediation and a Bathroom. This was a Super-​Divey place. Dark, dank, rough around the edges. I probably wouldn’t have stayed for more that my Pit-​Stop and one Cheap Beer, but (see the original review) I found out that people actually put Bacon in Bloody Mary’s. I won’t lie — for all the dark-​ness and dank-​ness, for all «go-​the-​f-​back-​to-​suburbia» this place had to offer… They crushed the Bloody. This thing was killer.
«Pop’s, After»: If the sign on the door hadn’t said Pop’s when I walked in, there is no way I would have believed this was the same place. The place has been turned classy. It’s like Rocker Tommy Lee turned into Realtor Phil Dunphy. It’s now a nice, although not super-​pretentious, neighborhood bar. You can take a look at the new photos — if you remember what it once looked like, you’ll be stunned. They still had the Bacon Bloody, but it wasn’t quite the same. Again, check out my photo vs. some of the originals from «Pop’s, Before». The service was nice, the crowd was not much different than a place like R Bar in the Tendernob (yeah yeah, I know some of you think that place is much more fratty than it really is, a la Wreck Room).
So, what is the real analysis? Was it better to have the edgy, divey, f-​the-​squares joint? Is it better to have another perfectly affable spot with daylight and nice finishes? We’ve endured another Neil Young to Neil Diamond transformation. But, such is life in SF. I don’t know what the answer is, but I know in SF that this is something that is a fact of life, writ large. For what it’s worth, I think they did a nice job. Had I not known «Pop’s, Before», I would have found this to be a nicely-​finished neighborhood spot that was friendly and had good service. But, there is a little something in my «go-​the-​f-​back-​to-​suburbia» soul that reminds me that eventually, suburbia can swallow you up and turn you into everyone else. And trust me, I grew up in Golden Valley, Minnesota.
If there’s a moral of the story, it’s that times change. Often times progress is good — but it is worth thinking about what won’t be anymore. Some of the change is colored by nostalgia. But, I wonder what exactly we lose…