This was me and my roommate’s first St. Patrick’s Day in our neighborhood, and while I never really go out drinking on 3.17, we figured there’s so many Irish bars within walking distance, we should hit some up.

Hahahahahaha, wrong. Even before I started this paragraph I could see you shaking your head and clucking your tongue, dear reader, and you would be right. We were very much schooled. These are excellent bars on any other freaking day of the year. On that night, every bar was overrun by frat/sorority kids who were too drunk and too crazy and too… preppie. Forgive me for my sounding bewildered, but isn’t San Francisco supposed to have some sort of magic spell protecting us from such things? I kid, of course, but now I know where all the preppies are; they’re bridge-and-tunnel cases or they’re nursing their beers until those special chronological events arise, causing public celebrations of drunkenness and fisticuffs. No, really, I’m kidding.*

So instead of going to one of the Inner Richmond’s Irish establishments and listening to authentic Irish music, we ended up somewhere quieter with other folks who probably had more of a clue than we did at the beginning of our evening. Trad’r Sam is a crazy tiki dive bar (sounds redundant, maybe… but where else is each booth named after an island or chain of islands, proclaimed in wicker on an archway above each one?) serving all sorts of colorful spirits. I had a Tahitian Purple Haze (rating: excellent), other blue and pinks and amber-colored drinks were consumed, and I saw a lot of drinks being served in bowls with multiple straws. The music kept fluctuating between mellow and loud-and-conversation-threatening, which I like to think of as “charming” rather than “obnoxious.” Brilliant. Authentic? Hell if I know.

Green beer for the Irish, bah! I’m Irish every day of the year, screw it. I’ll take purple with a little paper umbrella.

Trad’r Sam is located at 6150 Geary @ 26th Avenue in SF. Look for the big orange arrow.

(*I should maybe note that my attitude is not San Francisco snobbery… I imported it with me from Chicago. <3 preppies!

Also, I’m not kidding about the fisticuffs. Part of our posse somehow got involved in a scuffle, too, though it was really minor and there was no blood, and I just stood there like I would know what the fuck I was doing when really, no clue here, and a cop pulled up and broke it up and said, no lie, “Get off of my street,” which led to us asking ourselves on the cab ride over to Trad’r Sam’s if he’d been waiting all night to use that line.)