It’s acquired a variety of what’s nice a couple of bar. It’s cozy and welcoming (its identify, Vieni Vieni, means “come come”), small and slender, 15 or 20 barstools, no tables, so it’s simple to speak to the individuals who apparently know one another and appear blissful to welcome you in. Drinks are moderately low cost — $6 to $7 for a beer, $7 to $10 for a shot or blended drink — although not fairly as low cost as they was once. Extra about that later.
It doesn’t have a variety of what’s unhealthy a couple of bar. No reside leisure to make dialog troublesome. (There is a jukebox as an alternative.) No “drink menu” checklist of sophisticated concoctions with silly names. Solely two TVs. It’s the type of place your dad took you while you have been a child if you happen to have been fortunate.
Dominique Buoni — behind the bar — and her sister Donna.
Dominique Buoni was luckier than most. Her father not solely took her to Vieni Vieni, in what was once the Italian part of San Francisco. He owned the place, having purchased it in 1965 from one other Italian man who had run it as a beatnik bar, promoting wine out of massive bottles. When dad retired in 1992, Dominique took over.
“I acquired it as a result of I used to be the oldest of us eight children,” says Dominique, now 54. “I used to be going to run it with my oldest brother, however he died in a bike accident, that very same yr.” For a very long time Dominique earned a dwelling for herself and her two children. However then two issues occurred.
One was Covid, from which the enterprise and the North Seaside neighborhood — linked for thus lengthy — nonetheless haven’t recovered. “Look,” says Dominique, declaring the window to the nook of Stockton and Columbus. “The foot visitors hasn’t come again.” However the second factor was worse.
San Francisco was taken over by a brand new era, individuals who truly need drink menus, and reside leisure and plenty of enormous TVs. Additionally they took over the flats, driving out many neighborhood bar denizens.
A few of these bars began taking over the trimmings new prospects needed and changing the outdated bartenders. However Dominique discovered “the extra belongings you change and the extra belongings you add, the extra sophisticated it will get. And the place doesn’t essentially change into a greater place.”
So aside from lastly including a buck to the drink costs just a few weeks in the past, solely to finish up offsetting it a bit of with a $12 beer and name shot particular, and deciding to just accept bank cards regardless that they will trigger extra issues than they remedy, she has been attempting to carry regular, true to her dad’s beliefs.
“They name this place a dive bar now. And for a very long time that harm my emotions. However, you already know, I’m pleased with that now as a result of a dive bar, to lots of people, has come to imply a spot the place they are often themselves and really feel needed and know they’ll be taken care of. Now after they name this a dive bar, I embrace it.”
Dominque Buoni, proprietor, Vieni Vieni
She’s paying the value.
Driving in from greater than 40 miles away, the place she lastly needed to transfer to search out an reasonably priced place for the household to reside, she has had good days, when “it’s wall to wall” and he or she’s in a position to pay the lease and her suppliers and to make the payroll for her 5 bartenders who work just a few hours every.
“Thank God the owner has been truthful and affordable,” she says, noting that others have refused to resume leases, solely too blissful to see their properties redecorated and remodeled.
However there have been days when, after final name, there’s been $45 within the register, and the underside line, Dominique says, is that “I am going by my inheritance and my financial savings.”
On a latest Thursday afternoon at 5, she had three prospects. Across the nook, a spot with younger bartenders and “craft cocktails” was packed. In the meantime, a headline within the San Francisco Chronicle was asserting — as if it was excellent news — {that a} close by “100-year-old dive bar area is reopening with a snazzy new cocktail bar” (providing a $13 quantity made with rhum agricole, bitter lime, condensed milk and “a little bit of pie crust”).
“They name this place a dive bar now,” she says. “And for a very long time that harm my emotions. However, you already know, I’m pleased with that now as a result of a dive bar, to lots of people, has come to imply a spot the place they are often themselves and really feel needed and know they’ll be taken care of. Now after they name this a dive bar, I embrace it.”
She recalled a longtime common, a retired museum workers member, who lately died, alone, in his 80s. “He’d hit just a few tough patches the place he was between checks, out of cash for some time, and he knew he might at all times are available right here. I’m undecided that may have been the identical at a variety of these newer locations. However we’d maintain observe of what he owed and he at all times saved his guarantees.”
In any case, Dominique nonetheless has no plans to show Vieni Vieni into one thing it’s not. And she or he’s nonetheless optimistic that she received’t should.
“There was a giant neighborhood competition that wasn’t the cash maker I hoped for. And town has a ‘legacy enterprise program’ to assist out outdated locations like this, nevertheless it takes three months for them to even have a look at your utility. Nonetheless, Columbus Day is coming. I’ve acquired excessive hopes hanging on that.”
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She’s additionally having fun with good word-of-mouth from bartenders and waiters within the space who, not all that comfy at their very own locations of employment, have been coming in and recommending Vieni Vieni to their mates. She’s hoping all that may proceed to develop.
In the meantime, she appears out the window once more, ready for the shoppers to come back.
“After I was a child,” she remembers, “I cherished bars like this, the place the older folks would drink. They have been those with the good tales, who’d accomplished all these nice issues we hoped we’d get to do sometime. We cherished these folks they usually cherished us again and all of us took care of one another. No one in these locations was ever alone.”
