SF’s storied queer bar, the Stud, ‘rises from the ashes’ in SoMa

The rhinestones on the decades-old sign glinted in the Tuesday morning sunlight at the corner of Folsom and Langton streets in SoMa, surrounded by a bustling crowd of city politicians, drag performers and TV reporters. 

Its message, “Welcome Home Stud,” harkened back to when it once welcomed patrons into San Francisco’s oldest cooperatively owned queer bar. But it also celebrated the famed nightlife venue’s future, as members of the Stud collective announced the Stud’s long-awaited reopening, which is slated for early 2024 at 1123 Folsom St. 

“As many of you know, we have been waiting for years to bring the Stud back,” Honey Mahogany, a member of the Stud collective and chair of the San Francisco Democratic Party, said during the press conference Tuesday, calling it “one of San Francisco’s most iconic venues.”    

In May 2020, the 57-year-old bar and legacy business shuttered its previous physical space three blocks away on 9th Street, where it had been operating since 1987. At the time, members of the Stud collective — which bought the bar and revived it as a co-op in 2017, saving it after a massive rent hike — said the difficult decision, brought on by a lack of revenue during the pandemic, helped them avoid accruing debt that would have made it impossible for them to eventually reopen at a new location. 

In the meantime, the bar lived on through virtual drag shows and its “Stud Stories” history podcast. Collective members fundraised for the bar’s hopeful future by selling T-shirts and other merchandise as they scouted vacant warehouses, car repair shops, coffee roasteries and other available locations for the Stud’s third home in the neighborhood. (The Stud first opened as a country western-themed gay bar at 1535 Folsom St. in 1966, where it carved out a place for gender-nonconforming individuals and drag queens, at a time when many of them were not welcomed in gay bars, as SFGATE previously reported.) 

“We looked long and hard to find a place that was worthy of the Stud’s legacy,” Mahogany said. “We all have heard the stories of the doom loop; the South of Market and mid-Market area has been really, really negatively impacted by the pandemic … But now this is an opportunity to rebuild and build back better. We are the city where our emblem is the phoenix which rises from the ashes, and just as the Stud closed almost four years ago, now, we are about to reopen and start on a new journey.”

Last month, Stud collective members signed the lease on 1123 Folsom St., which previously housed Julie’s Supper Club, sports bar Trademark and the pop-up “Golden Girls” Kitchen. The new location has a capacity of just under 300 and is twice the size of the Stud’s former space, with room for a future stage, a patio and twice as many bathrooms, said Stud collective president and bar manager Rachel Ryan. They envision the space will be adorned by “a treasure trove” of historical ephemera from the Stud’s past lives, including hundreds of old photographs, a pin archive, a contract for legendary R&B singer Etta James, which had been written on a napkin when she performed there in the ’70s, and the aforementioned rhinestone sign, which was “hiding under a dusty sheet in the back of the basement,” Ryan said. 

It’s too soon to say what the Stud’s programming will look like, but Mahogany said the collective plans to preserve preserve its legacy of hosting DJ nights and showcasing alternative drag in a similar vein to T-Shack, a club spearheaded by the late drag legend Heklina in the ’90s. Known in later iterations as Mother, the raucous, DIY punk spectacle of a drag show was held every Tuesday at the Stud for several years and changed the art form forever. 

“We want a lot of new drag queens to come,” Mahogany said, “and try new things and be weird and strange and San Franciscan.”

But a long road lies ahead as collective members jump through permitting and licensing hoops and prepare for the construction of all-new dressing rooms, a dance floor and DJ booths, as well as install a sound system. To help offset costs, they recently launched a crowdfunding campaign with a goal of $500,000, more than $30,000 of which had been raised as of Tuesday. 

“It takes a lot to re/open a bar these days—and we want to remain among the most accessible (and cheapest), serving a community that can’t afford other places or doesn’t feel welcome, and is holding on by a thread,” wrote Marke Bieschke, publisher of 48 Hills and a member of the Stud collective. 

The collective certainly seems to have the city’s support: San Francisco Mayor London Breed, district supervisors Matt Dorsey, Rafael Mandelman, Connie Chan and Ahsha Safaí, and state senator Scott Wiener were all in attendance at Tuesday’s press conference. Several of them aided in the efforts to change the zoning for the building, which was no longer eligible for new nighttime use, Mahogany said.

“We’re here to signify how important this is,” Breed said during the conference. “The collective here came together and said this institution, the Stud, is needed. It’s needed now more than ever in light of the pandemic, where we could not come together, especially in places like the Stud, where it wasn’t just about partying. It was a place that was about being together with friends, with families.” 

San Francisco drag laureate and Oasis owner D’Arcy Drollinger, who cut her teeth doing drag at the Stud, said its closure “felt like we were losing part of San Francisco.”

“Now we have the opportunity to help rebuild it,” Drollinger said. “Today is that day where we get to stand together and look at the beautiful little new sprout that is coming up in this time that has been so dark … Here’s to keeping San Francisco fabulous, and keeping San Francisco queer.”