THE PEOPLE BEHIND
THE WATERFRONT

A bar is a room and a liquor license. What people actually mean when they talk about Waterfront is the people in it.

Behind the bar

Bartending here is a long job, not a shift. Several of the people pouring have been doing it for a decade or more, which is why regulars order by nodding. They learn what you drink, then they learn where you work, then they learn your dog's name, roughly in that order.

The habits carry over between them. Tabs get run the same way. The greeting at the door is the same at 9am as it is at midnight. That consistency is most of what keeps people coming back — it isn't a policy, it's just how the room has always been run.

The regulars

The morning crowd is different from the afternoon crowd, which is different again after work. Breakfast is quiet: people reading, a few finishing a night shift. By three, the seats fill with people who have been coming for years and know each other by first name. Later it's a mix — dock workers, downtown office people, Padres fans, art-walk stragglers, dog owners, cooks off a service somewhere else in Little Italy.

Some of them have been coming since the 1970s. A few of them were brought here by parents who came in the 1950s. The stools turn over; the pattern doesn't.

The neighborhood around it

Waterfront opened in 1933, when this block was tuna boats and canneries and the shoreline sat closer to the door. The families who worked those boats drank here. When the fleet went, the neighborhood emptied for a while, then filled back in with condos and restaurants. The bar stayed put through all of it and kept its hours.

That's the reason the room feels the way it does. It wasn't designed to look old. It's just old, and nobody got around to changing it.

The culture of the room

There's no dress code and there's never been a cover. Nobody's performing. People end up talking to strangers because the bar is long and the seats are close, and because the bartender will introduce you if it seems useful.

That's it, really. Ninety-plus years of the same job done the same way, by people who intend to still be here next year.