Butter in San Francisco, California: A Bar Review

The kids who grew up in the 1980s are now in the coveted age 28-40 "working professional" demographic so greatly coveted by marketing types, and no greater proof of this lies in the movie line-ups we've been seeing at major theaters as of the last couple of years. Transformers, G.I. Joe, and even Tron is getting a belated sequel, amongst others. In all realms of profit-making enterprise, not just movies, we're seeing more and more repackaging of 1980s zeitgeist to sell to today's office warriors to comfort them in their off hours.

Butter, a bar in the South of Market neighborhood of San Francisco, is right in the middle of this trend, perhaps even a few years ahead of it (I'm not sure when they first opened, but it was at least five years ago.) Recognizing that since the "tech boom" occurred, much of the city population consists of affluent tech geeks and business majors who grew up in very similar suburban circumstances in the 1980s, they've packaged up all the familiar sights and sounds from days gone by, serving them up with fatty comfort food and alcohol for the ultimate in regression and escape from reality.

This is, obviously, a love or hate proposition. You had to grow up at least lower-middle class in the 'burbs in the 1980s in America for the full appeal; those born later might enjoy it just for the kitschiness and panache, but those born before it, born in poverty here in America, or born in a part of the world where people have their heads screwed on straighter will completely not understand what the hell the point of all this is.

Butter is the kind of place that, if you'd described it to me beforehand, and then told me there would be a $5 cover charge to get it, I'd have told you "Get the f* out of here man" and cued up a John Carpenter movie and a fattie for the evening or something. But I went blind, dragged along with a group that got in sans the cover somehow, probably because some hottish young women were involved. And thus we have a review on our hands.

The first and most important thing to know is, no matter how cute you might think it is, it's crazily expensive. Mixed drinks start at 7 bucks. Pabst is something like $5 for a can. Wasn't Pabst the ultra cheap beer once? I guess that was before hipsters started drinking gallons of it at bars due to the "irony" of it. You know, I wonder if any hipsters ever become alcoholics and get liver disease because it's the ultimate in irony. We can only hope, I guess.

The menu is complete and total junk food. I'm told the theme of the bar is supposed to be "white trash", which certainly does compute, but to me the menu read more like a 1980s public school lunch menu. Corn dogs, tater tots, Spam and Tang, amongst other things. Food is a little more reasonably priced than the drinks, but seriously, you can't get anything here that isn't greasy and heavily processed.

The ambiance is blaring 1980s music, think the Grand Theft Auto: Vice City soundtrack (minus the hip-hop) and you're pretty much on track. Lots of Steve Perry in the rotation, for sure. That's always been a litmus test for me, if you secretly like Journey, you're probably a yuppie, or at least a yuppie at heart. I'm not burdened with such afflictions, but I also know this because I find the idea of sucking down Pabst, Jello shots and fried Twinkies completely revolting.

From my visit I can declare this a total Yupwazian bar (yuppies, white and Asian, mostly the former in this case.) There were a couple of black dudes but they were very openly and flamboyantly gay.

So basically, the deal with this place is that you pay a huge premium to regress to childhood and/or pretend to be a white trash person in the 1980s. I guess if you really dig old Wrestlemanias and Jerry Springer you might have a good time watching it on the 50" plasma TVs, or if you want to do one of those hillbilly theme party type deals. Seriously, you can do all this stuff at home without spending $30-$50 though - rent some old Wrestlemanias and John Hughes movies, get some Oreida tater tots and Cheez Wiz from Safeway and fire 'em up in the oven, get some Pabst from the grocery store where it's actually inexpensive, and you've got the whole experience in a nutshell at probably less than ten bucks, and minus the ear-shattering music volume.