Bissap Baobab Reopens Oakland Location After SF Closure

After selling and closing Senegalese restaurant and dance club Bissap Baobab in San Francisco, business owner Marco Senghor has reopened the club’s Oakland location at 381 15th Street. That offshoot, which closed in summer 2018, is back up and running today and through this weekend with late night events “to feel back the space,” says Senghor, “and warm it up for a long run, I hope.” Lunch is back on the table next week.

“We have been missing Oakland, and now since we have only Little Baobab in SF, we decided to reopen Oakland for the benefit of our East Bay community.”

Little Baobab, the smaller SF restaurant space at 3386 19th (out of which the larger Bissap Baobab grew), remains open for peanut stew, drinks, and dancing, keeping later hours to accommodate more diners and dancers. But Senghor sold the larger SF Bissap Baobab’s location — whose property he’d finally purchased a few years prior — to pay for legal fees: This spring, he plead guilty to making false claims in his citizenship application.

At the final dance party for SF’s Bissap Baobab, a line of 850 people gathered, according to Senghor. “Every one wanted to give respect to a legacy community establishment... Every one was sad.”

Now, with some of the old SF DJ nights and events moved to Oakland, there’s something for Senghor and fans to be happy about.