Worries Mount Over Fate of 40-Year-Old SoMa Leather Bar the Eagle

Welcome to p.m. Intel, your midday roundup of Bay Area food and restaurant news from publications near and far. Tips are always welcome, drop them here.

• The building that houses the Eagle Tavern, a nearly 40-year-old SoMa leather bar that’s been designated a legacy business since 2017, is up for sale, Hoodline reports. A listing agent for the sellers said that “we are trying to work out with the bar tenant to see if they’re interested in possibly purchasing the building,” but refused to comment further. Typically, this time of year, SoMa LGBTQ+ bars like the Eagle and the Stud would be packed — this weekend is the Folsom Street Fair, the neighborhood’s annual celebration of leather culture. But the Stud (the city’s oldest queer bar until it lost its home this summer) is gone, and now the future of the Eagle appears to be unclear.
• One issue that restaurants can put off, until March of 2021, are evictions. As reported by the SF Chronicle, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order this week that allows local jurisdictions to keep an eviction ban in place until then — and SF quickly followed suit, with Mayor London Breed announcing that businesses would have until the end of March, 2021, to figure out their rent situations. That doesn’t mean anyone’s operating for free, of course: unless restaurants make a deal with their landlord, all of their unpaid rent will be due as of April 1, 2021, and no, that’s not an April Fools prank.
• For the cost of transporting a decommissioned, 1970s-era, 22-ton train car ($8,000-$10,000, ballpark), anyone can have a piece of BART, but you don’t have to buy the whole thing: BART special projects manager Brian Tsukamoto tells the Chron “If you want to do a restaurant with booth seating with BART seats, we’re going to help you do that.”
• Hoodline has the weird and wild tale of the problems faced by Don Ramon’s, a 38-year-old, family-owned SoMa Mexican spot known as a watering hole for City Hall power players. It’s a strange, scofflaw tenant that’s put the restaurant at risk, an issue compounded by the pandemic that’s left its owners millions of dollars in debt.
• Brenda’s French Soul Food founder Brenda Buenviaje recently faced social media scorn from folks who accused her of “pretending to be Black,” the Chron reports. Buenviaje doesn’t understand how that complaint came about, as she’s “the child of a Filipino-Creole mother of French and Italian ancestry, and a Filipino father” and hasn’t hidden that fact, saying “I’ve talked about my identity before, and even on my YouTube page and on my website, you can see pictures of me. I wish I could clear this up.”
• Miyoko Schinner, the founder of Bay Area faux-cheese company Miyoko’s Creamery, has joined an effort to transport rescued dogs from Korea to the U.S. She recently flew from Seoul to SF with a pup named Koru, who was adopted by a Portland couple upon their arrival. [Veg News]
• People are calling in false health order violation complaints about some restaurants in Santa Clara County. [KPIX]