Tech-Favorite Coffee Shop the Creamery Gets Approval to Open on Mission, Despite Opposition

Welcome to p.m. Intel, your bite-sized roundup of Bay Area food and restaurant news. Tips are always welcome, drop them here.

• Despite opposition from neighborhood advocacy groups, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously approved plans for former SoMa coffee shop the Creamery to reopen in the Mission. The Board voted Tuesday on the Creamery’s plans to open in a never-before occupied space on the ground floor of a new building at 1801 Mission Street, despite arguments that the proposal violated a 1970 California neighborhood law — the stretch of Mission that the Creamery will be located on is part of the American Indian Cultural District, designated in 2019 to help prevent and counteract displacement, as well as help preserve a neighborhood’s heritage. The Creamery, founded in 2008 by Ivor Bradley, was known as a tech entrepreneur hangout that helped nurture the tech boom of the 2010s, before the coffee shop shuttered in August 2020. [SF Business Times]
• KQED reviews Uncle Tito, a new restaurant in SoMa’s Filipino cultural district serving creative twists on traditional, homestyle Filipino dishes in an art-centric space designed with the Filipino-American community in mind. Joseph Alcasabas, Paolo Dayao, and Vincent Dayao recently opened Uncle Tito at 59 9th Street for takeout, with onsite dining set to debut on Tuesday, June 15. Alcasabas and Paolo Dayao started out bartending throughout the Bay Area before teaming up on a catering company, and they later joined forces with Paolo’s brother, Vince, a former sous chef at Namu Gaji, in order to open Uncle Tito. [KQED]
• After a seven-month closure, SoMa drag venue and nightclub Oasis is returning with a grand reopening party on June 26, the Saturday of SF Pride weekend, followed by an all-day rooftop party Sunday. As the only remaining dedicated drag venue in SoMa, and the only queer cabaret/nightclub of its kind in the city, it’s a significant return, according to SFist. It’s due in large part to the creativity of owner D’Arcy Drollinger during the pandemic, who received national coverage for Oasis’s Meals on Heels drag food delivery service and held a successful 12-hour telethon to keep it afloat. Follow Oasis on Facebook or Twitter for presale ticket information. [SFist]
• San Francisco strip clubs, which are almost exclusively owned or managed by Los Angeles–based company BSC Management, will reopen with no restrictions next Friday, June 18, according to SFGate. While a few clubs have reopened in recent months, including Crazy Horse (the only club under different ownership), all ten of BSC’s clubs (the historic Condor Club in North Beach, as well as the Gold Club and Larry Flynt’s Hustler Club) will reopen without a mask requirement for patrons or performers. [SFGate]
• San Francisco is close to reaching herd immunity from COVID-19, a group of UCSF epidemiologists told ABC7 this week, with 79 percent of eligible San Franciscans having received at least one dose of the vaccine and 68 percent fully vaccinated. The city is on track to reach herd immunity in about three weeks, the epidemiologists say, which would make San Francisco the first California city to do so, and possibly the first major U.S. city to achieve herd immunity. [ABC 7]