After All That, Here’s How Club Deluxe Managed to Stay Open in the End

If news surrounding Upper Haight’s Club Deluxe feels like whiplash, it’s not just you. At the beginning of the month the 33-year-old destination for live music and cheap drinks told fans out of the blue it would shut down, but on August 23 it was announced the club’s owners and property owners brokered a deal. SFGATE reports District 5 Supervisor Dean Preston helped guide a six-hour mediation at City Hall.

Apparently, the peace was struck off of an ordinance passed in 2021 that allows small business owners financial sanctuary from debts accrued during the pandemic. A group of property owners challenged the law, but a judge upheld the ordinance in April 2022. Preston further nominated Club Deluxe for the city’s Legacy Business Registry. “Long live Club Deluxe,” Preston told SFGATE.

Divisadero fire temporarily closes two restaurants

On August 23 a three-alarm apartment fire broke out at Divisadero and McAllister streets, and the San Francisco Fire Department reports up to 100 firefighters battled the blaze at one point. Oasis Cafe and Kava Lounge, a beloved Western Addition restaurant and cafe, are closed due to the fire’s impacts, Hoodline reports.

This Stinson Beach abandoned cafe is not actually abandoned

Despite influencers and wedding photographers swamping up the place, beachside restaurant the Siren Canteen in Marin County is not without ownership. SFGATE writes Iman Bengana, co-owner alongside her mother Mary Margaret Stewart, is disappointed so many flock to the to-be-demolished building she loves so much. The owners already have a lease with the National Park Service for the Siren Canteen’s future building, to be built in the next few years.

Napa-based wine startup lays off staff and looks to sell

For Pix, a wine tech company with aspirations to break down wine’s at-times confusing nomenclature through discovery tools, the final grapes have apparently been harvested. The San Francisco Chronicle writes CEO Paul Mabray laid off the majority of the 20-person staff and hopes someone may buy the company after an unsuccessful third round of funding. “I think the wine industry has a stain against it in the VC community,” Mabray told the Chronicle.

Oakland-based wine startup looks to bridge industry’s racial gap

For another wine company, though, things look brighter. The Sip, a discovery-based business aimed at sparkling wine and champagne specifically, is owned by best friends Erica Davis and Catherine Carter. The duo want to make wine more accessible for women of color — the Marin Independent Journal reports less than 1 percent of wine brands are Black-owned.