It’s received numerous what’s nice a couple of bar. It’s cozy and welcoming (its title, Vieni Vieni, means “come come”), small and slender, 15 or 20 barstools, no tables, so it’s straightforward to speak to the individuals who apparently know one another and appear pleased to welcome you in. Drinks are fairly low-cost — $6 to $7 for a beer, $7 to $10 for a shot or blended drink — although not fairly as low-cost as they was. Extra about that later.
It doesn’t have numerous what’s dangerous a couple of bar. No dwell leisure to make dialog troublesome. (There is a jukebox as a substitute.) No “drink menu” listing of difficult concoctions with silly names. Solely two TVs. It’s the sort of place your dad took you if you have been a child in the event you have been fortunate.
Dominique Buoni — behind the bar — and her sister Donna.
Dominique Buoni was luckier than most. Her father not solely took her to Vieni Vieni, in what was the Italian part of San Francisco. He owned the place, having purchased it in 1965 from one other Italian man who had run it as a beatnik bar, promoting wine out of massive bottles. When dad retired in 1992, Dominique took over.
“I received it as a result of I used to be the oldest of us eight youngsters,” says Dominique, now 54. “I used to be going to run it with my oldest brother, however he died in a motorbike accident, that very same 12 months.” For a very long time Dominique earned a residing for herself and her two youngsters. However then two issues occurred.
One was Covid, from which the enterprise and the North Seashore neighborhood — linked for thus lengthy — nonetheless haven’t recovered. “Look,” says Dominique, declaring the window to the nook of Stockton and Columbus. “The foot visitors hasn’t come again.” However the second factor was worse.
San Francisco was taken over by a brand new technology, individuals who really need drink menus, and dwell leisure and many enormous TVs. Additionally they took over the flats, driving out many neighborhood bar denizens.
A few of these bars began taking up the trimmings new prospects wished and changing the previous bartenders. However Dominique discovered “the extra belongings you change and the extra belongings you add, the extra difficult it will get. And the place doesn’t essentially turn into a greater place.”
So apart from lastly including a buck to the drink costs a couple of weeks in the past, solely to finish up offsetting it a bit of with a $12 beer and name shot particular, and deciding to simply accept bank cards though they’ll trigger extra issues than they clear up, she has been making an attempt to carry regular, true to her dad’s beliefs.
“They name this place a dive bar now. And for a very long time that damage my emotions. However, , I’m pleased with that now as a result of a dive bar, to lots of people, has come to imply a spot the place they are often themselves and really feel wished and know they’ll be taken care of. Now after they name this a dive bar, I embrace it.”
Dominque Buoni, proprietor, Vieni Vieni
She’s paying the worth.
Driving in from greater than 40 miles away, the place she lastly needed to transfer to seek out an reasonably priced place for the household to dwell, she has had good days, when “it’s wall to wall” and she or he’s capable of pay the hire and her suppliers and to make the payroll for her 5 bartenders who work a couple of hours every.
“Thank God the owner has been honest and cheap,” she says, noting that others have refused to resume leases, solely too pleased to see their properties redecorated and reworked.
However there have been days when, after final name, there’s been $45 within the register, and the underside line, Dominique says, is that “I am going by my inheritance and my financial savings.”
On a current Thursday afternoon at 5, she had three prospects. Across the nook, a spot with younger bartenders and “craft cocktails” was packed. In the meantime, a headline within the San Francisco Chronicle was saying — as if it was excellent news — {that a} close by “100-year-old dive bar area is reopening with a snazzy new cocktail bar” (providing a $13 quantity made with rhum agricole, bitter lime, condensed milk and “a little bit of pie crust”).
“They name this place a dive bar now,” she says. “And for a very long time that damage my emotions. However, , I’m pleased with that now as a result of a dive bar, to lots of people, has come to imply a spot the place they are often themselves and really feel wished and know they’ll be taken care of. Now after they name this a dive bar, I embrace it.”
She recalled a longtime common, a retired museum employees member, who just lately died, alone, in his 80s. “He’d hit a couple of tough patches the place he was between checks, out of cash for some time, and he knew he might all the time are available in right here. I’m undecided that will have been the identical at numerous these newer locations. However we’d hold observe of what he owed and he all the time stored his guarantees.”
In any case, Dominique nonetheless has no plans to show Vieni Vieni into one thing it’s not. And he or she’s nonetheless optimistic that she gained’t must.
“There was a giant neighborhood competition that wasn’t the cash maker I hoped for. And town has a ‘legacy enterprise program’ to assist out previous locations like this, nevertheless it takes three months for them to even take a look at your software. Nonetheless, Columbus Day is coming. I’ve received excessive hopes hanging on that.”
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She’s additionally having fun with good word-of-mouth from bartenders and waiters within the space who, now not all that snug at their very own locations of employment, have been coming in and recommending Vieni Vieni to their associates. She’s hoping all that may proceed to develop.
In the meantime, she seems to be out the window once more, ready for the shoppers to come back.
“Once I was a child,” she remembers, “I cherished bars like this, the place the older individuals would drink. They have been those with the nice tales, who’d carried out all these nice issues we hoped we’d get to do sometime. We cherished these individuals and so they cherished us again and all of us took care of one another. No person in these locations was ever alone.”
