It’s obtained lots of what’s nice a few bar. It’s cozy and alluring (its identify, Vieni Vieni, means “come come”), small and slender, 15 or 20 barstools, no tables, so it’s simple to speak to the individuals who apparently know one another and appear completely satisfied to welcome you in. Drinks are fairly low cost — $6 to $7 for a beer, $7 to $10 for a shot or combined drink — although not fairly as low cost as they was. Extra about that later.
It doesn’t have lots of what’s dangerous a few bar. No dwell leisure to make dialog troublesome. (There is a jukebox as an alternative.) No “drink menu” record of difficult concoctions with silly names. Solely two TVs. It’s the form of place your dad took you while you have been a child in case 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 huge bottles. When dad retired in 1992, Dominique took over.
“I obtained 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 yr.” 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, mentioning 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 plenty of big 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 stuff you change and the extra stuff you add, the extra difficult it will get. And the place doesn’t essentially change into a greater place.”
So aside from lastly including a buck to the drink costs a number of weeks in the past, solely to finish up offsetting it somewhat with a $12 beer and name shot particular, and deciding to simply accept bank cards although they’ll trigger extra issues than they resolve, she has been attempting 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, you already know, I’m happy 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 value.
Driving in from greater than 40 miles away, the place she lastly needed to transfer to search out an reasonably priced place for the household to dwell, she has had good days, when “it’s wall to wall” and he or she’s capable of pay the lease and her suppliers and to make the payroll for her 5 bartenders who work a number of hours every.
“Thank God the owner has been honest and cheap,” she says, noting that others have refused to resume leases, solely too completely satisfied 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 via 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 house 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, you already know, I’m happy 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 number of tough patches the place he was between checks, out of cash for some time, and he knew he might at all times are available right here. I’m unsure that might have been the identical at lots of these newer locations. However we’d preserve observe of what he owed and he at all times saved his guarantees.”
In any case, Dominique nonetheless has no plans to show Vieni Vieni into one thing it’s not. And she or he’s nonetheless optimistic that she received’t must.
“There was a giant neighborhood pageant that wasn’t the cash maker I hoped for. And the town has a ‘legacy enterprise program’ to assist out previous locations like this, nevertheless it takes three months for them to even have a look at your software. Nonetheless, Columbus Day is coming. I’ve obtained 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 buddies. She’s hoping all that may proceed to develop.
In the meantime, she seems out the window once more, ready for the purchasers to come back.
“Once I was a child,” she remembers, “I beloved bars like this, the place the older individuals would drink. They have been those with the good tales, who’d completed all these nice issues we hoped we’d get to do sometime. We beloved these individuals and so they beloved us again and all of us took care of one another. No person in these locations was ever alone.”
