Ginger’s Trois wasn’t exactly seedy, but it certainly wasn’t hip, either.
Not gay bars lodged within neighborhoods of gay residents, but scattered instead among office buildings and professional life. Not the Tenderloin, not the Castro, not even the Mission. These, like Ginger’s, were Financial District gay bars.
It belonged to a genre of gay bar that Michael Flanagan, who chronicles such histories for the Bay Area Reporter, classifies as the “businessman’s bar.” He cites Trinity Place, Belden 22 and Wilde Oscar’s - creatures of the 1970s and ’80s - and the longer-lived Sutter’s Mill. The reign of Ginger’s Trois was long and legendary. It was out with the slumpy gay bar in with the artisan whiskey bar. They kept Ginger’s Trois alive for a few months, then closed, revamped and reopened as Rickhouse. That’s when Future Bars (the group behind Bourbon & Branch, Pagan Idol, Tradition, et al) took over the bar. Ginger’s previous iteration, called Ginger’s Trois, inhabited that Kearny-facing space until 2009. Literally: The bar’s entrance, now tucked into diminutive Hardie Place, used to be around the corner on Kearny Street, where Rickhouse now is. Ginger’s has been around the block before.
Leah Millis/The Chronicle Show More Show Less Leah Millis/The Chronicle Show More Show Less 7 of7 General Manager Michael Sedlacek pours a drink at Ginger's in the Financial District Augin San Francisco, Calif. Leah Millis/The Chronicle Show More Show Less 6 of7 Ghost of Ginger's pictured at Ginger's in the Financial District Augin San Francisco, Calif. Leah Millis/The Chronicle Show More Show Less 5 of7 Esta Noche pictured at Ginger's in the Financial District Augin San Francisco, Calif. Leah Millis/The Chronicle Show More Show Less 4 of7 A "bar" sign is seen outside of Ginger's in the Financial District Augin San Francisco, Calif. Leah Millis/The Chronicle Show More Show Less 3 of7 A classic sign can be seen while walking into Ginger's in the Financial District Augin San Francisco, Calif. Leah Millis/The Chronicle Show More Show Less 2 of7 General Manager Michael Sedlacek pictured outside of Ginger's in the Financial District Augin San Francisco, Calif.