NIGHTCLUBS: Banjos on the Bay

Although some San Franciscans are so set in their ways that they still play dominoes, San Francisco claims to have nurtured more contemporary trends than any other U.S. city. The Bach-toned jazz of Dave Brubeck first took flight there about a decade ago. The mordant political satire of Comedian Mort Sahl found its first audience 6½ years ago at San Francisco’s hungry i. And the beats were nowhere until they settled down in San Francisco pads.

Now it is “banjo bars.” The movement began two years ago in a lipstick-colored room called the Red Garter. This year the sound of strumming has spread throughout the Bay Area (one banjo bar has already opened in Los Angeles, and no other U.S. city can feel absolutely safe). Despite names like the Honey Bucket and the Purple Girdle, Greater San Francisco’s six banjo bars are respectable, all-beer niteries with red-checked tablecloths. Says one waiter: “We’ll match college degrees with any bar in town.”

The bandstand may support a ricky-tick piano, a musical saw, or a tuba—but it is the multiple banjos that reign. The crowds, like the proprietors, are mainly collegiate, and they sing along enthusiastically while the banjos plunk out the immemorially cubic rhythms of Hold That Tiger! or Sweet Georgia Brown. The whole wholesome atmosphere is enough to make the massed inhabitants of the beatnik colony at Sausalito slouch toward the sea like lemmings.