Here's an entry from the book
San Francisco's Best Dive Bars, about LaRocca's Corner Tavern.
LaRocca’s Corner
A small, pie-shaped slice of drinking bliss in one of the more heavily guide-booked parts of the city, LaRocca’s bills itself as the bar “Where Tourists Meet the Locals.” While I’ve never met any tourists here, the locals are quite a presence. Steadily inhabited by a coterie of hard-drinking, loud-laughing, dice-smacking fellas, LaRocca’s is a placw where the shit-talk flies, sports banter rarely stops, and women are sometimes as sparse as North Beach parking spots.
With cable cars rattling just outside the enormous windows and lots of framed, local black and whites slapped on the wall, the place can seem, well, a little too San Francisco-themed for those who prefer drab environs in which to sink into a stupor. But the astute observer will notice a few choice gems of the city’s finest moments on the walls: neighborhood son Joe DiMaggio on his Yankees stripes (hiss…), the Niners crushing the Bengals in Super Bowl 16, and a signed poster of gun-toting heiress Patty Hearst as Tania, SLA warrior. Local lore has it that LaRocca’s was a mafia hangout in one of its past lives, but I’m wondering why they’d pick a place with so many windows.
If you’re hoping to save a few bucks, order a drink special (the $5 Pabst-Smir comes to mind – a PBR draft and “cosmo shot” of Smirnoff, whatever that is). Otherwise the drinks are steeper than your average dive – drafts are $4, name drinks $5. With Bimbo’s just a few doors down, the place can get a bit crowded with hipsters aiming to pre-lubricate before the show.
While the drinks are overpriced and the regulars a tough crowd to break in with, there’s still something charming about LaRocca’s. It might just be that it’s one of those places where you get a glimpse at a part of the city most people never see. Or it could be that the Mexican place next door will deliver your nachos to your barstool. Either way, LaRocca’s neon motto, “This is it!” somehow rings true, whatever that is.
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