Part of the Gay San Francisco Guide — bars, events & things to do.
San Francisco, California
Funky Mission bar with a big patio, live music and dance nights.
El Rio is a queer-owned Mission institution on Mission Street near the Bernal border, open since 1978 and built around one of the best back patios in the city — a sprawling, plant-filled yard with old lemon trees that the city specifically safeguarded when it named El Rio a San Francisco Legacy Business. It started life as a Brazilian gay bar and has spent four-plus decades widening into a genuinely mixed, no-attitude crowd. The calendar is the draw: live music, DJs, drag, and long-running parties like Salsa Sundays (going more than 30 years) and Mango, a women-of-color daytime party that dates to the 1980s. Add famously strong margaritas and a come-as-you-are door, and it's beloved across San Francisco's LGBTQ+ communities of color and beyond. Worth the trip out to the Mission for the patio alone.
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