Mother, San Francisco

About Mother

Mother is a women- and femme-centered queer bar in the Mission at 16th Street, opened in February 2023 by Malia Spanyol, who also runs Thee Parkside. Its motto, "dyke of center, all queers welcome," sets the tone: Spanyol opened it after watching how many of San Francisco's lesbian and women's bars had vanished, from the Artemis Society to the Lexington Club, the Mission's last lesbian bar, which closed in 2015. The room carries history too, occupying the former home of Esta Noche, the city's legendary Latino drag bar. Bon Appetit named Mother one of the best new bars in the U.S. in its first year. Inside it's small, purple-lit and unpretentious, with cheap drinks, no cover, and a calendar that leans on drag, DJ nights and dance parties built around the people who haven't always had a room of their own. It isn't a slick nightclub and doesn't try to be; the draw is that it's a neighborhood bar where queer women and trans and nonbinary folks are the center of the night rather than an afterthought. Worth crossing town for if a femme-forward, community-rooted space is what you're after.