Hi Times
A Vintage Cocktail Sanctuary on Polk

The comeback.

It’s a thing to behold.

When you’ve just about given up hope, slowly, surely, the tides turn.

Losers become winners. The downtrodden become uptrodden. Missing out on the Facebook IPO turns out to be the best financial decision of your entire lifetime.

Also: bars come back to life...

Meet Hi Lo Club, a smart new dive bar from the Koko Cocktails crew, now soft-open in Polk Gulch.

You remember the Koko Cocktails guys. They served you smart cocktails at their low-key spot on Geary for years. Well, after being pushed out of their digs last summer, they up and took their game to Polk Street.

Which means this long, narrow watering hole may feel familiar—specifically, the old bar rail, taken from the original Koko’s. The whole thing has the feel of an old apothecary, like an old-timey Woolworth’s. Booths crafted out of cable-car benches. Formica tabletops. An antique tin ceiling from a building in New York.

You’ll come here after work for a bourbon-spiked Buster Brown, or to wind down after a long night out with a Modelo Fully Loaded (a can of Modelo rimmed in salt and cayenne pepper, with a twist of lime). Also, we should mention there’s a gin/fernet number called the Hanky Panky.

Hey, inspiration comes wherever you find it.