Camper English's Blog, page 2
June 11, 2025
The Valley Club is Now Soft Open in the Former Benjamin Cooper Space
As of last night, The Valley Club [website][instagram] is soft opened. I do not know the hours going forward, nor if they’ll be taking reservations. It is located upstairs from Corzetti in the Hotel G on Mason Street, right around the corner from the temporary entrance to the St. Francis (or, if you must, the new Nintendo store). It is the former Benjamin Cooper space.
The bar is from Mitch Lagneaux, who has worked at several bars including Brass Tacks previously. This is his first ownership.
The space has been transformed into a sexy sexy lounge with lots of mirrors that feels like peak 1980s glamour without being retro. The menu seals that deal: it looks like a high-gloss fashion magazine. One page has a loveline advertising their Chocolate-Raspberry Negroni. The page for the Nightvision (peach moscato, gin, shiso, absinthe, and lemon) - which is EXTREMELY MY JAM- has silvery cassette tape.
The “side quests” are batched shooters to make things quick and easy, and there are a generous three NA drinks on the menu.
My pictures are lousy but here they are:
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And here is the menu:
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June 10, 2025
The Next Future Bars Venue in SF’s North Beach Will Change Every 9 Months
This venue has been in the works for a while - years I think. But I just saw some public info about it.
Future Bars (Bourbon & Branch, Pagan Idol, Rickhouse, Bottle Club Pub, Local Edition, Zombie Village, Cask Stores, etc) is opening a venue with concepts that will regularly rotate, on the corner of Columbus and Broadway. The first iteration of the concept will be Cuban.
I believe the venue is this one, adjacent to The Devil’s Acre, right on the corner. (Future bars looooooves adjacent concepts.) It’s the former E’ Tutto Qua cafe and a bank building.
They say:
Each iteration is intended to run for 9 months, and while the first iteration will see it presented as "Long Weekend Havana", future iterations could be Long Weekend Paris, Long Weekend Mexico City, Long Weekend Milan, etc. The 9-month run will be a limited engagement, with the constant change of experience being the appeal of something new on the horizon at all times.
With the Long Weekend Havana, the intention of the bar is to offer an experience of a visit to Cuba. Our guests will get to delve into the Cuban culture of enjoying cocktails, music, art and storytelling with people from all walks of life.
Bar Layout
We've converted the beautiful 1923 Italian-American bank building into a bar with three levels. On the street level is the Main Bar and art gallery, with two mezzanine areas on the second level. The main bar will offer a fun, traditional Cuban bar experience. Underneath the main bar is the original bank vault, which will offer a smaller bar called “La Bóveda”, with a modern take on the current Havana underground nightlife experience.
Sounds dope. I’ll go.
Not sure when though - I am unaware of the opening date.
June 4, 2025
Great Courses, Great Voyages, and History for Fun
A thing I do for edu-tainment is watch the Great Courses series on various (mostly historical) subjects. It’s like going to college forever, which is what I would do if I could afford it.
[image error]You remember the Great Courses, of course! They were advertised in SkyMall. If I remember correctly they were first advertised on videocassette, then later on DVD, and now on streaming.
The courses are college-level studies taught by university professors on a range of topics, but I mostly watch the history ones. The courses are mostly 24 half-hour long lectures, but some are 36 or even 48 lectures like the one on Western Civilization I watched during the pandemic.
If you buy them they’re pretty expensive but you can watch many of them for free via your library. Via the San Francisco Public Library I can watch them for free via Hoopla or Kanopy.
[image error]I’ve now watched at least 22 series, which is a lot of hours. The first one I ever watched - and one of the best - is "The Black Death: The World's Most Devastating Plague.”
Last weekend I watched another one I thought was pretty great: "History's Greatest Voyages of Exploration.” It includes not only the typical ones - Magellan, Vasco da Gama, etc. but some lesser-known ones by women. It also includes stories of some of the non-Europeans who accompanied the famous explorers, like an enslaved person who was actually the first person to circumnavigate the globe (because he was from a more eastern country than the captain he was traveling with).
Anyway, just wanted to put in another plug for watching these. They’re what I do on days I’m cleaning my apartment, meal prep, busy work, etc. I feel like a smarter person for it.
June 3, 2025
50 Year Time Capsule from the Transamerica Pyramid
There’s a new exhibit at the Transamerica Pyramid from a time capsule buried 50 years ago. I checked it out.
The building was completed in 1972- the time capsule is from 1974. Before that, from 1853-1959, it was the Montgomery Block that hosted the Bank Exchange Saloon. The Bank Exchange was the home of the Pisco Punch, the most famous cocktail in SF from roughly 1870-1920. Duncan Nicol, mentioned in the pictures, was the proprietor of the Bank Exchange in its later decades, and the person who popularized the Pisco Punch. He took his secret recipe to his grave.
I’ve left these images purposefully crappy to encourage you to go see it yourself!
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May 31, 2025
June, July, and August New Drink Book Releases 2025
For all new drink books released in 2025, see this post!
June, July, and August New Drink Book Releases 2025
Behind the Home Bar: The Essential Guide to Making Cocktails
Amazon
Bookshop
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Spooky Cocktails: 100+ Spirited and Wickedly Delicious Drinks
Amazon
Bookshop
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Totally '80s Cocktails
Amazon
Bookshop
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The Cocktail Bar: Perfectly mixed drinks from London's iconic hotel bars
Amazon
Bookshop
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The Eras Pour: The Unofficial, Ultimate Taylor Swift Cocktail Book
Amazon
Bookshop
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The Obituary Cocktail
Amazon
Bookshop
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The Ramos Gin Fizz
Amazon
Bookshop
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Be a Beverage Expert: A Guide to Understanding Wine, Beer, Spirits, and Cocktails
Amazon
Bookshop
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Note that these are all affiliate links.
May 27, 2025
Bottled Water Went Viral 125 Years Ago
My latest piece for Food & Wine is "How a Bottled Water Goes Social Media Viral and the Real Differences Between Them"
May 23, 2025
May 17, 2025
Why the Shape and Size of Ice in Your Drink Matters
My latest story for Food & Wine is "Why the Shape and Size of Ice in Your Drink Matters."
May 8, 2025
All of the Olives' Brine Time to Shine
My latest story for the San Francisco Chronicle is about all the ways bartenders are liquifying olives in their Martinis - in the vermouth, gin, vodka, brine, leaf tinctures, oil-washing everything, and even an “olive turducken.”
Here’s a gift link so you can read it.
May 7, 2025
And Put It In a Man Glass!
Bartenders joke about male customers who ask for their cocktails to be served in a “man glass” - an Old Fashioned rocks glass rather than in a cocktail glass on a stem, fearful that the Martini glass will make them look gay.
I am reading the preview of the forthcoming The Comic Book History of the Cocktail: Five Centuries of Mixing Drinks and Carrying On [amazon][bookshop] by the great David Wondrich, and it reminded me that this sentiment is nothing new.
The original cocktail (circa 1800) became known as the Old Fashioned cocktail (circa 1880) due to customers who asked for their drink not to be a fancified modern version with all the flavorful liqueurs like Chartreuse, maraschino, and Curacao mixed in. They didn’t want any new fangled, feminized flavors!
Wondrich includes that story in a panel in his forthcoming book, with the customer requesting the drink be made with “none of that other garbage” and “not in one of those namby-pamby little cocktail glasses.”
It’s funny (in a bad way) that toxic masculinity was a part of bar culture even in the days when women weren’t allowed in most bars.
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Wondrich’s book comes out in September and it’s a must-read.
