We learned from Grub Street that the Midnight Sun (4067 18th Street) is currently going through a remodel. Employees have been hearing about plans of a facelift for the 42-year-old bar for over a year and a half now and renovations commenced about a week ago.
Plans for the new design include moving the bathrooms from the front of the bar to the back and making them ADA compliant. This will leave the wall facing 18th street free to place glass windows in. The current bathroom area will serve as an open lounge area that patrons can watch 18th Street from. Fable Restaurant’s interior designer, Craige Walters, will be working on the updated look of the inside.
The Midnight Sun is the last gay bar in the Castro to not yet feature windows looking towards the street. Co-owner Tim Eicher said that one of the reasons it has taken the Midnight Sun so long to add windows facing 18th Street was that the projector technology they had for their jumbo screens flanking the front and the back of the bar would, in the past, not have been able to compete with the ambient light from outside. The Midnight Sun is predominantly a video bar that plays classic and new music videos, funny shorts from SNL, or funny clips from iconic movies like Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion. They even host TV show nights like RuPaul’s Drag Race on Mondays or Project Runway on Thursdays. With projector technology getting sharper and brighter, competing with the ambient light is not as much of a challenge. It’s also nothing a good set of heavy, dark shades can’t help remedy for brighter days.
Eicher said that the bar would be completed in time for Gay Pride festivities in late June with no impact to their business hours save for heavy construction that will see it closed for a day or two.
