Jay Barmann

With anxieties rising about the Delta variant and the current surge of COVID cases, more SF bars and restaurants are going to start carding — looking for your vaccine card along with your ID.

Most of the Bay Area is masking back up, at least in some situations, and tensions are high as COVID cases and hospitalizations tick up. But things continue to reopen, and events are still happening.

We have news of a taker for the prominent corner space that was briefly home to AL's Deli (598 Guerrero St.), and beloved doughnut spot The Jelly Donut at 24th and South Van Ness is finally back alive.

A new wine bar with dance bar aspirations is coming to the former Thieves Tavern space at 496 14th Street (at Guerrero), and it's called Bar Part Time.

SF's music venues are finally popping back alive, and the beloved Divisadero spot The Independent makes its resurrection official on Friday, July 9 with a show by Bay Area soul, psych-rock, and R&B band Con Brio. 

As businesses in Mid-Market and SoMa slowly come back to life, the Namu Gaji/Namu Stonepot/Sunset Squares team of Dennis Lee, David Lee, and Daniel Lee are opening up SSP Beer Hall (59 9th Street). Also, there's a Sunset Squares Slice Shop opening on Divisadero, in the former Namu Stonepot space.

Starting next week, San Franciscans don't have to go to Cow Hollow to get your Shake Shack fix. The chain is opening its second San Francisco location in the heart of downtown, at the Westfield San Francisco Centre mall (845 Market St.), just a hop and a skip from the Powell Street BART station.

SF's kitschiest Tiki bar experience, The Tonga Room at the Fairmont Hotel (950 Mason Street), will be welcoming guests and people who just want to Instagram the rainstorms starting July 9.

As (some of) the masks come off, here's some news this week about more things reopening in SF and elsewhere around the Bay.

The Stinking Rose (325 Columbus Ave.), which opened in 1991 in North Beach and maintains a loyal clientele of tourists and garlic-loving locals, has been closed throughout the pandemic. And now we learn that it won't reopen unless a new owner steps in and wants to keep the concept going, with the original owners deciding to retire.

Namu Stonepot (553 Divisadero) is no longer serving its loco moco bowls and stonepot rice from the Divisadero space where it's lived since 2017, but the menu is still being served at Dolores and 18th, and will be appearing at a new food-hall concept the team is opening soon on 9th Street.

Osito, a much-delayed restaurant with a celebratory, communal tasting-menu concept centered around live-fire cooking of meat and fish, is finally taking shape and aiming for a fall opening at 2875 18th Street (at Florida).

We all knew that the Stacks space (501 Hayes St.) at the corner of Octavia and Hayes likely wouldn't stay empty for long, and as the pandemic wanes we learn that the owners of Cow Hollow's The Brixton (2140 Union St.) are set to open a new location — their third — there in the coming months.

The 92-year-old private social club on Lake Merritt, the Bellevue Club (525 Bellevue Ave.), is being sold to San Francisco-based club The Battery, for an East Bay expansion. 

A mass shooting on Wednesday morning at the Valley Transit Authority (VTA) light rail yard (101 W. Younger Ave.) in downtown San Jose has claimed the lives of at least eight people, likely all VTA workers, and the shooter also reportedly took his own life at the scene.

The Hayes Valley/Mid-Market environs are about to get a new and unique sounding restaurant/wine bar called Le Fantastique, from the team behind Bird Dog in downtown Palo Alto.

Another mountain lion has made it into the urban wilds of San Francisco, and it was spotted in Bernal Heights on Tuesday morning.

At long last, the Mission District's beloved indie movie house, The Roxie Theater (3117 16th St.), has a reopening date and a reopening movie: 'Cinema Paradiso' (1988).

After nearly two years of being totally dark, the 102-year-old Tosca Cafe (242 Columbus Ave.) is opening its doors again this week, having undergone its second light remodel and refurbishing in the last decade.

Bistro Central Parc, the popular French bistro at 560 Central Avenue in the NoPa neighborhood that closed in December 2019, will be reopening under new ownership but under the same name in June.

While many bars across the city have spent money on heat lamps and outdoor patio platforms, and partnered with nearby food businesses in order to abide by public health orders that drinking can only be done with a "bona fide meal" in front of you, the last of those rules for bars goes away starting on Thursday, May 6.

It's been a long 14 months of total closure for a pair of acclaimed neighborhood restaurants, Octavia and Frances, both of which were opened by chef Melissa Perello in the last decade. And she says that the team is taking the task of reopening them one step at a time, with Octavia happening first.

Get your ten-layer Russian honey cake while you can. After eight years on Gough Street, pastry chef Michelle Polzine's ode to the cafe culture of Vienna and Prague, 20th Century Cafe, is calling it quits.

Historic, beloved North Beach dive bar Specs turns 53 years old this week, and after nearly 14 months of being dark, the bar and museum of curios is planning to light up again next month and start slinging its cheap drinks outdoors.

A spate of high-profile closures at San Francisco's once-thriving Ferry Building is being followed by some more positive news, as four new businesses announce openings at the iconic shopping and dining complex.