What actually kept Bruno's shut for six years?
Bruno's closed its doors in March 2020, days into the pandemic lockdown, after more than 60 years on the same stretch of Mission Street near 20th. The storefront sat boarded up and tagged with graffiti for the better part of four years, a visible scar on a corridor that lost a string of bars and restaurants over the same stretch. The holdup wasn't just COVID. The club's original license was a Type 48 restaurant license, and San Francisco's restricted-use districts made it nearly impossible to get a straightforward new liquor license once that one lapsed.
How did a 2022 state law get it open again?
The fix came from Sacramento, not City Hall. California's Senate Bill 793, passed in 2022, created a Type 90 Music Venue License, built for exactly this kind of room: a bar can pour alcohol without running a full commercial kitchen, as long as service is tied to a live performance window, two hours before a show through one hour after. San Francisco's Board of Supervisors backed the push in February 2024, when then-District 9 Supervisor Hillary Ronen sponsored a resolution recommending the state issue Bruno's a new license under the category. New owner Noelle Calixto, who also runs the Owl Tree, Chief Sullivan's and Campus around the city, took over the space and General Manager Travis Blain has been running point on the relaunch.
"I'm excited. I can't wait. I think the neighborhood wants this place going again," Blain told Mission Local.
What happens this weekend?
Soft-open test events started September 12 with DJ REZA and DJ Ibarra behind the decks, and Bruno's has run weekend nights through the rest of September to work out the room before a full launch. A grand opening is targeted for the first weekend of October, essentially now. Blain says the plan is a door policy built around welcoming regulars in rather than the velvet-rope posture a lot of nightclubs default to, on a block that's watched a long stretch of storefronts turn over since 2020.
