This is an old place.

It was built in 1908, when the Barbary Coast was still hellified. 1908, the year Bette Davis was born. The year of the first Model T. Four years before Woody Guthrie was born. Twenty-eight years before the Bay Bridge. This bar was standing before, during, and after Prohibition.

The Deininger family opened the saloon, and commissioned furniture makers in Belgium to design and create its ornate bar-back. They also served the city's best beer, Fredericksburg, brought to The Utah by horse and carriage and lowered into the cellar in wooden kegs.

A place with a sketchy past.

Gamblers, thieves, ladies up to no good, politicians, hustlers, friends of opium, goldseekers, godseekers, charlatans, police, fancy miscreants. They visited The Utah. And that was when South of Market was just a lonely section of the San Francisco waterfront.

After the Bay Bridge was finished in 1936, SOMA came into its own. The saloon was home to longshoreman, merchants, metalsmiths, furniture makers, people from the neighborhood, traffic flowing back and forth between San Francisco and the East Bay.

And good stories.

In the 1950s, Al Opatz presided over the saloon. Al didn’t like neckties. If someone wearing a tie got close enough, Al cut the tie off with scissors. His favorite way to greet someone was to offer them his hand and say “Shake the hand that shook the world.” His clientele were Beat Poets, gangsters, Marilyn Monroe, Joe DiMaggio, Bing Crosby, the cocktail generation. He eventually bought the bar in 1966 and renamed it Al’s Transbay Tavern. Al’s Transbay gets a mention in Coppola’s film, The Conversation.

In 1977, Paul Gaer, who wrote the screenplay for the 1979 film The Electric Horseman, bought the bar from Al. He renamed it The Utah and built a stage to support local music, experimental art, writers, comedy, and theater. Whoopi Goldberg, Robin Williams, and the Pickle Family Circus broke it in. It got a reputation — as one of the most generous stages in the city.

Stories that go on.

Hard to believe that after almost a century a place can still have the same personality. But it does. Mostly. There are a few differences, like a big TV for Giants games. Jacked-up sound. New paint.

But other than that it’s pretty much the same. And the stories keep coming. Curious fictions. With details we can’t go into. Come in sometime. Tell us your own.