This Outer Richmond bar may masquerade as a no-frills, family-run Mexican restaurant, but really, it's home to one of the best tequila selections in the country (if not the world). Tommy's is legendary, and for good reason

Spec's has been tucked into an alley next to Tosca since 1968, and you'll likely find regulars from its opening era still drinking there today. Pitchers of beer, fedora-wearing eccentrics and walls covered with curiosities and kitsch (hence the bar's museum monicker) combine to make for a bar that captures everything excellent about the San Francisco of old. Drink beer or something neat, pair it with a basket of saltines and a wedge of Edam cheese and hope that the guy in the back eyeing the piano will sit down and play some jazz.

Channel your inner Jack Kerouac at this two-level North Beach bar, where the whiskey-soaked Beat was known to hang out (and often do some writing when he could still see straight). Downstairs is raucous and often filled with a group of riffing, hopeful poets; the best spot in the house, though, is upstairs at the table by the front window. A drink and a notebook are fine companions here, though a literary-minded date will appreciate the ambiance, too.

You've had Irish Coffee before. You may have even had multiple Irish Coffees. But you haven't truly had one until you've braved Fisherman's Wharf to sit at the barstool of the place that originated the drink, Buena Vista Cafe. As you settle into this mainstay that wouldn't be out of place in Mad Men, you'll ask the bartender for one of the hundreds of Irish Coffee's he'll serve that day. And if you're lucky, he may show you a card trick on a deck that's older than you.

The Saloon bills itself as the oldest operating bar in San Francisco. Legend has it that city firefighters made a point to protect it during the post-1906 earthquake fires to keep their preferred watering hole intact (along with the working girls living upstairs). It's still as fine a place as any for some imbibery, particularly during the twice-daily live blues shows.