tobygo.com (Where the Boys Are!)

The search for the hottest bar to hangout is of ultimate importance to us all. We all want a place where we can chill out, listen to great music, and of course, enjoying that delicious strong Vodka Cran with our friends. A bar that has quickly grown in popularity for bringing such ambiance is the bar Lookout on the corner of 16th St. and Market St. and I had the pleasure of talking to Chris Hastings, the proud owner, and asked a few questions about the bar and upcoming parties:

JR: First of all, I'd like you to tell me, what is the concept of the Lookout? How is the crowd's reaction?

CH: I think of it as an upscale neighborhood bar with the neighborhood being the Castro, a welcoming place to all different types of people that might be in this neighborhood. We have a lot of support from the community; we continue to get busier and busier at different times. From what I can tell it seems to be really well received. I'm really happy with the way things are going.

JR: Tell me about your background, where do you come from? Where else have you worked?

CH: I was born in the east bay, grew up there and in Chicago. I went to school in Berkeley and I've lived most of my life in Northern California. This is the second time I've lived in San Francisco; the first time for about a year, and for about 5 years this time. It was right about when I moved to San Francisco that I decided to open something. In the city I've only worked in restaurants such as Catch, Metropolitan Lounge, and Teatro ZinZanni.

JR: Why did you name the place the Lookout?

CH: We had a contest to name the bar when I first opened. People submitted names and I narrowed it down to 5 names that I thought were good then the people voted on those and the Lookout was the winner and if you can see from all of our windows it fits well.

JR: What is the atmosphere you want to achieve with the bar every night?

CH: I want it to be an inviting, fun, unpretentious place where people can come and be themselves and have a good time.

JR: Are there plans to open up a dance floor?

CH: Without a dance floor for now.

JR: What about plans to remodel the place?

CH: There are definitely plans to remodel. I just bought all new furniture for the restaurant [Thick and Thin Pizza], which converts to a lounge at night. We've started to open up that side as a more casual and intimate area. Ideally I would love to be able to open up a public area on the roof but that's a little further down the road.

JR: The Lookout just celebrated their 1st year anniversary back in September, how was the first year? How was the transition from the Metro to the Lookout?

CH: The transition has been great; it's been really an incredible year. I only found out I was going to get the bar six weeks before I got the keys so in that short time I got everything together; hired a full staff, trained them, did all the cleaning and opened back up. The first few months that we were open were to learn a little more about this business and see how it worked. After that first 3 month period I started making some changes and people responded and its been getting busier and busier since.

JR: Now tell me about Thick and Thin Pizza, the restaurant inside the bar

CH: Thick and Thin Pizza fits in well with the space and with the idea of a bar to have a pizza restaurant and I thought that we could do it a little better than the other pizza places in the neighborhood. We have a better quality food, we use natural ingredients, the dough takes us 3 days to make due to its rustic style, kind of artesian process to make, and the deep dish is a Chicago style pizza which only a few places in the city do. I thought pizza works well because there aren't a lot of other places that have sit down pizza restaurants in the neighborhood and it's also good bar food and its something you can serve later at night and people would eat.

JR: What are some of your favorite events at the Lookout? From what I remember the bar only used to host a few parties, now it seems like there's one every night of the week.

CH: We have events Tuesday through Sunday and out of all the events we've done I would say Jock is my favorite but I like each of them individually for different reasons. Some of the most recent ones we've started are WigOut which is a very interactive and engaged drag show we do every other Wednesday, on Tuesday night we throw a party called Double Vision were all the well drinks are 2-4-1 and also on Tuesday night we offer all you can eat pizza for $7.95. We are about to launch a party this Sunday [November 9, 2008] called Gloss, I'm working with Gloss Magazine to throw it and it'll go into the time slot where Jock was, we decided Jock is going to the off season and we are going to take it away for about 3 months during the winter and then it'll come back. Gloss is a Sunday afternoon party. We are dressing it up a little bit, there's not going to be athletes here trying to use as a fundraiser selling jell-o shots instead its going to be a little more high fashion, the music will be pop.

JR: Recently the Lookout has been hosting several different fundraisers; can you tell me a little more about that?

CH: One of the fundraisers that I'm the most proud of is the one that we just had called Hitched. It was a party basically to defeat proposition 8 and we were able to raise $31,000.00 dollars in 4 hours. In the first year and two months the bar has been open it has raised over $85,000.00 dollars for different community organizations and I think that that's pretty incredible for a new business to be able to give back that much to the community and still be able to have a good time doing it.

JR: I agree. I hope to see the Lookout become an even bigger success than it already is. Thank you very much for you time.

CH: You're welcome. Thank you.