Ghosts, Cocktails & Chinatown After Dark : A Haunted San Francisco Tour
I don’t spend nearly enough time in San Francisco’s Chinatown after dark. And apparently, I’ve also been missing its ghosts and haunted alleys.
I recently joined San Francisco’s Stretchy Pants Food Tours for its new Spirits & Spirits Haunted Chinatown and Cocktail Tour, which combines three things I can get behind: wandering Chinatown, a good story, and cocktails.
The next (and last one) will be on Friday, October 30th!
Spirits & Spirits
We started at Hotaling Place in Jackson Square, San Francisco’s oldest (and haunted) alleyway, and then made our way on foot to Chinatown.
Over the course of the evening, our guide, Robert Magee, led us through Chinatown’s streets and alleyways, regaling us with tales of apparitions, mysterious scents, Barbary Coast lore, ladies in white and grey cats, and the clatter of phantom cattle hooves.
You know, normal San Francisco stuff.
Fortunately, Stretchy Pants understands that paranormal promenading is thirsty work, and San Francisco’s Chinatown, the oldest in North America, is home to some great dive bars.
One of our stops was Li Po Cocktail Lounge, the wonderfully old-school Chinatown bar on Grant Avenue with the cave-like entrance, known for its Chinese Mai Tai. Anthony Bourdain drank one here, which seems like a perfectly good endorsement to me.
The historic 1937 bar sits above the old Chinatown basement levels and historic subterranean tunnels, which I imagine feel haunted and have walls that have seen some things. I don’t know; we didn’t go down there.
But Li Po is exactly the kind of place I want on a Chinatown ghost & cocktail tour: neon-lit, lively, strong drinks served fast, and not remotely trying to reinvent itself for Instagram, which makes it totally Instagrammable.
Its signature Chinese Mai Tai doesn’t hurt either, with its rum and pineapple gut punch.
With our cocktails in hand, a few of us gathered around a sticky table to share our own ghost stories and paranormal encounters. I have never ‘met’ a ghost, but my fellow travelers had tales that were seriously spooky.
I found myself looking at things through a different lens. What was that noise? Is that a flash of light or a spirit? Did you feel that?
Only they know…
A Tour Without a Pop Quiz
What do I really appreciate about Stretchy Pants Tours? They are very easygoing.
Guides don’t pepper you with dates and names you’ll forget five minutes later. And if they do, don’t worry—there is no quiz at the end of the night.
Instead, guides make sure there is time to stop. Laugh. Look around. Take pictures. Get distracted. And that’s very easy to do in San Francisco’s Chinatown.
Case in point: when we wandered down Ross Alley, the Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory happened to be open.
It wasn’t officially part of the tour, but there it was, open and smelling all vanilla-y. So in we went.
The owner, Kevin Chan, was there and welcomed us in to snap pictures and snack. If only this had been a Fortune Cookie-flavored cocktail stop. Next time, Kevin? Think about it.
Our final stop was Red’s Place, which bills itself as Chinatown’s oldest bar.
Honestly, it wasn’t nearly as atmospheric as Li Po Lounge and felt like a strange place to end the tour.
I would have preferred a deserted alleyway, Portsmouth Square, or anywhere we could imagine the restless spirits of children searching for lost loved ones by candlelight.
Red’s Place felt as if it could have been in a strip mall in Ohio. But you know what? It had locally brewed beer, the karaoke machine was powered up, and sometimes that’s all you need.
A woman in our group grabbed the microphone, and soon we were all singing along with her to the Fugees’ version of “Killing Me Softly With His Song,” a title that ultimately seemed a perfect anthem for the end of a ghost tour.
Was karaoke on the official ghost-tour itinerary? Nope. Did anyone object? Also nope.
The tour left room for spontaneous detours and a little silliness along the way, which is my kind of tour.
Apparently, I Like Stretchy Pants
This was my second tour with Stretchy Pants Food Tours.
The first was its North Beach Italian Food tour, where my husband and I ate our way through pizza, panini, pasta, gelato, and enough garlic to make me temporarily vampire-proof.
I really wish I had worn stretchy pants that day, we ate so much.
The two experiences couldn’t be more different—one had me eating my way through North Beach in broad daylight, while the other had me following ghost stories down Chinatown alleys after dark.
But they each had the same relaxed approach I appreciate, and they both made me love San Francisco even more.
Backyard Travel For The Win
I’ve walked through Chinatown countless times, but I’m usually there during the day. Egg tarts, dim sum, shopping. It looks and feels totally different at night.
The daytime crowds thin, but there is still a buzz. Storefronts glow. The alleyways get moodier and redder. Even places I’ve walked past dozens of times suddenly made me stop and look.
And that’s part of what I liked most about being a tourist in my hometown. It’s a reminder that you don’t have to travel very far to feel like you’ve gone somewhere. Especially in San Francisco’s Chinatown
And if a lantern starts swaying when there’s absolutely no wind? Just take another sip and go with the flow.
Check out all Stretchy Pants Tours here, and sign up for your October 30th Spirits & Spirits: Haunted Chinatown Cocktail Tour here.
🏮I was a guest of Stretchy Pants Food Tours. As always, all opinions, embellished ghost sightings, and enthusiasm for dive bars are entirely my own.🏮
