A beloved Outer Sunset dive bar just steps from the Pacific at the western edge of San Francisco, the Riptide has been a neighborhood anchor for the surfers, artists, and working-class families of the Outer Sunset for decades: a warm, dog-friendly bar with a fireplace, cold cheap beer, and the kind of unpretentious, genuine neighborhood bar character that San Francisco’s increasingly expensive neighborhoods keep accidentally erasing. The beach is a block away; the Riptide is why locals call the Outer Sunset home.
A fireplace, a dog at your feet, cheap cold beer, and the Pacific a block down the road. That is a formula nobody needs to improve on, and the Outer Sunset has quietly protected it while the rest of San Francisco priced itself into oblivion. The Riptide is high on our list but the Bum has not planted a stool there yet, so I want the real intel: if you have closed out a foggy afternoon at the Riptide, what did you drink and was the fog worth it? And if there is another honest beach dive we have been sleeping on, drop it below.