Future Bars, the city’s prolific bar group, first garnered attention—and hundreds of flocked wallpaper copycats—with its modern speakeasy, Bourbon & Branch.
Now, nineteen years later, they’re flipping the script with the group’s most ambitious undertaking to date. Continuing the brand’s hallmark of theatrical interiors, Long Weekend radiates with the rhythms, hues, and rum-spiked drinks of Havana, Cuba. Yet, unlike its precursors, the daiquiris will stop flowing in the summer of 2026 when the Cuban theme shifts to the next location in a series of rotating, global-inspired pop-ups, each of which is a nine-month, three-dimensional travelogue of the world’s great cocktail hubs.
The decor at Long Weekend can be switched out like the skin on an avatar(Courtesy of Long Weekend Bar)
Why a Pop-Up?
While famed for its spectacular, thematic interiors, hidden behind each lush, detailed environment is an arduous process involving architects, permits, and lengthy build-outs. While a bar-going audience eagerly packs the latest spot for the first few months, they soon move on to the next new thing.
“Opening a cool new bar every few years is hard work,” shares CEO Brian Sheehy, who concedes the group’s winning formula is up against not only city planning department hurdles but shorter attention spans, too.
The solution? A venue that can accommodate multiple new pop-up concepts. A rotating concept keeps crowds coming back while giving the bar group the opportunity to sample different ideas, noting which spark the most patronage. “If any iteration of Long Weekend is packed every night, we’ll look at a permanent space for it,” says Sheehy.
While the space was born as a strategic solution to real problems, Future Bars may have stumbled into its most ingenious venture yet. Sheehy, who picked up a general contracting license during the pandemic, designed the new, multi-storied space with a clever infrastructure that allows themes to be swapped out like skins on an avatar. A complete transformation —from Havana to Tokyo, for example—can be done in one week’s time and without filing a single permit.
The downstairs nightclub space, La Boveda(Courtesy of Long Weekend Bar)
The Dynamic Space
With 7,000 square feet spread over four levels, the 1923 Italian American Bank building at Columbus and Broadway in North Beach offered the perfect blank slate for the Long Weekend. Working with long-time collaborator and architect, Andrea Marie Gifford, the Future Bars team decked the airy main floor in pastels, oil-burning hurricane lamps, and Cuban flags. Yet, while the tikis of Pagan Idol or whiskey barrels at Rickhouse might function simply as decor, Long Weekend brims with more cultural authenticity.
“Without the cultural insight, you’re doing no better than building an Irish bar in an airport,” Sheehy remarks. With original artwork, video, and audio captured on the island, the space ends up functioning as a de facto art gallery as much as a bar.
Thousands of feet of cabling and a hidden network of hundreds of mini speakers embedded in the walls hum with a layered, re-engineered soundtrack of interviews and musicians recorded by Sheehy and his team while in Havana. On a hidden mezzanine level, which offers the best seats in the house, guests can simultaneously peer over the main bar and Broadway Street, in addition to a color-saturated cityscape of Havana via video sequences blending famous landmarks such as the domed National Capitol building into a continuous horizon with passing cars, fluttering palms, and shifting sun and moon cycles. Once recorded soundtrack and visuals are ready for the next pop-up, the team can flip a switch and swap out all the audio and video throughout the bar.
The space also highlights original print artwork. Tucked behind the bar, a cozy nook dubbed La Galeria displays prints of the gorgeous, vintage product design-inspired artwork of Havana artist, Reynerio Tamayo. When the Havana theme shutters, the pieces will be auctioned off in support of Tamayo's community education efforts back home.
(Courtesy of Long Weekend Bar)
Downstairs, the subterranean La Boveda, named for the extant vault, is an homage to the underground nightclubs of Havana that have popped up in abandoned buildings, including former banks. Sheehy and his business partner, Doug Dalton, photographed local Havana street art and wheat pasted the oversized prints throughout the low-ceilinged space; a San Francisco artist tied it together with additional artwork. Future iterations will be layered on top, adding to the patina.
There is one space that will remain untouched at Long Weekend: a stunning rooftop where a restored 2003 Banksy mural is complemented by striking views of the twinkling Transamerica Building and Salesforce Tower. While not normally open to the public, you might be able to coax a staff member for a peek on a slow night or special occasion.
The Drinks
While the atmosphere may serve as the headliner at fellow Future Bars spaces such as The Dawn Club, drinks remain at the heart of each new venture. True to the concept’s intention, the cocktail menu reminds guests how many iconic drinks originated from Cuba. You’ll find usual suspects like daiquiris and hand-muddled mojitos with both American and Cuban mint grown in rooftop planters, alongside lesser-known drinks like the sugar cane-redolent Canchánchara with salted honey and butterscotch foam.
The group’s bar director and prolific cocktail hitmaker Jayson Wilde designed the menu, as he did for all Future Bars properties. Because Cuban rums are prohibited from being sold in the U.S., the bar team created proprietary blends to approximate those that would normally inform classics such as an El Presidente or Hotel Nacional. You’ll have to look elsewhere for a Cubano sandwich, though. “You’ll find plenty of good food throughout North Beach, just not here,” says Sheehy.
(Courtesy of Long Weekend Bar)
What’s Next
Sitting alongside the Columbus Street side, an LED screen displays another Havana streetscape with a vintage-inspired billboard and a countdown clock to the next theme, plus a QR code to vote for the next city they honor: Tokyo, Mexico City, or Rio de Janeiro.
The well-traveled team started with a highly debated list of top ten cities that have contributed to drinking culture, and it quickly got whittled down to three. The goal is not just dreamy destinations that populate many people’s bucket list, but also concepts that would work well in San Francisco and that the bar team can get behind.
As for an Irish theme, Sheehy’s childhood home, he simply says, “We’re not ready for that.”
// Long Weekend is open Tuesday and Wednesday from 4:30pm to 12am, Friday through Saturday from 4:30pm to 2am, and Sunday from 3pm to 11pm; 270 Columbus Ave. (North Beach), longweekendbar.com
