A few weeks ago, Christian Beaulieu bumped into a San Francisco bar professional who looked him dead in the eye and, without so much as a hello, simply asked, “Is it true?”

It was true. Beaulieu, a former bartender at Haight Street jazz venue Club DeLuxe, was working to reopen it — this time, as The DeLuxe (opens in new tab). Having been shuttered since April 2023, word was getting around the city’s nightlife community that the long-promised restoration was nearly complete. 

“I was like, ‘Yes,’ and she started crying,” Beaulieu recalls of that chance sidewalk encounter. “It was the most amazing thing.”

The DeLuxe, which opens Thursday, isn’t just any old bar. Its return — overseen by Beaulieu and Jay Bordelau, the owner of Mid-Market jazz hotspot Mr. Tipple’s — arrives at a precarious moment for independent, midsize venues. Across town, the clock is ticking for Bottom of the Hill and Thee Parkside, the latter of which has already ceased booking shows entirely. 

Even then, The DeLuxe is different. The club operated as Club DeLuxe from the late 1990s until a dispute between its former owner and the landlord, and its absence has been something of an unhealed wound in the Upper Haight, which has otherwise shown signs of a pronounced culinary and nightlife renaissance. 

“I couldn’t bartend anywhere in the city when it was closed without being recognized from here or hearing people talking about [The DeLuxe] without knowing I worked here,” Beaulieu says.A party on Tuesday night with Berkeley performer Kai Lyons (opens in new tab) and his band as the headliner revealed a refurbished art deco interior whose intimacy harkens back to the speakeasy era, with close-set round cabaret tables and murals of people dancing and shooting pool. On the small, bandshell-style stage, the musicians sounded crisp over the shaking of cocktails.

The drink list evokes another period entirely, written out as album liner notes tucked into a CD case. There are classics such as a greyhound and a Manhattan, as well as a “Mezcal Louisianne” that Beaulieu describes as an agave-driven combination of two signature New Orleans cocktails, the Vieux Carré and the Sazerac. Offerings from local craft producers such as Standard Deviant and Fort Point comprise much of the beer list.

The club’s new lease on life comes at a pivotal moment for the music, too. “Jazz is getting cool because it’s kind of branching out into different regions,” Beaulieu says, adding that the programming will broaden from a long tradition of rockabilly and Latin jazz into indie pop, country, and even an homage to the Haight’s most famous psychedelic rockers. “I think it’s weird to put on a Grateful Dead night at The DeLuxe — which is why I want to do it,” he adds. “You expect it in the Haight, but not at a place like this.”

The Louisiana connection wasn’t lost on party attendee Peterson Harter, who owns the nearby sandwich shop Sandy’s — famous for its New Orleans-inspired muffalettas. Club DeLuxe, he noted, shuttered right before Sandy’s opened on the next block of Haight Street. “We need more live music,” he said. “And where else do you have this music history in the city? It’s really gonna bring back the Haight.”