“It seemed pretty much like living in a zoo,” said Woody LaBounty, leaning on a rail of a pier at San Francisco’s Northern waterfront. “Or drinking in a zoo.”

The president of San Francisco Heritage was of course referring to one of the city’s strangest bars of lore that once existed nearby — Abe Warner’s Cobweb Palace — a drinking establishment that operated on the former Meigg’s Wharf on the city’s waterfront from 1856 to 1893.

The bar’s name was no empty boast. The handful of photos that remain show a room packed with all sorts of tchotchkes: whale tusks, scrimshaws, paintings, birdcages, live animals and a ceiling encased in cobwebs. Another photo shows Warner sitting in a chair reading the newspaper, with a pair of monkeys roaming nearby.

“Abe Warner had a miner bird, he had a bear

See Full Page