High Spirits

J. K. Dineen is a metro reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle, where he writes about real estate development, the waterfront, housing, neighborhoods, and land-use planning. He has also been a staff reporter at the San Francisco Business Times, The San Francisco Examiner, the New York Daily News, and a bunch of papers in his native Massachusetts. He lives in San Francisco with his family.

"Dineen has produced a social history at its best, and it's perfect reading over a cocktail." —Beyond Chron"From Vesuvio to the Silver Crest, Sam Jordan's to the Twin Peaks, Dineen unearths the rollicking, poignant and hilarious stories that lurk behind the swinging doors. High Spirits is a righteous pour from the top shelf." —Gary Kamiya, author of Cool Gray City of Love: 49 Views of San Francisco"J. K. Dineen's book High Spirits does for these San Franciscan bars what Joseph Mitchell did for McSorley's Saloon. His profiles read like an extended shore leave spent touring the most storied public parlors in the city, meeting their saltiest, strangest, wonderful keepers and patrons—taking in the booze, the music, the myths, all the camaraderie, and all the heartache, too." —Paul Harding, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Tinkers and Enon"The way to San Francisco's heart is not just through its stomach, but down its throat. J. K. Dineen's wonderful bar-hopping odyssey takes us deep inside a neon-lit world that is in many ways the best of this magical city." —David Talbot, author of Season of the Witch"The dives in this book may be endangered, and that is sad. But reading Dineen on, say, Sam Jordan's Bar and Grill or the Wild Side West, you can only feel pleasure. Dineen's a guy who can tell a story. His portraits are pungent and laced with humor. You can smell the stale beer; you can see the flicker of old neon." —Kitty Morgan, San Francisco Chronicle