"This is an old place.

It was built in 1908, when the Barbary Coast was still going strong ? 1908, the year Bette Davis was born. The year of the first Model T. Four years before Woody Guthrie was born. Twenty-eight years before the Bay Bridge. This bar was standing before, during, and after Prohibition.

The Deininger family opened the saloon, and commissioned furniture makers in Belgium to design and create its ornate bar-back. They also served the city's best beer, Fredericksburg, brought to The Utah by horse and carriage and lowered into the cellar in wooden kegs.

A place with a sketchy past.

Gamblers, thieves, ladies up to no good, politicians, hustlers, friends of opium, goldseekers, godseekers, charlatans, police, fancy miscreants ? they all visited The Utah. And that was when South of Market was just a lonely section of the San Francisco waterfront.

After the Bay Bridge was finished in 1936, SOMA came into its own. The saloon was home to longshoreman, merchants, metalsmiths, furniture makers, people from the neighborhood, traffic flowing back and forth between San Francisco and the East Bay.

And good stories. "