A Deeper Dive: Squashing the Beef with Gilly’s – Mostly

A few days ago, I found myself standing beneath the effervescent glow of a Colt 45 sign, drinking Jack Daniels, at the soft opening of Gilly’s House of Cocktails. Until recently, it was simply Gilly’s Cocktails. 

Erick Castro, who recently bought the bar with a partner, was passionately pitching me on his ideas about democratizing good cocktails and creating a bar that’s open to everyone. 

“I’m not sure I want it open to everyone,” I told him. That sounds really bad, so let me back up.  

I was at Gilly’s, because last week I wrote a story about how the dark, dingy, lushy dives of this city are disappearing. I took some shots at the investors, who have bought — and bedazzled — what’s left of San Diego’s working-class barrooms. It wasn’t so much that I can’t stomach change. It was an elegy for the death of affordable gathering places — Gilly’s being one.

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Castro, understandably, didn’t vibe with it.   

“As someone who worked his way up from nothing until I was in a spot to invest my life savings into buying a bar in the city I grew up in… I’m bummed, obviously. It feels really unfair and not true,” he wrote to me in an email. 

Castro — graciously I admit — invited me to the soft open, because he wanted me to see that he planned to keep Gilly’s divey and affordable, not turn it into a tourist destination.

At first glance, things did look mostly the same.

“I like that it still feels divey, except without the hepatitis,” someone told him earlier in the night, Castro remembered. 

“Sorry we ran out, but come back on Tuesday,” he said.

Something inside the new Gilly’s did feel a little less biohazardous. The carpet seemed new, the smell was neutral and the lighting slightly brighter. Three specific changes stuck out to me.

The cocktail menu was different — in that it now existed. “Pale Rider,” “Twilight Samurai,” and “Vieux Carre” were a few of the offerings.

As we stood next to the bar, Castro rhapsodized on how it was possible to use fresh juice and fresh ingredients to make cocktails that didn’t cost $16. He thought his margins might even be better than the expensive places, since he hadn’t spent much on a redesign and knew how to keep the ingredient list simple. 

“Yeah, but won’t these cocktails bring the fancy crowds,” I said. 

“That’s a misconception. Craft cocktails aren’t really supposed to be fancy. Going back all the way to the early days of this nation, these were cocktails that you could get in any bar you walked into,” he said. “This was just how folks drank by default.”

Good cocktails are fine. It’s not my thing so much as a shot and a beer. My real worry was that the people taking selfies across the street in the recently glammed up Lafayette Hotel might catch wind of these well-crafted cheap drinks and displace the neighborhood people.

The Gilly’s of old was not a place to order an old fashioned. It was a place that didn’t even feel like it was in North Park. (Technically, it’s not. It’s in University Heights, according to Google Maps. But spiritually, it’s in North Park.) Like any good dive bar, it rode the line between a little bit sad and a place that felt like home.

One of those things that wavered between sad and beautiful was the karaoke. Karaoke, however, didn’t survive the makeover.

Castro’s partner Jacob Mantel is autistic — which is part of what drove the change, he told me. Mantel believes karaoke can be alienating to neurodivergent people of all kinds, including people with ADHD and anxiety.

I’ve spoken to other Gilly’s regulars, who disagreed. They said plenty of neurodivergent people also love karaoke.

I couldn’t find any studies to settle the matter. But the change is part of what Castro and Mantel are pitching as aggressive inclusivity.

This also applied to the last change I noticed: the windows.

Castro and Mantel removed the blackout tint that had previously been a shield between the regulars and the world.

“People have already been walking by and looking in and saying, ‘Wow, what is this place?’” Castro told me.

It’s not that they noticed the change to the windows. It’s that they hadn’t even noticed Gilly’s existed before, he told me.

It must seem petty, but that was the moment my heart sank most. Anonymity is rare and beautiful.

Castro said this was about safety. Many women, especially, he said, don’t feel safe in a bar, where people can’t see in and out.

“It’s not like the early 1900s when bars were places that only men were allowed to go,” he said. “We have to make this feel safe for everyone. We want everyone to feel welcome here.”

I agree with that. I’m not a monster. I also know Gilly’s was not a place that looked like a 1950’s bar. A lot of women hung out there. People of all genders and sexualities and neurodivergencies love bars where daylight is not allowed.

At the end of the day, Castro and Mantel really haven’t changed much. The question is, have they changed enough to fundamentally alter Gilly’s as a neighborhood establishment.

Chatting with them, they seemed like good dudes, who care about the community. I don’t think it had anything to do with all the shots they served me. It’s also clear they want to expand the appeal of Gilly’s, because — among other reasons — it’s a business opportunity. Faulting someone for that would be like faulting the Santa Ana winds for blowing.

The full potential of that business opportunity remains unclear. For now, Castro and Mantel have kept the Bud Light on tap. They’ve even kept the Pineapple SKYY Vodka. And they kept the prices of some of those dirtbag favorites the same. At some point though – as the tourists wander in – they may feel the pull of money over community.

I came back to Gilly’s a few days after the opening to check back in. It was a Friday. The place was packed. As I finished my pint, a man next to me threw on his coat and said to the group of 20-somethings with him: “OK, let’s go ahead and head over to the Lafayette.”

Mantel and Castro say they can make room for these people and the regulars. We’ll see.