The DeLuxe: A Conversation with Christian Beaulieu

The DeLuxe opened on June 18th with live music seven nights a week and a room that looks both untouched and quietly transformed. The venue occupies the former space of Club DeLuxe, a beloved jazz venue in Upper Haight that closed in April 2023.

The DeLuxe’s co-owners are Christian Beaulieu, a former bartender at Club DeLuxe, and Jay Bordeleau, owner of SF jazz venue Mr. Tipples. When renovation began on the space, they found redwood pilings, old newspapers, funky drawings, a 1940s beer bottle under the walk-in cooler, and on that cooler’s door, a built-in pull-out window and a plate reading “installed in 1928.” The building had been leaving its own time capsules for a century. The new owners left their own by sealing handwritten notes and a bottle of rye whiskey into a time capsule at 1511 Haight Street for future occupants to find.

What did you protect, and what had to change?

The Spa Collins and the Greyhound cocktails were non-negotiable. What had to change was speed.

People waited too long at the old place on weekends. We put all our classics on tap so we can get guests drinking and dancing as fast as possible. That part’s working.

The murals are new. What story are they telling?

The original gay bar in this space had murals I’ve been looking for evidence of for years. The story goes: a couple in a 1952 Chevy DeLuxe breaks down on the side of the road. The bar’s name was shamelessly appropriated from that car, logo and all. A mechanic shows up. The husband leaves with the mechanic. That was the story of a gay bar in the Upper Haight in the late ‘70s.

When J. Johnson took over and opened Club DeLuxe here, he immediately painted over the original murals and commissioned his own depicting his journey from Chicago to California, indicated by a train. Those left with him.

So we needed our own mural. I’ve known Jon Weiss for years. We were both on the same music label, Alternative Tentacles. My band, Triclops! opened for his band, Jello Biafra and The Guantanamo School of Medicine. Together we decided to tell the story of the room: Playland at the Beach, the creamery, the tailor shops, the gay bar, the swing era, and J. Johnson himself, singing out to the street with his train behind him. There’s enough Grateful Dead imagery on the outside of buildings in this neighborhood. This is our version.

What does running this place actually feel like?

My partner Jay noted that it belongs more to the regulars and the neighborhood than it does to us. After Club DeLuxe closed, I couldn’t bartend anywhere in the city without someone bringing it up. At some point it clicked: this thing is bigger than I realized. The building has kept morphing into whatever the present moment needed: gay bar, swing club, neighborhood anchor. That’s what we’re aiming to do now.