The Washington Square Bar & Grill was a landmark restaurant adjoining Washington Square in San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood (Powell at Union streets). Known widely as the Washbag, so named by columnist Herb Caen as a play on words, it was a favorite gathering place for a generation of writers, politicians, musicians, and social elite.[1][2]
In 1973, Rose 'Pistola' Evangelisti sold her bar Rose Pistola,[3][4] and a restaurant was opened there by Ed Moose, a former dispatcher and reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch,[5] his wife Mary Etta, and partner Sam Dietsch. Moose organized a softball team, the Lapins Sauvages, composed of famous and influential people who were regular restaurant patrons. Caen often wrote of the team's exploits in his newspaper columns, describing its travels to play in major stadiums in various locations around the world.[5] Caen's decades-long buddy at the San Francisco Chronicle, Pulitzer prizewinner Stanton Delaplane actually wrote many of his columns while sitting by the Washbag's piano, and then dispatched them to the paper via messenger.[6]
In 1989 author Ron Fimrite,[7] one of the softball team members, wrote The Square: the Story of a Saloon, describing the restaurant's place in San Francisco's cocktail culture.[8]
In 1990 the partners sold the restaurant. Ed and Mary Etta, with Sam Dietsch as a silent partner, opened a larger restaurant, Moose's, on the opposite side of the square.[9][10] The new restaurant soon took on the same local cultural significance for San Francisco.[11]
The Washbag was sold to new partners in 2000, closed on January 1, 2008, then reopened from March 2, 2009,[1][12][13] under new owners, closing in August 2010.[11] That same week, on August 12, 2010, Ed died at San Francisco General Hospital..[14] Mary Etta died on December 23, 2023, two days after her 95th birthday.[15]
