In the heart of the financial district, Schroeder’s is great for afterwork happy hours. It’s an old man bar in the old mannest way. The salty old bartenders and servers wear black vests and crisp white shirts. The interior resembles a ye olde German tavern, California style. The food is heavy on the meat and the bar is heavy on the beer, and they DO serve free meatballs during happy hour: 5PM to 7:30PM.

I don’t like free meatballs because I don’t eat meat, but they do serve free bread with the meatballs and I do eat that. You know, so many restaurants nowadays don’t even serve you bread with your meal. Like, you have to pay for it. South Beach Diet, what have you done?!?

I feel like places like Schroeder’s were very active in the mid-80s. This place is so Michael Douglas, if you know what I mean. Schroeder’s is a relic to simplier times.

Why is it always that sports bars offer the most free food? Is that why guys who love football all have beer bellies and food babies? I love free food too, but I’m not happy about always having to go to sport’s bars to get it. I don’t know a touchdown from a layup.

That said, come to Jack’s Club. You can pretend you actually care about the game as you wolf down your free grub. Free tacos on Tuesdays. Taco Tuesdays – now that’s some great alliteration! If you like Monday night football, they give you free hotdogs! Yessssss. Too bad I hate football.

I love the Castro, and I love Castro bars, but I hate how cliche they can be sometimes. Like how Lucky 13 has Le Chat Noir and The Screamer posters on the wall. Hello – we aren’t in high school, discovering European art for the first time. How pedestrian.

Okay enough with the ranting. I always see the negative in everything, and my New Year’s Resolution was to look for the positive. And at Lucky 13, the big positive is that they have $2 beers on Sundays from 5pm-7pm and FREE BBQ. I love BBQ. It reminds me of childhood summer days spent by the pool in my blue house in Pennsylvania.

Why am I such a creepy nostalgic person? Ignore me. But don’t ignore this: come to Lucky 13. Just remember to suck in your food baby if you end up going home with someone! No one likes a preggers man!

At Maya, you get a big plate of Mexican food appetizer thingys during happy hour, from 5pm to 7pm! That’s pretty sweet. This is a nice downtown establishment that is pretty convenient for an afterwork wind-me-down.

There are all these expensive, classy Mexican joints in downtown. What’s with that? I dunno – it feels kind of wrong to me, paying like $12 for a taco. I mean, that must mean it has the most organic pinto beans in the whole entire universe, plated with gold. Their tacos are also made with filet mignon. Last time I checked, the French were not in the business of making tacos, but that’s just me. Their guacamole also costs $9. NINE BUCKS!!!! WHAT IN DE HELL????

Whatever though! Free food at happy hour, yesssssss. Just put that menu away and revel in the freeness of not buying a single thing besides a beer.

Pac Heights is like, soooooo bourgeois. It’s so bourgeois that instead of serving buffalo wings like the rest of the plebian bars in SF, bars like Lion Pub in P.H. need to outdo everyone by serving sushi, tiny sandwiches, little brownies (the kind you have at like company meetings, with the 3 weird strawberries ‘adorning’ the plate), cheese (because nothing screams upper middle class quite like chevre), and olives.

I hate Pac Heights. I really do. The people are really pretentious and not even in like the cool artsy way. But I appreciate the fact that Lion Pub exists. Unfortch you will be making up for the free food by paying a lot of money on drinks, but free sushi?!!? You know the Pac Heights clientele will be too busy showing how indifferent to freebies they are by picking at the food, so that just means more food for all the rest of the grubby south of Market Street crowd!! Hell yeah for stuffing wasabi in the face!

Can I say something quickly though? The reason why the preppy crowd in Pac Heights are way fatter than the cool kids in the Mission is because of all the expensive cheese they eat.

Glen Park Station. I don’t know what more to say than there’s hot dogs and all the standards – catsup, mustard, relish, onions – whenever there’s a game. I don’t ever know when there’s a game because I hate sports. But my friends like it.

Glen Park is so hella random though. I don’t even know where Glen Park is. Is that even in SF?

Monday night football has corresponding freebies. Fridays, you get free hotdogs. You can smoke inside by the back pool table. A cigarette and a hot dog, and a beer? All at the same time? Let your tastebuds explode!

It’s on Natoma Street. Natoma Street’s quite the hip street these days. I don’t know what I feel about SOMA though, generally. It’s a lot of tech people and I always see a Burning Man freak or two while I’m down there.

Does it make me judgmental to hate the Burning Man crowd? It’s not that they suck so much, per se, it’s that they just… okay it is because they suck. Badly. There, I said it.

Free food at Tempest though, who’s with me?!?!?