Super Bowl DUI Checkpoints Don't Faze Steelers, Packers Bars

Get his keys! Quick!

​The national holiday of overindulging in booze and substandard cheese-related snacks is coming on Feb. 6. Around here, that's what we call it -- The National Holiday of Overindulging in Booze and Substandard Cheese-Related Snacks. Those who are into the whole brevity thing just call it Super Bowl Sunday.

With tippling, of course, comes impaired driving -- and the San Francisco Police Department today announced a DUI checkpoint for the evening of Feb. 5 and wee hours of Feb. 6 to nab early NHOBSC-RS/Super Bowl revelers. They chose an interesting location for the checkpoint, incidentally: Something of the midpoint of the three biggest Steelers or Packers bars in town.

The DUI checkpoint will be at Geary and Steiner. Glancing at the map, that's roughly equidistant from Shanghai Kelly's (Steelers central) and Zeke's (Packers town). If we include Pittsburgh's Pub in the mix, the shape on the map becomes a stretched-out right triangle, with the checkpoint enclosed within. 

SF Weekly called Avoid the 8, the state-funded campaign that puts on local DUI checkpoints. Our queries regarding the logistics behind selecting the Geary and Steiner locale have been shunted to the police department's "traffic guys." 


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Zeke's by the way, will be opening its doors to cheeseheads at 10 a.m. And Shanghai Kelly's is expecting a crowd of "legal capacity" (owner Steve Grealish notes that it'd be extraordinarily foolish to predict a crowd greater than the legal capacity).

Grealish's bar has been bleeding black and gold for 22 years, ever since Brendan Coyne -- a relative of the Rooney family that owns the Steelers franchise -- cajoled them into turning on the games. "We started with six guys, it went to 20, 40, 60, and then wall to wall for every Steelers game," recalls Grealish. "You couldn't have a better crowd. Salt of the earth and hard-drinking."

The barkeep also notes that it's a "cab-and-bus-driven crowd." They'll be avoiding Geary and Steiner in the same way you'd be advised to avoid making a Kordell Stewart joke anywhere near Shanghai Kelly's.

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