Paolo Bicchieri is the associate editor for the Northern California and Pacific Northwest region writing about restaurant and bar trends, coffee and cafes, and pop-ups.
A contentious purchase of longtime Haight Street bar Toronado has gone Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. Days after would-be buyer Orion Parrott visited the bar with a San Francisco Chronicle reporter and photographer — a visit that devolved into chaos and shouts — current owner Dave Keene’s lawyers told Parrot that the sale was off, supposedly because Parrot didn’t waive “certain contingencies within a given period of time,” the Chronicle reports. Parrott told the paper that he can’t waive those contingencies because he’s waiting on paperwork from Keene. So for now, the sale of a neighborhood institution and one of the city’s most important beer bars is on ice.
Toronado is closing because Keene, who opened the bar in 1987 and also founded the Barleywine Festival, is retiring. Parrott, a former Raytheon employee and current crypto entrepreneur, seemed like an odd match for Tornado, an old-school place that doesn’t even take credit cards. When the San Francisco Standard broke the news in March that he was buying Tornado, the paper called him a “tech bro” and quoted a group chat message where he said that he was trying to build “the next great San Francisco food & beverage brand in the steps of Blue Bottle.” The Standard also reported that Parrott planned to launch a ToronadoCash crypto coin, but the reaction from the bar’s regulars was so negative he gave up on the idea, he told the Chron…