As the San Francisco Chronicle reported, Anthony Niboli was driving through Lower Nob Hill last month when he spotted an empty storefront at the corner of Polk and Post. He liked the blank exterior wall enough to picture a mural on it before he'd even looked inside. When he and his business partner Ronald Rodriguez started asking around the neighborhood about the space, the answer came back the same way more than once: don't.
The address, 1101 Polk St, has cycled through at least five businesses in the last fifteen years, according to permits filed with the San Francisco Planning Department. Three of those came and went just since 2021, the year sandwich shop Eleven O One closed after a full decade in the spot. Niboli and Rodriguez heard the word "cursed" enough times that they decided it was the space they wanted. Meanwhile, on Geary Street, the Mission breakfast burrito spot Al Carajo is opening a second location in a storefront with no such reputation attached to it.
Both openings landed on Lower Nob Hill's radar within a week of each other this September. They are not the same kind of bet.
Niboli and Rodriguez have never run a bar or restaurant. Niboli worked in advertising and organized Cabfest, an annual wine festival in San Francisco. Rodriguez is a commercial lawyer who plans to keep his day job even after Innerbloom opens. Both are Fresno natives who moved to the city separately and have been friends long enough that opening a wine bar together felt, in Niboli's telling, less like a leap than a shared idea whose time had come.
The space itself did not make it easy. When the pair got the keys, the electricity was still off. They found a locked sidewalk hatch leading to a cellar that Niboli described as filled with "hazardous who-knows-what," one that floods with every rainfall. None of that scared them off the address. If anything, the litany of past tenants and unresolved plumbing made the pitch clearer to them: this corner has never had someone commit to it past a lease term, and they intend to.
The name comes from a 2016 song by the electronic trio Rüfüs Du Sol, though Niboli's first instinct was to call the place something plainer: Flowers and Wine. That impulse survived in the concept even after the name changed. He's partnered with a florist friend who will supply arrangements for the space and sell "flowers to go" alongside the wine and small plates.
The bigger ambition is programming. Niboli and Rodriguez want to set aside space for visual artists, especially ones based in the neighborhood, to exhibit work on the walls. They're hoping to host acoustic and jazz musicians on a regular basis, DJs on weekends, and eventually a parklet built out on Polk Street for live music once they clear the necessary permits. None of that is running yet. Innerbloom is aiming to open its doors in January 2027, self-funded, with Niboli crediting Mayor Daniel Lurie's push for neighborhood revitalization as part of what convinced them the timing was right.
Rodriguez lived in Lower Nob Hill for about a dozen years before relocating to a boat moored in Alameda, and he pushes back on the idea that the block needs saving. He and Niboli see themselves joining a cluster of bars and restaurants they think already gets overlooked: Jackalope, BlindPig Speakeasy, and Sushi Sato, all within a few doors of the site they picked.
While Innerbloom works through permits and a leaking cellar, Al Carajo Breakfast Burrito is taking a much shorter path to opening day. As KRON4 reported, the Mission taqueria, known for the burritos it's served on 22nd Street under chef and owner Javier León, announced in July that it was expanding into a second location. That location is 683 Geary Street in Lower Nob Hill, the former home of breakfast sandwich spot Bandit, and it's set to open this October.
There's no jinxed-corner narrative attached to this one. Al Carajo isn't testing a new concept or converting a vacant shell that's been sitting empty for months. It's a business with an established following moving a known menu into a second storefront, the kind of expansion that happens when demand in one part of the city makes a second location worth the overhead. León's announcement leaned on continuity rather than reinvention, promising the same burritos his Mission regulars already know alongside a few new items he's been developing.
Put the two openings side by side and the difference in risk profile is the whole story. Innerbloom is two people with no restaurant experience betting that persistence and programming can turn a corner five other tenants couldn't hold. Al Carajo is a proven operator extending a working formula into a storefront that just needs a kitchen buildout, not a leap of faith.
Neither business is opening into a vacuum. The bars Niboli and Rodriguez cite as their unofficial neighbors have their own recent histories worth knowing if you're picturing this stretch of Polk Street. BlindPig Speakeasy, run by owner Derrick Li, reopened to the public on March 29 in a space at 1113 Polk St that used to serve as the private dining room for Sushi Sato next door. Before that, BlindPig operated out of the historic Cathay House in Chinatown. Entry still requires a password, posted weekly on the bar's Instagram, and the cocktails lean on Chinese ingredients like mapo tofu and pineapple bun cordial.
Sushi Sato itself opened in November 2021 in a space that had previously been occupied by Bitters, Bock and Rye, part of a project from Mins Group. That opening, and the slow churn of what's happened in the building since, is a smaller version of the same pattern playing out at 1101 Polk: a storefront changes hands, someone tries something new, and the neighborhood absorbs it without much fanfare either way.
The "cursed corner" framing makes for a good story, but the more accurate read is that 1101 Polk St has simply turned over fast, five tenants in fifteen years, which is a pace a lot of small commercial spaces in this city can match without anyone calling them jinxed. What's notable isn't that the space has been hard to hold onto. It's that two very different kinds of operators picked the same few blocks of Lower Nob Hill in the same month to make their next move: one betting on an unproven idea in a space with a rough track record, the other extending a proven idea into a space with none.
By January, if Innerbloom's timeline holds, you'll be able to walk from a Mission-tested breakfast burrito counter on Geary to a first-time wine bar on Polk, passing BlindPig's password-protected door and Sushi Sato along the way. Al Carajo opens first, this October. Whether Innerbloom's bet on the corner pays off the way its owners hope is the kind of thing you'll be able to judge for yourself by walking past it in a year.
If you own property on this stretch of Polk or Geary and you're curious what a storefront's turnover history actually means for its value, or what a corner like 1101 Polk is worth to a future buyer versus a future tenant, Mirella Webb works with owners across Lower Nob Hill and the rest of San Francisco on exactly that kind of question. A complimentary, confidential valuation is a good place to start.
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