George McCalman, the SF-based artist and restaurant designer who designed Nopa Fish, has held a bar seat at 560 Divisadero roughly once a week since the room's third day of business in 2006.

George McCalman has been occupying a stool at Nopa's bar since the restaurant's third day of business in June 2006. He was 35 then. He is 55 now. The stool, and the weekly ritual, have not changed.

McCalman — Grenada-born, San Francisco-based, a working artist, author, and restaurant designer — is not a passive regular. He sketches the room from his seat: the staff moving between tables, the guests settling in at the communal tables, the room at work. For someone who designs restaurants professionally, Nopa has functioned for two decades as a kind of continuing education.

"When Nopa opened, we were happy, because the Western Addition didn't have a ton of big restaurants," he told the SF Standard this week. "We rolled up, sat at the bar, and ordered the elderflower gimlet. After that, it was on."

The elderflower gimlet is long off the menu and, at 55, McCalman's consumption has leveled off from its early peaks. What hasn't leveled off is his attendance. He described to the Standard what keeps drawing him back: "It's a chance for me to go somewhere where I also recognize myself inside of the experience. Nopa strikes that balance of what living in San Francisco is about. It is both fancy and casual. It is welcoming."

His loyalty eventually deepened into a professional relationship: McCalman most recently designed Nopa Fish, the brand's 2025 spinoff at the Ferry Building. He went from watching how the original room works — from that bar seat, week after week — to shaping how its expansion would feel.

Nopa, at 560 Divisadero at Hayes in the Western Addition, is open nightly from 5:30 p.m. It celebrated its 20th anniversary this month.