The dog curling around your feet in front of the fireplace might make this fixture of the Outer Sunset feel more like home than a bar.

"A lot of people who live out here are regulars," said bartender Lisa-Marie Delgadillo. "It's a different crowd during the night and the day."

The Riptide Cocktails is generally known as a surfer bar, within spitting distance from Ocean Beach and the Great Highway. But Riptide is more a neighborhood bar, Delgadillo said, with locals stopping in after work and students from both SF State and other schools filling the rough-hewn booths made from a single cut of old growth redwood.

"It's chill, it's laid back, you don't have to get dressed up, you can just go there to hang out on a weekday," said Ashley Holyoak, a sociology major at SF State who lives on the same block and is a regular at the Riptide.

Old lanterns, tin drink ads, as well as nautical, surfing, and hunting lodge decor festoon the walls in an odd hodgepodge of styles that form the unique feel of Riptide.

The cheapest beer offered begins at $2.50 but are a dollar off during the daily happy hours ranging from 4 to 8 p.m., depending on the day of the week.

Mondays are Open Mike Night, Tuesdays are Rock and Roll Movie Nights, where a projection screen above the fireplace is lowered for the flicks; "Wet Wednesdays" feature surfer movies, Thursday is Lady's Night, and Sundays feature Worker's Night.

"It's a relaxing, mellow, fun atmosphere with cool people," said Vince Mungo, a communications major at SF State. "I like the Riptide Red a lot, it's really good."

The Riptide features its own "Riptide Red" beer on tap, provided by the nearby Beach Chalet brewery. A Riptide Red will set one thirsty patron back $5.

"When we removed a drop ceiling, we saw all this was underneath," said owner Les Janes, referring to the original wood paneling of the walls and ceiling.

"We had this guy in here once who said we needed a foot rail, like in older bars, and he starts saying, 'I can get ya a real rail from a steam locomotive'... I ride it off as the s*** you always hear in bars, but a few months later he shows up with this!" Janes continued, kicking the length of Union Pacific rail that runs the length of the bar. "We don't even need to bolt this down."

"It's not going anywhere!" Delgadillo, the bartender, added with a laugh.

The Riptide has existed with the same structure since the early 1930's. It has been a bar since early construction and the bar's other side was originally a bait shop called the Master Baiter.

The Riptide is about a 30-minute trip from campus using Muni. Hop the 28 bus north, switch to the L and hop off near the end of Taraval about a block from the Great Highway, then amble in and take a seat. The best one is under the moose head.