The Squadron Bottle tradition in San Francisco

Anyone can leave a bottle, and you don’t need to be part of a specific squadron to have a drink, either. “If you present a military ID, you can choose whichever bottle that you want to drink from, basically,” says Perez-Wong. As for what there is to drink, “the story is that it started with a bottle of bourbon,” she says. “So the majority would be either whiskey or bourbon, but we’ve had purchases of vodka [and] gin. It runs the gamut now.”