Former San Francisco resident found dead near Market and Page streets

Sharbel Saker’s disappearance moved fast through San Francisco’s nightlife corridor and just as quickly became a citywide search. The 34-year-old former San Francisco resident left Martuni’s, the piano bar at 4 Valencia Street, around 1 a.m. on Friday, April 3, and was found dead later that same day near Market and Page streets, only a few blocks away.

SFPD spokesperson Paulina Henderson said police do not currently suspect foul play. Even so, the case has left an unnerving gap between the last confirmed sighting and where Saker’s body was recovered, raising basic questions about who saw him after he left the bar and how he moved through the area near Market, Valencia and Page.

Saker had deep ties to the Bay Area. He had moved to San Francisco in 2017, worked at Fisherman’s Wharf and was visiting from Los Angeles when he disappeared. Friends and former neighbors spent the weekend posting online in hopes of finding him before police confirmed his body had been located. That online urgency reflected how familiar he was to people who knew him here, and how quickly a recognizable face could disappear in a dense stretch of the city.

The geography matters. Martuni’s sits on Valencia Street, one of the Mission District’s main commercial drags, at the edge of a nightlife corridor that links the Mission, Mid-Market and the Tenderloin. SF Gay History describes Martuni’s as an LGBT piano bar that opened in 1996 and took over a site that had earlier housed Lily’s and Motorwerks, with live sing-alongs, showtunes and a long history in the city’s queer nightlife scene. A few blocks north and east, the Tenderloin has long been known for a history that mixes crime, refuge, entertainment, protest and activism.

The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner handles sudden, unexpected or violent deaths, including suspected suicides or homicides, which is part of the process in cases like this one as investigators work toward a formal determination. For San Francisco, the episode is a reminder that on a familiar Friday-night walk from Valencia Street to Market and Page, the city’s crowded streets can turn a routine exit into a search with no easy answers.