A travel log.. For bars..

In West Marin, the past lives on through dive bars

By Andrew Simmons

Before the bar opens on a recent weekday morning, men congregate outside the noble white facade of Smiley’s Schooner Saloon in Bolinas. One brown-bags a Budweiser and eats a tamale from the coffee stand across the street. Another sketches on paper, muttering calculations, tapping his pencil against the side of his face.

“One week,” says an approaching gray-haired woman, twirling her hands like Stevie Nicks.

“Till what,” says a burly mustachioed man in a camouflage hat.

“The solstice,” she says, extending her arms as if proudly presenting a tray of food.

“Oh,” he says.

“You know that whale behind my house?” she says, changing the subject. “When the scientists from the college got what they needed, someone came and cut it up with a chainsaw. Pushed the pieces out for the sharks.”

“Some fool cut up that whale with a chainsaw?”

“He left a piece behind,” she says. “And it’s getting skunky.”

“Haw,” the man laughs.

If one searches for local color in misty Bolinas, where the surfboards rattling out of car trunks provide a backbeat to morning bird calls, Smiley’s provides.

Enjoyed between hikes, surf sessions and farm stand visits, a “crawl” through the dive bars of rural Marin County feels almost healthy. From Smiley’s to the Old Western Saloon in Point Reyes Station to the Papermill Creek Saloon near Lagunitas, these bars are monuments to the past and functional gathering places for their present-day communities. Yet a boozy romp through time and space in scenic Marin quickly becomes a meditation on what’s at stake in a community that some fear may be swallowed, sharklike, by tourists and moneyed weekenders from nearby cities.

For the visitor, a bar like 166-year-old Smiley’s provides temporary escape. Worn, infused with the spirits of generations of carousers and dubious characters, such a bar, anchored in its legend, comforts because it feels authentic — real — and, despite changes in ownership over the years, essentially timeless.

During the week by daylight, Smiley’s is a quiet place for a craft beer and a few rounds of pool. The mirror behind the bar encourages a patron to stare himself down as he paws at the condensation filming his glass of Anchor. In such moments, he isn’t all that different from his 19th century predecessor. At night, especially on weekends, crowds come for the music, sometimes after nearby wedding parties. A few years ago, I watched young San Franciscans do Tequila shots and dance to a two-piece band tearing through Jimi Hendrix songs, and then Hendrix-influenced versions of songs Hendrix wasn’t alive to cover. On any given night, Smiley’s, which survived the 1906 earthquake and thrived in its aftermath, shakes with a vitality that, even when bolstered by electric guitars, exhumes its boisterous 19th century tavern’s soul.

Fourteen miles away, the Old Western Saloon occupies the ground floor of a building once home to a brothel. Model Conestoga wagons parade across the cabinet behind the bar. The wooden bar itself is as lined and cracked as the faces of the old dairy farmers and oystermen one imagines once bellied up to it. On weekend nights, women in designer dresses and sweaty suited men with shirttails hanging out — more wedding party survivors — cha-cha in front of the stage as a blues band plays, the dancers almost-tripping on the stove in the middle of the room. On a Wednesday morning, though, a manager-type works out the weekly schedule over a glass of wine. He makes a rich, balanced, Worcestershire-heavy Bloody Mary, a drink often ruined by too much horseradish or vodka. A young bartender with a shaved head is off to run errands, but before she leaves, he shows her video of a Roger Waters show he’s just attended. “Here’s when the mushrooms kicked in,” he cackles as the music presumably swells.

A woman wanders in and orders a Coke with Rose’s lime juice. She points up at a framed picture of Prince Charles petting a dog at the entrance to the bar. “You know Prince Charles was here?”

“Yeah,” growls the manager-type. “That’s my dog he’s petting.”

Prince Charles’ 2005 visit is recent history at a bar that formerly served as a bootlegger stash house. Legend also has it that locals used to ride their horses into the bar. Back in Bolinas, Smiley’s has a vivid history, too, of course. In the 1920s the town was a playground for rum-runners, including, for a summer, as some stories go, Al Capone. One wants desperately to envision a sneering Capone chewing on a cigar and shaking his ring-laden fist at a blue whale carcass spoiling his beach view. Back then, the windows of Smiley’s were painted black, with a barbershop chair visible through one that was left clear. A second door led customers to clandestine drinks instead of haircuts.

Up the road from a farm stand on Sir Francis Drake Boulevard, the Papermill was a general store in 1907, and a soda fountain during Prohibition. In the late 1930s it became a tavern, and in 1967, when Thomasina Wilson, the current owner, bought the bar — then called the Lodge — it was a hangout for Janis Joplin and her Big Brother and the Holding Company bandmates. Guitarist Elvin Bishop and members of the Grateful Dead passed through, too, a reminder (if the solstice revelers don’t serve as evidence) that 1960s counterculture adds a layer of less distant history to the venues that originally popped up to serve farmers, seafarers and train travelers.

A manager for the past 20 years, Jared Litwin says the Papermill remains “unchanged.” He is talking about the interior, which is mostly original. Pictures of W.C. Fields and a cigarette-brandishing James Dean peer down at the pool table. A piano sits in the main room. At the same time, the neon signs, flat-screens and ATM machine call attention to the century. On my first visit to the cash-only bar, the ATM fizzled, which I interpreted as the building’s symbolic rejection of newfangled technology.

“I always thought we could be doing better with music and social media,” says Litwin, who has helped Thomasina’s daughter, Rebecca Moore, revamp the bar’s reputation as a destination for craft beer and cover-free rock, blues and country. “It’s been fun, a game almost, doing that while keeping the vibe right for the locals, who sometimes like a quiet place. It’s about finding the right balance.”

Moore points out that with the renewed focus on music, the bar is returning to its ’60s heyday. She echoes Litwin: “The people who grew up or gravitated here don’t leave. And generations gather here for conversation.”

“I’ve always been fascinated by old buildings,” says Leila Monroe, a coastal-conservation lawyer who bought Smiley’s in 2015. Monroe grew up in the back of a Gold Rush-era restaurant her father owned. “This place is iconic,” she says of Smiley’s. “In the early morning, when I’m the first one here, cleaning, opening the bar, I love the energy reverberating off the walls, the feeling of centuries of people being in this space.”

Like Moore and Litwin recasting the Papermill as a music hot spot, Monroe sees Smiley’s as “more than a place to get a beer.” She wants the bar to be a living room, a community center, which is a designation of some weight in Bolinas. Monroe’s nonprofit hosts a residency program for musicians. A writing workshop meets in the upstairs “captain’s quarters.”

“I try to be very sensitive,” says Monroe, who is happy to abide by Bolinas’ ban on advertising. “The other weekend, thousands of cars streamed into West Marin. There was terrible congestion. They weren’t coming to Smiley’s; they were coming to surf and hang out by the ocean, and they were upset about parking. We aren’t contributing to the tension (when it occurs), but we look for constructive ways to alleviate it. When we have a big show, we sell half the tickets at the bar so people here have access. The bar has a strong local constituency, and we have to walk that line.”

For nonresidents, these Marin communities rich in natural beauty and charm can feel precious, otherworldly — like movie sets. Monroe is quick to point out that Bolinas is a working town facing a serious affordable-housing shortage, thanks in part to the many vacation homes that go unused much of the year. “I struggle to find staff that can afford to live within an hour of here,” she says. That’s a reality, but probably not one that weekenders contemplate when they’re on Highway 1, hoping to find a parking spot.

An hour after hearing about the whale, I’m drinking my second Scrimshaw at Smiley’s, watching the news on the TV positioned high on the wall.

A man in motorcycle gear, shades propped up on his head crowned with gray hair, ambles into the bar and examines the TV. He is tanned and smiling.

“I don’t watch the news,” he adds. “It’s always bad stuff.”

And then he’s gone.

Perhaps unfairly, I consider squinting like the cliche of the disgruntled local I am not.

The historic dives I favor are self-contained ecosystems regularly swarmed by visitors who may appreciate their history but do not necessarily understand or respect the role these saloons play for locals. There is always some tension between the present and the past, but also tension between the local reality and those visiting to escape their own — be it on their doorsteps or in the news. The impulse to escape is natural; over the decades it has brought many people to this part of California. But one person’s refuge may be another’s home, and it’s important to appreciate that with each cold pilsner and perfect Bloody Mary.