The Sand Bar

1977

It is late summer of 1977. Until this minute, right now, if someone would have said to me, "When did you move to California?" I would have to think, calculate and come up with an answer. I would have said?...hmmmm 1978?? Obviously not top of the mind, but I just figured out it was the summer of 1977 and here is the story.

I graduated high school in 1973. I broke my neck and back in a swimming/diving accident days after graduation. This put me in a halo cast until 1974 when I could finally start University, months after everyone else I had gone to school with. So January 1974, in a partial body cast, I begin my freshman year at UWSP. Fast forward to 1977 and me ending up going to San Diego with my “first love” who I met while at UWSP, my first year, and who told me he was dieing of leukemia. This was his last wish, that I go to California with him. This story in itself is an entire blog that you would read and say, NO WAY WERE YOU THIS STUPID!!!

But alas. I was. He is still alive and well, living in Marshfield, Wisconsin.

So after a week or two of travel, when we finally drive into San Diego, in MY car, we end up following signs that say “TO THE BEACH”. “The beach” these signs took us to was, at the time, one of the 5 beaches in San Diego, Ocean Beach. OB is what the locals called it, and still do. I have always had a really great feeling about OB. In the past 30 years I have been back there many times. Maurice and I have been there together, and I have been there alone and with friends and family. Every time I went back I felt the need to live there again. I still do have connections. I still have a dear friend there, Laurie, who I met in 1978. Laurie is a real honest to goodness Californian. Not many of those!! I think she is 5th generation. Since I left, long ago, my sister now lives in San Diego, too. Whenever I go back to OB the vibe is the same. It is frozen in time. The beach is retro and so cool.. Except for the million dollar houses that are now replacing the small, 300 sq ft beach cottages it hasn‘t changed.

My bar in OB was The Sunshine Company. I spent most of my free time there. As did my “friends”. It was a surreal time of my life. Beer, partying, fires on the beach, all the things you would expect San Diego in the 70’s to be. When I lived there OB proudly claimed it was the drug and VD capital of the world. The Hell’s Angels hung out there. Quite a place for a truly innocent girl from Wisconsin to find herself.

My 4 month trip to San Diego ended, as was the plan, in December and I went back to Wisconsin. I arrived for Christmas, and I was to do my student teaching (Special Ed) in January. After a short time my family soon realized I was not staying in Wisconsin, nor was I doing my student teaching. Instead, January took me back to OB and The Sunshine Company. I was home there. My “family” was there and for the three years I lived in the San Diego area I always felt safe and secure at The Sunshine Company.

In 1989 I excitedly took Maurice there. He had heard all the stories and I was going to sit there and re-live them with him. It had been a couple of years since I had been back to San Diego and the quaint and charming neighborhood bar called The Sunshine Company now had big screen TV’s and it was three times bigger. More of a sports bar, than a really cool neighborhood hang out. I was so sad it had changed. The strangest thing was that the same bartender was there, Tom, from New York. A little more wrinkled and a lot more worn, but it was the guy I used to have crush on 14 years before. That was bizarre. I guess for Tom this really was home. But it wasn’t only Tom who must have felt this way. The place was filled with people who had been there for a decade or two. Not that I recognized them but you could tell. They were beach people. Locals who dress the same and have the same long hair and attitude they did in the 70’s. Since I had moved away and now came back to visit I realized these people are trying to maintain their youth. I get it. Part of me yearned for this as well. I am not sure why. The lack of responsibility and the ability to do whatever you want, anytime?? I really loved this time of my life and was totally disappointed when Tom, the bartender of the Sunshine Company, was surrounded by big screen TVs. I took this as a person assault.

2009 Baja Sur

My first time in the Sand Bar, named because it has a sand floor, was awkward. Ya it was filled with Americans and Canadians but I guess I am not a drinking-in-a-bar-all-day kind of person anymore. That is the kind of place the Sand Bar is. It just did not feel “cozy“.

Maurice went there a few times when he was here alone, building our future. He had met lots of guys there and they also have all you can eat pizza on Wednesday night for 79 pesos! What a deal. So Maurice takes me in and I felt strange. The bar is 90% filled with men…I should have loved that!! They range in age from 18 to probably 70. They all have the same things in common. No one is wearing a wrist watch. They all have shorts on. Some are barefoot, the rest have sandals on. Some of the guys, most proud of their physique, do not wear shirts. They have long hair and sit around the bar telling stories, drinking lots of alcohol and slapping each other on the backs. They are a happy group and most of them are there every single day.

I finally had an epiphany after my third visit there. This place was The Sunshine Company!!! It is the same. The same kind of people are there. Even though many are from California, they come from all over the US and Canada, and what they have in common is they all have the same reasons for being there.

All of a sudden I got catapulted in time back to my youth!! I would hang there every day, too, if I was here in Mexico to set myself up for rehab. Instead I look forward to stopping in there a couple times a month. Maybe for pizza night, and saying, “Hi Gabe, how ya doing!!” Gabe is the, 20 something bartender, who was raised in the Baja, but is from California originally. Will he still be there in 20 years??!!! While there, Maurice and I chat to a few people, and gossip about the rest.

This is why the Sand Bar is special to me. It’s kind of like living the California dream all over again and than stepping outside into our wonderful new reality...all in the same day.

That really makes me smile.