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1970s: Sam Varela Remembers the Galway Bay Inn

In the 1970s a fun place to go to for Sunday brunch was the Galway Bay Inn in Moss Beach. The owner himself, Michael Murphy, was often there, serving the customers.

Do you remember the restaurant?

I wish I’d kept the napkins with the four leaf clover logo. The Galway Bay Inn overlooked the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve; we’d get a seat by the windows; it was a lovely way to spend a Sunday morning. Do you know where it was?

In the early 1970s the low key Galway Bay Inn became the upbeat Moss Beach Distillery when several young, high energy guys bought the historic prohibition roadhouse, among them Dave Andrews and Sam Varela.

(Photo: I believe both Dave Andrews & Sam Varela are standing outside the Distillery; sorry the image is so small.)

Dave and Sam were personable and easy going; they soon had a big loyal following. Such a special, loyal following that every year there is a reunion in Princeton-by-the-Sea.

Here’s what Sam Varela, former owner of the Moss Beach Distillery remembers:

Back in the very late 60’s a drunken Irishman by the name of Michael Murphy, who worked for the Telephone Company, spent so much time drinking in Dominics in HMB, that one day he woke up there, and decided that since it cost him so much to hang out there, he might as well buy the place.

So he did, but not having much money, and being a real tight—– Irishman, he converted it to an Irish restaurant by simply adding an O to the name thus creating O’Dominics. Do you remember ?

After a few years in the business, he sold the O’, and worked out a deal for Vic Torres’ place with Pearl [Torres], a restaurant which was located over a cove that reminded Murphy of Galway Bay ( beats me ). Thus was born the Galway Bay Inn an Irish restaurant.

In early 1973, I was diving for Abs near Flat Rock, right below “Weebies” (Sp ?) place, which I think is where “Goofus, the duck” lived. This is a Sunday about noon; I didn’t live on the Coastside then, so not too familiar with where I was. I was thirsty from diving, and wanted a beer, looked at the building , couldn’t figure what it was, so checked it out, and by golly there was a Bar in there, but not one customer in the whole place.

To make a long story short, 9 months later I was behind the Bar and “Goofus” was in my ice bin behind the Bar with two of my friends, Jerry and Mark, cracking up.

October of 1973 the Moss Beach Distillery was born, as was the world famous “Tamale Jerry enterprise.” As well as a classic Streaker with a very cold butt ! God those were fun times ! The “Still” today is geared for Tourists, not locals and lacks the Color of the early days. There are too many memories to list but I know you can recount many, I did spend time with Fannie and Frank Torres at their home close to the Still and enjoyed their stories. (Photo below: Fanny & Frank Torres; behind them the “lost” painting of Frank Torres wearing suit & tie, with Devil’s Slide in the background, courtesy Millie Muller.)

Does anybody know who “Goofus the duck” was? And what about the Tamale Jerry enterprise? I know Sam is referring to photographer Jerry Koontz,

(Photo: Jerry Koontz & Doug St. Denis in the 1970s.)
and I do remember Jerry selling homemade tamales from a cart.

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Sam? Are you there? Peter Adams remembers the good times. He and his wife send you a big hug.

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Sanchez Adobe Was Once Pacifica’s “Crime Shack”

Image: (Watercolor by Coastside artist Galen Wolf or one of his students, probably one of his students.)

By June Morrall (I wrote this in 1998)

It’s hard to imagine that Pacifica, a Coastside community of neat neighborhoods, was once a dumping ground for victims of the criminal underworld.

The organized underworld of 1920s Prohibition-era San Francisco consisted of criminals who specialized in bootlegging, gambling, the “white slave trade,” and all the other vices that spilled onto next door neighbor Pacifica.

Isolated and often hidden under a net of fog, the two-story “Old Adobe,” originally the site of a mission outpost in present-day Pacifica, was better known to law enforcement officials as the sleazy “Crime Shack.”

The house was built with sun-dried bricks by Francisco Sanchez, the grantee to the Rancho San Pedro. Sanchez resided in the fine adobe between 1846 and 1862, but 50 years later, surly armed guards were posted around the dilapidated structure, the favorite rendezvous for criminals gathering in Pacifica’s remote Pedro Valley.

Rumor had that the toughest lawbreakers felt safe hiding in the “Crime Shack.” Today, the beautifully restored Sanchez Adobe on Linda Mar Blvd remains an authentic reminder, perhaps the only reminder, of Spanish-American days on the Coastside.

No one knew more about criminal activity at the Crime Shack than Colma Constable S.A. Landini. At the adobe in 1920, Landini led police officers in a shootout with a band of liquor smugglers. On another occasion, the constable arrested members of the Baciagalipi gang for robbing and murdering an elderly man. Landini also broke up a “white slave” vice ring, rescuing four young women from the sinister network.

One woman, a regular at the Crime Shack, told Constable Landini that she could identify San Francisco mob leader Charles Valento as the murderer of her husband. Valento also had been identified as the killer of legendary San Francisco Police Detective Miles Jackson.

A few months earlier, Detective Jackson had been the lead investigator of Dr. Galen Hickok’s “abortion mill,” housed in the famous “castle of mystery” high above Pacifica’s Salada Beach surf. The “castle,” originally built for Ocean Shore Railroad attorney Henry H. McCloskey, grandfather of former Congressman “Pete” McCloskey, still stands overlooking Pacifica’s busy Municipal Fishing Pier.

Three days after testifying for prosecutors in the Hickok trial, held under the dome of the Redwood City Courthouse, Detective Jackson was gunned down by gangster Charles Valento in a brutal shootout in Santa Rosa. Unable to elude the authorities, Valento was captured and jailed.

Revenge for Detective Jackson’s death came swiftly. In Wild West vigilante style, a party of 100 masked men in 15 automobiles burst into the Santa Rosa jail, seized Valento and two other gang members, hanging all three on a tree overlooking the Odd Fellows cemetery.

Constable Landini, who had assisted Jackson with the Hickok case, was deeply familiar with Pacifica’s terrain. He knew every hidden valley and cow path; he knew every bend and turn of twisty Pedro Mountain Road. These skills proved invaluable later when the constable led a manhunt in Pacifica for Colma priest, the Reverend Patrick E. Heslin, abducted from his parish house in the summer of 1921.

On food and horseback, Landini and his men fanned out from Colma, heading south toward Pedro Mountain Road. The manhunt was meticulous. After threading through the mass of scrub and thick underbrush high on the side of the mountain, the posse approached a “squalid shack” at the end of a narrow foot trail. Near the shack stood two horses, saddled, with a rifle holster hanging from each saddle. A search of the shack came up empty; the riders of the horses were nowhere to be found, nor was there a trace of Father Heslin.

Constable Landini picked up the scent of Father Heslin’s abductor while interviewing a Salada Beach restaurant owner. Landini had a description of the kidnapper, and the restaurateur confirmed seeing the man, his clothes, gritty with sand.

The clue led Landini to Father Heslin’s shallow grave located beneath a Salada Beach billboard advertising a pancake mix.

Charged with murder in the first degree was William A. Hightower, a cook and former manual laborer for the Ocean Shore Railroad. In a sensational trial held at the Redwood City courthouse, Hightower was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. At the time of Hightower’s trial, there were unconfirmed reports that he had ties to the underworld of Sacramento.

Five years later, when the body of a young woman, wrapped in a sheet, was found in “O’Malley’s Gulch” near Salada Beach, police confirmed that the victim was the “Moth Girl,” part of San Francisco’s underworld. A police search of the “Moth Girl’s” apartment–where the last recording she played on her portable Victrola was the jazz favorite, “Charleston”–led investigators to believe she led a double life: one as a conscientious piano student, the other as a player in the city’s dangerous night life. Continue reading “Sanchez Adobe Was Once Pacifica’s “Crime Shack””

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Some Questions for a Coastside Artist


Some questions for Coastside artist Linda Montalto Patterson, whose latest work is currently on display at Moon News Bookstore in Half Moon Bay.

Halfmoonbaymemories.com: Does your latest work have a name or theme?

Linda: The new series doesn’t have a formal name. I consider it a garden series. There are 7 paintings in all They are each comprised of two panels that hang next to one another. Three of the paintings are hanging separately but not as a unit due to the space in Moon News.

HMBM: What’s your day like?

Linda: My typical day starts with a look at the ocean, and Of course you can hear the waves pounding. Our house shakes with the waves . I often feel we are living on a boat and the views from the garden reinforce that feeling.

I can be way in the back of the property sitting under the trees, and look out, and there is the ocean, and I feel as though I am on a island of my making floating on the water.

My day continues with a stroll through the garden. This is an important time for me, a time of reflection and appraisal.

How is my garden doing? What changes need I make? What is blooming? What changes have occurred over the night?

I begin my day with either working in the garden or painting, or taking care of a wedding setup or doing a landscape design. I work with local architects and also individual clients and do landscape concepts for them.

HMBM: Do you love living in Miramar?

Linda: I do love living in Miramar . We have lived there since 1984.

HMBM: Miramar is a little known place—Even today the Coastside retains a little bit of its identity as a “remote place.” You got here when the word “secluded” meant something.

Linda: We moved to the Coastside in 78 . We lived in the “Old School House” on 6th and Le Conte in Montara, now known as Montara Gardens. We lived there when the post office was in the small building at the end of 6th street and mail was sent to us marked:

“Linda & Richard
Old School House Montara.”

It was a different world, yet such a short time ago. We lived in the old apartment on the first floor of the School House. We rented it sight unseen. We were recently back from Spain; Richard was working on a Master’s at San Francisco State, and we had a big German Shepherd dog.

We couldn’t find a place in the city that would allow us to rent with a dog. So on a very wet, rainy night we heard about a space at the Montara School House, and Richard got into the phone booth at the peanut & fish bait shop on HWY 92 and called Colleen Fulller . She said she didn’t care if we had a horse as long as we paid the rent. We made an agreement and the next week moved in.

HMBM: Did you have a studio in the School House?

Linda: The School House was enormous. We had the whole first floor at out disposal. i taught art
classes on the stage in the theatre room, and my art studio was what is now the “mirrored room.”

Wild horses from Montana were corralled in the fenced area which is now the garden space around the school house. I’d paint at night and the horses would stare into the lights of my studio with their mournful eyes.

HMBM: Then you moved to Miramar?

Linda: In 84 we moved to Miramar and I loved the change. I used to ride my bike from Montara to HMB everyday to work for the local Ophthalmologist Melto Goumas.

I’d pass through Miramar and delight in the sunshine, and then work my way back into the fog of Montara each night.

Miramar sits in what is considered the sun belt of the coast. I often see the fog bank shrouding Princeton Point to the north and the “Ritz” to the south, while we are in the sun.

I worked for Goumas for 10 years and became an optician, and medical assistant. I enjoyed it. We did minor surgery in office and I loved assisting.

HMBM: What makes you the happiest?

Linda: Probably working in my art studio; the French doors are wide open, and I can take in all of the garden. I can hear the ocean, and the occasional sound of Michael Powers working on one of his stone creations, and I’m in the “creative zone” of the neighborhood and I feel all is well with the world.

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