Miramar Beach – Page 3 – Half Moon Bay Memories

December 17, 2006

Langston Bowen R.I.P.: A Very Funny Recollection By Fayden Holmboe

Lang Bowen’s Driving Lesson Dilemma

Story by Fayden

Miramar Beach, circa 1920s

Langston Bowen (most of us called him “Lang” back then) passed away about a month ago; he lived out here for a long time, and the most memorable thing I remember about Lang was a driving lesson gone bad.

So to set the stage, Lang lived at the south end of the road the Miramar beach Inn sits on.This house is now known as the “Hastings House”. After the “outer” breakwater was installed, the currents changed and ripped the beach down dramatically, so instead of walking straight out of the front of one’s house onto the beach, you had to climb down a cliff wherever access was possible. It looks similar to how it is
today, the difference is they hadn’t put the rocks in yet to curb further erosion.

I think that happened in 1970.

Some of these new cliffs stood fifteen feet or more between the road and the sand.

As memory serves me, Lang had one of the first Toyota land cruisers, a large station wagon- sized- four wheel- drive. He volunteered to help this kid Steve learn how to drive. Teaching someone to drive
is a charitable act at best, while at the same time putting one’s life, health and material wealth into a unpredictable teenager’s hands.

Apparently Steve hit the gas a little too hard backing out of the driveway, drove himself, Lang and the landcruiser out of the driveway and across the road a little too quickly to brake. Slowly………
slowly the car tilted until it sat on its back window and bumper facing down into the sand, its windshield facing skyward. It looked kinda like the space shuttle at the launch ramp in Florida .

After all this happened, I came walking upon the scene described. I looked down over the front of the car (I was standing on the road) through the windshield at a very puzzled Lang and Steve gazing back upward at me. Lang, whenever puzzled and unnerved, had a smile with enough teeth to look like the front grill of a fancy Lincoln Continental. With this smile he welcomed me to the scene not seeming to be terribly upset although somewhat bewildered.

So I asked Lang what in hindsight was an absurd question! “Do you need any help”?

Wth his Lincoln Continental “full-teethed” grin dazzling me and the heavens beyond, he laughed and replied “Uh……..no……….no……NO……we’re fine”!

So believing him, I walked away and went on in life with whatever I was doing.

Now, remember there were no cell phones. I have no idea to this day how they got out of the car (but they did), I have no idea how the car made it back onto the road (but it did), and we laughed about it later.

Ahhhhhh, the end of the sixties, we all did inhale, and no none of uswere running for president.

December 8, 2006

Ah ha! How The Bach Dancing & Dynamite Society Got Its Name

This is how Pete Douglas explained it to me in 1979–

“There was another spontaneous party going on. We were playing jazz and some of the people who visited were engineers from some of the electronic outfits down the Peninsula. And they got hold of this dynamite–and so like the boys they were, they have to try it out. I didn’t pay much attention to their interest in the dynamite. I was partying and dancing. So they disappeared on the beach. Fortunately they didn’t do it right in front of the house.

“And like I often do, after running the record player a little energetically, I wanted something a little laid back. I had classical records. I put on the Bach Brandenburg Concerto as a kind of relief from this jazz. We were feeling happy and continued to dance to Bach. Nothing is more powerful than Bach. Bach is very dramatic. When I heard the dynamite go off it sounded slightly muffled. But it reverberated very big down in Half Moon Bay–but the sheriff never go on to it….

“Bob Swift, the local science teacher, coined the phrase, Bach Dancing & Dynamite Society.”

December 6, 2006

1959: When the “Beat Scene” Hit Miramar Beach, Part V, Conclusion

What most astonished Pete Douglas was the appearance of artist Michael McCracken with his entourage in tow. McCracken, who resembled 1950s actor Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., ws well known on the beat scene in San Francisco. Pete says that for awhile McCracken was “the beat leader in Princeton…along with these legendary characters right out of the book ‘On The Road.’ When these characters traveled down Highway 1, “they fell in at Princeton. He (McCracken) was what you’d call hard core on the scene…”

McCracken’s “scene” was at Princeton’s Abalone Factory, an old wood frame plant that once had processed fresh abalone. McCracken painted abstract floor-to-ceiling murals and lived there with his fellow free spirit friends. Also sharing the cramped space were goats that clomped across the floor and exotic birds that swooped and flew through the air.

Pete Douglas says that he was carefully watched by the paranoid McCracken who “suspected me because I was employed. That was enough right there. As a probation officer, that was even worse.”

On that hot Sunday afternoon–while Michael McCracken and friends romped and rolled in the weeds that grew in front of the Ebb Tide Cafe and the Brazilian soundtrack from Black Orpheus blasted in the background–someone arrived with the svelte Miss San Mateo, a beauty whom Pete says became Karen Black, the well known movie star. He remembered her wearing the kind of bathing attire suitable for a beauty competition, “out of character with the raunchy scene, posing on the picnic table.”

Into the mix, the sociology teacher arrived, his troop of open-eyed students trailing behind him.

“They arrive,” mused Pete, “with these cases of beer. Finally we coaxed them in, and they were foolish enough to start bringing in their beer–which never even reached the front door.”

By then the scene had become what Douglas defines as “a hard party. Carrying on. Arguing. It was going on indoors and outdoors everywhere. There were even people on the roof.” Pete had never seen such a “totally involved party” in his life, “in which there weren’t passive spectators. They were oblivious to anything going on.”

They were oblivious even to the cars accumulating on unpaved, rocky Mirada Road–cars that moved slower and slower, finally grinding to a halt.

Gridlock.

“One of my tricks was to go out and direct traffic,” laughed Douglas. But his gallant efforts were hopeless. “By now I’m dancing and I look out and I see we were ringed. There was a crowd just standing there and watching us.” He says some of those watching were people who had abandoned their vehicles. What else was there to do but join the party?

And how did the party end?

Pete Douglas told me that he doesn’t remember.

But it was the end of a decade–and, in a way, the end of innocence. The horror of the Vietnam War loomed in the future–and the “beats” of the 1950s would usher in their socially committed brothers and sisters of the 60s.

End

December 6, 2006

1959: When the “Beat Scene” Hit Miramar Beach, Part IV

Armed with a sociology degree from UC Santa Barbara, Pete Douglas set out to create what he called “a spontaneous scene” at the Ebb Tide Cafe at Miramar Beach–(today the home of a reborn Ebb Tide Cafe and the longtime location of the Bach Dancing & Dynamite Society).

Surrounding the Ebb Tide was a knee-high fence and within it a picnic table. On weekends Pete dangled the speakers of his hi-fi out the windows–and played big, round 78 rpm records like the lush soundtrack to the hit movie “Black Orpheus”.

“And,” Pete told me, “I used to sit out there in my captain’s hat and occasionally wave in some interesting people driving by. I didn’t have any money–I had to create my own social scene. Where else could be better than Miramar Beach?”

People were everywhere on that very warm fall Sunday in 1959 and Pete Douglas recalls it as a magical day. Here was the Beat Generation, fictionalized in books, creating the real thing on our beautiful Coastside.

On the other side of the hill, on the Peninsula, the temperature had soared and thousands of people hopped into their cars and headed for what they expected to be the air-conditioned Coastside.

They were disappointed: Instead of relief, the stream of vehicles caused what was then a rare occurrence–a major traffic jam on Highways 1 and 92. Some of the more adventurous drivers glimpsed the odd assortment of people “cavorting and pirouetting” on Mirada Road and veered toward the beach.

….To be Continued…

Photo: For years Ron Swinnert was a familiar face at the Bach Society.

December 5, 2006

1959: When the “Beat Scene” Hit Miramar Beach, Part III

“The idea of running a little joint appealed to me because, after all, the fantasy of every former beatnik or would-be beat type was an espresso shop,” Pete Douglas recalled. “Not that I had that directly in mind–but that was the fantasy, to drop-out and run your own little joint…”

Pete told me that “the stereotype of the laid-back beat was to have his coffee shop with cards, poetry books, chess, etc.”

In 1959 Mirada Road, sometimes called “the strip”, still retained a flavor from rumrunning days when the Coastside was “wide open.” The once stunning Palace Miramar Hotel stood brooding at the southern end of the road–while at the northern end the Ocean Beach Tavern (the present-day Miramar Beach Inn) was a roadhouse with official Prohibition era bona fides.

In the middle of the road stood Douglas’ tiny coffee shop. It had once been home to the notorious Drift Inn Cafe, where, Pete said, the bartendress often passed out dead drunk and kept an oak club handy so she could bonk undisciplined customers on the head.

…To be continued…

December 5, 2006

1959: When the “Beat Scene” Hit Miramar Beach, Part II

On that hot Sunday in 1959, Pete Douglas sasid Mirada Road looked like a “poor man’s movie set–with crazies auditioning for the roles. It was the kind of hard-leather, levi, greasy, bearded, crazy hat kind of scene.”

It was also a very democratic scene, with every strata of society represented. Joining the revelers were “playboys from Marin”, who stepped out of their sleek, candy apple red Corvette and went arm-in-arm with “heavily made-up chorus girls from the City.” One fellow wore an “authentic Cavalry uniform” with a saber tucked in the belt.

Douglas was looking forward to witnessing the reaction of the sociology teacher and his herd of students due to arrive for a lesson in “Something a little different on the beach.”

A family man at the time, Pete Douglas said he was leading a double life. On weekdays he worked as a “respectable county official (probation officer), wearing a gray flannel suit and button-down collar.” On weekends he shed the establishment image for a uniform including beltless levis (“It was not cool to wear a belt.”), sneakers, black turtleneck and an old captain’s hat. Appropriately attired, he presided over a “Sunday afternoon drop in, open-house-kind-of-thing.” The Ebb Tide was a place where people “fell in” and new people met.

…To be continued…

December 5, 2006

1959: When the “Beat Scene” Hit Miramar Beach, Part I

[Prologue: To the young bohemians, the unpleasant message of the 1950s was that it was not the individual that was important, it was the individual’s possessions. The bohemians chose to live in abandoned warehouse lofts, took menial jobs–or didn’t work at all.

They were fervently anti-establishment. And jazz music was their religion. Many came from middle class homes and rattled the nerves and sensibilities of their elders as they spewed a mumbo jumbo about “acting out” and unleashing their inhibitions. They were members of the Beat Generation who patterned their lives on characters in Jack Kerouac’s book, “On The Road.” They revered the existentialist French philosopher Jean Paul Sarte and hung out at the City Lights bookstore near the cafes in North Beach in San Francisco.]

Photo: The Douglas brothers, Pete and Jack, hang loose at the Ebb Tide Cafe.

On a balmy Sunday afternoon in the fall of 1959, a ragtag crew of pranksters spilled out of the funky Ebb Tide Cafe onto dusty Mirada Road overlooking the sparkling Pacific Ocean at Miramar Beach. They were madly gyrating to the soundtrack from the celebrated movie, “Black Orpheus”–whose spectacular backdrop was the kaleidoscopic carnival in Rio de Janiero.

“It’s the music of the slums on the hills overlooking Rio de Janiero. In the hot sun, there’s nothing like it,” Pete Douglas, concert manager of the acclaimed Miramar Beach jazz house, the Bach Dancing & Dynamite Society, told me in 1979. Twenty years earlier the thin and wiry Douglas was in his late 20s–and the owner of the funky Ebb Tide Cafe–a weekend coffee shop and hangout for part-time Coastside beatniks.

…to be continued…

July 3, 2006

The Coastside’s Other Ghost

The Blue Lady has been moving chairs and tables late at night in Moss Beach for decades earning her the reputation as the Coastsideâs top ghost.

But there is another ghost, the one we donât hear anything about, the one who also, in the end, raises many perplexing questions.

Iâm talking about the ghost at Miramar.

No sightings of this lesser known ghost had ever been reported until Albert and wife Eva Schmidt moved their restaurant business from Burlingame to Miramar.

It was after WWII, and the building they bought was the old Palace Miramar Hotel. During the war, U.S. soldiers used the Palace Miramar as a headquarters and they were pretty lax on maintenance. Albert had a lot of clean-up and restoration on his hands.

First, he renamed the place âAlbertâsâ?. Then, he found the ornate bar, gleaming chandeliers and other heavy dark furniture at the Spreckels estate sale.

Not only was the hotel worn out, but the historic wooden pier that once jutted 200 feet into the sea, had been left to rot. When Albert arrived, the pier had been reduced to stumps. While sipping at the bar, the Miramar locals guessed when the pilings would vanish forever.

I donât know what Albert was like in Burlingame, but he was a quirky figure in Miramar, an eclectic cook who whipped up chateaubriand for breakfast and ham and eggs at midnight. Albert and Eva Schmidt also built up a loyal following ranging from the locals to important politicos who loved their crab cioppino.

It was about this time that the âSecond Level Apparitionâ? that haunted Albertâs made its presence known. With an eerie shiver, the help reported sightings.

The chandeliers swung and tinkled as if agitated by a strong wind– but the windows were closed. Far more unsettling was the hooded, caped transparent face that peered through windows, there one second, gone the next.

And finally, what was going on in rooms six and seven?

When the pair of connecting rooms was unoccupied, lights could be seen beneath the doors. And when the doors were opened to see what the source of the light was, candles were found burning brightly.

Who lit the candles in rooms six and seven? Nobody knew.

Who lit the candles? Who swung the chandeliers? What was the hooded, caped thing at the windows?

Who was this âSecond Level Apparitionâ?? Man or woman? What is its story and why was it haunting Albertâs?

The only explanations seemed otherworldly. Remember, it is said that a ghost is a tortured soul searching for peace.

There are many theories: Was it one of the soldiers, a guest at the hotel, a fisherman on the pier, a passenger on the train, or someone who suffered an agonizing death during prohibition?

Most perplexing of al, what happened to the âSecond Level Apparitionâ? ghost when Albertâs burned in the 1960s?

Did the ghost find peace when the Albertâs hotel was destroyed by fire or did it move elsewhere?

Attention folks in Miramar: If you have any unexplained, strange activities in your home or business, please let me know.

Top photo: Albert’s, courtesy Joe Clement

May 15, 2006

Birth of the Ebb Tide Cafe: Interview w/Pete Douglas Part 4 (1979)

June: And so then you ran it as a café.

Pete: For about a year after I got it. I was still working for the county probation department. I worked for about four years before I was canned on a technicality. I won’t get into the politics…So I was working…I was living a double life you know. I was going over the hill being a respectable official. Even wearing a button down collar.

But over here, you know, we were…the difference in my dress was the fact that I had tennis shoes on more often.

I guess it was around 1958—even though I was working we had to do this little business thing. You know, we were just going to have hamburgers and coffee and whatever. A sandwich shop needs a beer license. That was all I wanted was a beer license.

I was going to bring the matter up to the probation department. And there is no law against a probation officer having a booze license as there is for police officers, by the way. No law against it.

Right away they got all upset over there—invented policy to say I couldn’t have one.
None the less we opened up. We made good hamburgers….

We just opened as a social thing, that’s all, no money in it. We ran it for about a year, a year-and-a-half, weekends only

We gradually met some people and they became my friends. Speaking of some of the early hanger-outers, there’s some still on the coast, one of them, Bill Bragg, do you know him?

June: Not sure.

Pete: Bill Bragg and his wife, Jackie. There were other couples like that. I won’t get into that. But that’s all it ended up being—they always knew they could fall in on the weekends, we were open, so to speak.

There were constant parties, lots of parties.

About that time, early 1959, I was a probation officers and I got a guy referred to me, his name was Pat Briggs. He got busted for stealing baloney in a supermarket.

At that time we only handled felony cases—but I got him and he was only 19-years-old. He was going to San Mateo College. When I was interviewing him and laughing at the police report, about stealing baloney and wondering why he was even here. I asked him what his interests were. He did play saxophone and he was being very straight with me.

I said, ‘Oh, yeah,’ what kind of sax? And he said baritone sax.

‘What are you, a poor man Jerry Mulligan?’ I said. He looked like Jerry Mulligan. So, I said I don’t want you on probation. I’m not going to recommend probation. I’ll recommend a fine and forget it. I said, why don’t you come out and play [at the Ebb Tide Café] sometime?

A few months later Pat Briggs was on the phone a Saturday night about 11 o’clock we were having our usual party. And here comes Pat. He says, ‘I picked up some good players in a band that’s coming through town.’

I said, ‘You want to come down?’

He came down, two guys dressed in suits. They came in and set up in that little room down the hall.

One, two, three,–wham! That started the whole live music scene.

End

The 4-part 1979 interview with Pete Douglas, Bach Dancing & Dynamite Society was taped and later transcribed by Linda Goetz, Coastside Secretarial. Don’t worry, I interviewed Pete many times and there is more detail to come.

May 12, 2006

The Fantasy: Interview with Pete Douglas (1979) Part III

(At this point, Pete had moved to Menlo Park with his wife, Pat, and their daughter, Linda).

June: And then you moved to the Coastside?

Pete: Well, to give you a little background on that, I was going nuts in Menlo Park; you know, isolated, we didnât know anybody. You are socially in, or you are nowhere, you know Menlo Park. I like Palo Alto, but I wasnât happy with the job, that was it.

It was the summer of 1957, a hot day in Menlo Park, and it was night, and I thought: I have to get out of here. So the light bulb flashed on and it was Iâve got to get back to the beach and everything will be all rightâespecially after a year-and-a-half of Vacaville; it was– I just had to get back to the beach.

That very next day I grabbed Linda (Peteâs daughter) and tore out to Half Moon Bay looking for something on the beach. Now, I had only been out there once or twice, and like most people, I had no idea what was around.

Then I drove to Miramar and saw this road, and I crossed the bridge and saw the old Miramar Hotel and kept driving and found this place (the Ebb Tide CafÃ©). It was for sale.

I wasnât thinking of buying, just renting, and I pulled up in front. There wasnât a fence. It was just a yellow stucco building sitting in a bunch of weeds. Pulled up and the windows were soaped up with something and I got out to peer into the windows.

There was the bar and the old fluorescent lights and the hamburger grill, and I looked in there, and obviously it was a commercial place. Beer joint, hamburger joint, something.

I was just going to get back in the car and keep drivingâbut then Linda jumped outâshe was 3-years-old, barely, always moving fast. My back was turned and she was in the garage over there (he pointed across next door).

Over there was old Charlie Jacobs, he had retired and built a house with his wife Mary. They were retired except for speculating on land. I ran into the garage after Linda and started chatting with Charlie. He saw me looking at this building, and he said: :âWhy donât you buy it? You ought to buy that buildingâ?.

I said Iâve got to have a place to live but the idea of running a little joint appealed to meâbecause, after all, the fantasy of every former beatnik or beat type would be an espresso coffee shop.

Not that I had that directly in mind, but that was the fantasyâ¦to drop out and run your own little joint. Including crafts, arts, anything.

Charlie Jacobs says, âYou can live in itâ– he says thereâs a bedroom back there and a separate bathroom with a shower. I said, Ok, Iâd like to see inside. He says Mrs. Hastings, who I incidentally work with right now (1979), I still have my real estate license. Mrs. Hastings, who owns Sandpiper Realty, had a real estate sign out there. We walked right over there and âLizâ? said, âYep, Grandma Treadwell wants $12,500.â

But it had been on the market for a yearânobody around here wanted the dump (ed. Overlooking the Pacific Ocean on Mirada Road!).

We offered $8,000 and Grandma Treadwell accepted $8,500. And she took the mortgage because no one would finance it. It was rough but thatâs how we got the Ebb Tide CafÃ©.