Oakland – Milwaukee of the West

To wet your historic whistle, here's a look at Oakland's beer history....

You may not know that from the late-1880s until Prohibition, Oakland not San Francisco was the beer capital of the West. Oakland and the surrounding communities processed raw materials of all kinds from all over the region into finished products. This included barley and hops grown throughout the Bay Area into tasty, tasty beer.

California farmers were growing a lot of hops and barley. The newly founded city of Oakland had a large German population. These two elements came together in 1852 with the founding of the city’s first brewery. The Oakland Brewery produced 150 barrels of lager beer a year. The brewery survived a fire, rebuilding, expansion, another expansion and the replacement of horses with steam engines. This all boosted output to 18,000 barrels.

The next of Oakland’s breweries opened in 1856. The Washington Brewery specialized in steam beer. They found a ready market and the brewery prospered and grew.

In 1869, the trans-continental railroad arrived in Oakland. It brought new customers and opened new beer markets all across the West. That same year the Anchor Brewery (no relation to San Francisco’s Anchor Brewery) opened. Anchor brewed steam beer and could produce 35 barrels a day – that’s 70 kegs! Anchor later became part of the Oakland Brewery.

Another of O-Town’s big breweries, the Brooklyn Brewery opened in 1872. In those days Oakland, Brooklyn and Anchor were the city’s three largest breweries.

Next to open was the East Oakland Brewery. It opened in 1881 and brewed steam beer and porter. They sold their beer in kegs for local hotels, restaurants and taverns and in bottles to be shipped all over California.

On January 1, 1890, a story in the Oakland Tribune wrote an article about the East Oakland Brewery, “The principal output is steam beer and porter. Special care is taken in the brewing of porter and extra stout which is acknowledged to be fully equal to the celebrated imported English and Irish brands.”

The article went on to talk about Oakland’s brewing industry,” These establishments furnish the city and surrounding towns with a very superior quality of the popular beverages, lager beer, steam beer, and porter. They give employment to a large number of men and consume a vast quantity of hops and barley, and cause hundreds of thousands of dollars to circulate through the channels of local trade. Each of these institutions is thoroughly equipped with all the latest improved inventions , methods, and appliances of manufacturing a first class quality of beer, and all of them enjoy an extensive and lucrative trade. It has been asserted by many who are acknowledged judges of the beverages, that the beers and porters made by the Oakland brewers are in many respects superior to the products of the other breweries on this coast and are equal to the famous beers of St. Louis and Milwaukee. This being the case, it is not to be wondered at that the Oakland breweries are prosperous and are steadily increasing their traffic with the outside world”.

In 1890, Oakland’s four breweries were producing 35,000 barrels a year. At the turn of the 20^th Century, there were 7 breweries in Oakland plus nine more in Berkeley and Alameda.

In 1910, the Washington Brewery merged with Oakland, & Anchor to become Golden West – Oakland’s largest and most famous brewery.

During Prohibition, Golden West made near beer and some real beer on the side. On the day Prohibition was repealed, December 6, 1933, somehow there was a ready supply of beer. That very day, trucks lined up outside the brewery to carry a fresh supply to all of the city’s restaurants and hotels. Within 48 hours the brewery was running at full production.

Prohibition’s demise (in 1933) led to another Tribune article. This time written by George White, president of Golden West in which he stated: “The return of beer means much to the community. It has stimulated industry in all quarters and we are proud that we have been able to take a leading part in this revival.”

The brewery was locally famous for both good beer and sponsoring the radio broadcasts of Oakland Oaks baseball games. In 1950, the brewery was purchased by Goebel Brewing of Detroit.  In 1958, the name was changed back to Golden West.

In 1959, Golden West, Oakland's longest-running and biggest brewery, shut down. Its tanks and vats were sold at auction (1963), and soon after (1964), it was demolished - thus ending the city's storied history as a big beer-making. The Golden West Brewery’s site is now a parking lot in the shadow of the West Oakland BART Station.

In 1890, the city had 40,000 residents and its breweries were producing 35,000 barrels of beer a year. Remember, a barrel is 31 gallons. Before it closed, Golden West was brewing half a million barrels of beer a year. For the next 50 years, Oakland continued to grow but, sadly, no local breweries sprang-up to quench the thirst of the city’s residents.

In 2009 everything changed and brewing came back to the Bright Side of the Bay. The Linden Street Brewery opened and began making lager beer in its tiny facility. They could produce 1,000 barrel per year (By comparison San Francisco’s Anchor Brewing makes 150,000 barrels a year). “The brewery’s owner, Adam Lamoreaux said, ”We are a very tiny brewery in a very big city. We want to honor beer styles native to the West Coast and contribute to the revitalization of this beautiful city and its people.”  Their first beer was a “steam beer”, a throwback to the late 1800s when that style dominated Bay Area brewing.

Pre Beer

El Sueno and I set out at the crack of noon today to check out the route for our next HEAD Trip. We zipped up to Oakland and parked at a public lot then traipsed over to Heinold's First and Last Chance Saloon. Honestly, this is the coolest bar I have ever honked down a beer in. We we decided to drink the local brew since it was there, we were there, and it just made sense. Plus, we're going to tour the Linden Street Brewery, so we thought we'd prime the pump. Pumps primed, we left the bar. I really wanted to stay there but since you have to leave the bar to go to the bathroom we eventually had to go. Then we traipsed back to our car (I love that word. Traipse) and tootled up Third Street to Linden Street. We parked and went inside. It is a cool old building with a nifty little brewery inside. Operative word here is "little". The whole place is marginally bigger than our garage, but the taproom is very nice and the owner is a gregarious man with a really impressive beard.

Next, we headed (ha!) over to the Warehouse Bar & Grill for lunch. The Warehouse is a cop bar which is cool because the people are nice, the food is good and you feel really safe there. We shared a Warehouse burger, which was so good you could plotz. I almost did but , like I said, it's a cop bar and I didn't wast to cause any trouble.

We then went back to our car and motored home. On the way, we decided that we need to rearrange the event so we can spend more time at Heinold's. Plus there's ample parking at the brewery and it will work out better this way. What we're going to do now is meet at the Linden Street Brewery, grab a bite at the Warehouse, and camp out at Heinold's until they make us leave...or we have to pee.
It's gonna be a hoot! See you there!!!

Cookies, Punch and Nekkid Santas!

By Thanksgiving, our Martini March was a wine - soaked memory, so we cast our gaze forward to the Italian Cookie Walk. The Saturday after the turkey stuff-a-thon, Ira, Harald, Jeneva and I met up at Union City BART and headed (ha!) up to San Francisco to pre-cookie the route. We have realized that the pre-whatevering is really important to our HEAD events what with the early closure of one of our burrito joints and the fact that bakeries sometimes have weird hours.

We had a lot of fun on our pre-cookieing but we commited several tactical errors. The first goof we made was to eat lunch before eating cookies. Don't get me wrong - lunch was delicious - we ate at Cap's Corner, a historic restaurant near Beach Blanket Babylon, but it was  muy estupido to eat lunch before visiting eight bakeries. The second mistake was visiting eight bakeries. Even though we just had a nibble at each stop, we were barely able to waddle into the Comstock Saloon and beg for help from Lindsey, an alcohol therapist and dispenser of digestives. Those things really work! We felt good enough to walk the rest of the way to BART and get our flabby butts home.

Armed with the results of our pre-cookieing, we pared our list of bakeries down to four. We figured we'd only visit the places that were historically significant and made their own pastries. Also, they needed to have a specialty. This time, we met Bruce and Pam at BART and headed (ha!) up to the City where we walked up to the Comstock - and guess who was there!!!? Lindsey,  Doctor of Boozology and the Official Bartender of the HEAD Society. At the bar, we met Nancy, Bob and Sharol and a whole bunch of people dressed like Santa. There were Santas all over the streets, on BART, everywhere! We were intrigued, because we thought WE were the coolest group in SF that day, but the Clauses were giving us a run for our money - just with sheer numbers!

We settled down at the bar to wait for Steve, who was still on BART. Lindsey made us some Pisco Punch, a cocktail invented during the Gold Rush in San Francisco. Its really good - kind of a Mikes Hard Lemonade from the Barbary Coast era. We heard from Steve who had arrived in the City and was starting to walk toward the Comstock - just about the same time some of the Santas clued us in that in 45 minutes they were going to try to break the Guiness Book record for naked Santas in Washington Square Park. We told Steve and ordered another round. Seconds later, Steve entered the bar. I had no idea he could move that fast! After we finished our drinks, we bade farewell to fair Lindsey and headed for our first bakery, via Washington Square Park...

...Where we encountered thousands of people dressed as Santa. Key word here is "dressed". There were a few brave, naked souls, lots of women in thongs, some people from Sharol an Bob's church and even a Waldo, but we got tired of waiting around for the group trou dropping and headed for the Italian French Bakery for a little macaroon action. We found out later that we had stumbled into Santacon which will be a HEAD Society outing next year. Second Saturday in December. Mark your calendars.

 The lady at the I&F bakery was charmed by us, but really wanted a report on the naked Santas so we clued her in. Fact is, the only naked Santas we saw looked a lot like Ira and me before the diet. Question: Why don't the pretty people get nekkid? Anyway, we snarfed our macaroons, bought some killer bread, and headed to Mara's on Columbus for canolli. Canolli are, to my mind, a perfect food, combining fried deliciousness and creamy goo, Plus - these ones had chocolate on them. Canolli are said to be a fertility symbol in Italy. What a horny bunch of people...

Next, we made it over to Stella Bakery for sacripantina. It means "sacred little bread" I think it should mean "oral orgasm" because, honestly, its that good... *Sorry, I drifted off there for a minute. After we finished licking the plate, spoon, fingers of the server, and anything else that came close to the sacripantina, we swooned over to Victoria Pastry Company on Vallejo. We chose this place because all of its cookies are wonderful, they serve coffee and they have a bathroom. My favorite cookie at Victoria is a little brown blob that tastes so good you could plotz. They have sacripantina, too!!!

By the time we left Victoria, it was a few minutes after five. We stumbled over to Kearny and Tomasso's Pizza. Tomasso's is the oldest pizza restaurant on the West Coast, it opens at 5pm, and when we got there at 5:15, it was full. We found out why when we got our pizzas - sausage and mushroom and a buratta cheese, cherry tomato, and basil.  OMG - that was some delicious pie!!! By the way, buratta cheese is a mozerella enriched with cream.

The walk back to BART was uneventful, but pretty what with the Christmas lights and all, and we motored back home with our leftover cookies, a loaf of bread and a few drunken Santas. It was a really fun event and we're in the middle of planning our next outing. Keep an eye peeled for  HEAD trip announcements - we'll see you there! Wherever "there" is!

Italian Cookie Walk

 

With the holiday season in full swing, the HEAD Society’s thoughts turn to cookies! And everyone knows that the Italians know their cookies. And where better to find Italian cookies than North Beach? Our next HEAD Trip, the Italian Cookie Walk will head out on a journey of tasty exploration on Saturday, December 10, 2011.

We’ll meet at the Comstock Saloon (155 Columbus Ave. @ Kearny) at 2:30pm. This year the Comstock was selected as the 9^th best cocktail bar in America by GQ Magazine. It’s been a bar since 1907 when it opened as the Andromeda Saloon. It was described as a place where “angling executives, sharp-talking politicians and homesick sailors all rubbed elbows while brazen prostitutes flaunted coquettish charms at the brass rail of the ornate bar.” It is the last of the old Barbary Coast bars still standing (and serving drinks).

The original bar has been restored. It made from a single twenty foot long slab of Cuban mahogany and they serve Pre-Prohibition cocktails including Pisco Punch, Hop Toad and the Martinez (remember that one?).

We’ll take in some pre-walk refreshment before our band of HEAD Trippers sets out on our Italian Cookie Walk. From the Comstock we’ll head up Columbus Avenue into the heart of North Beach Our first stop will be the Italian French Pastry Company (1501 Grant Ave.). This place bakes bread and breadsticks for many San Francisco restaurants in their huge brick oven from the 1920s. They also bake a number of delicious cookies and biscotti but the star of the show is their macaroon – sweet as a kiss with coconut and chocolate.

This wonderful cookie was born in Italy, introduced by Catherine de Medicis chef in 1533. They were served at Catherine’s  wedding. She married the Duc d'Orleans who later became king of France (Henry II). The name "macaroon" has the same origin as that the word "macaroni" - both mean "fine dough".

Next stop? Mara’s Italian Pastry (503 Columbus Ave.) for the house specialty, cannoli. These tube-shaped shells of fried pastry dough are filled with a sweet, creamy ricotta filling. Cannoli were first prepared as a treat during Carnevale (a Sicilian version of Mardi Gras). They were also seen as a fertility symbol (those Italians). Cannoli are an essential part of Sicilian cuisine.  The name means "little tube". Italian immigrants brought this treat to America. In Italy, these Sicilian pastry treats are commonly known as "cannoli Siciliani" or, Sicilian cannoli. They range in size from "cannulicchi", no bigger than a finger, to  fist-sized proportions.

A little ways down the street we’ll find our next bakery, Stella Pastry and Café (446 Columbus Ave.). This place has been a San Francisco landmark since it opened in 1942. The house specialty is the Sacripantina, a multilayered cake made with a “pan di spagna” (vanilla sponge cake), zabaione (delicate custard made with egg yolks, sweet butter, Marsala and sherry), cream, and rum. It's like eating a delicious cloud – a cloud full of flavor.

Sacripantina  was created in 1851 by Giovanni Preti in his pastry shop in Genoa. The name was inspired by the character Sacripante in the Italian romantic epic “Orlando Furioso” (“The Frenzy of Orlando” or “Mad Orlando”). Sacripante was a king and leader of knights. He was tormented by his love for Angelica (the most beautiful woman he had ever seen). He wanted her and fought to defend her.

Full yet? I don’t think so because we’ve saved the best for last, Victoria Pastry Company (1362 Stockton St.). Founded by Sicilian immigrants in 1914, Victoria specializes in a dizzying array of Italian cookies, biscotti, tortes and cakes. They still use the original Sicilian recipes and the same brick oven which is now almost 100 years old.  

At this point, we’ll walk around digesting and burning of a calorie or two. As our appetites revive, we’ll head over to Tommaso’s (1042 Kearny St.). Tommaso’s was the first pizzeria on the west coast. It was opened in 1935 by an immigrant family from Naples. They still use the original wood-fired brick pizza oven.

The whole walk is only .8 of a mile. An advance team from the HEAD Society’s crack research unit pre-walked the route. We learned a valuable lesson – eat a light lunch!

Martini Memories

Yes, I know its been a long time since we traveled to Martinez, I've completely sobered up, and I've been meaning to write - I really have...I've been experiencing a bit of blogger's block, though, and I think its because although I only drank one martini (a lemon drop - it was pretty good although very strong but the rim of the glass was coated with sugar! The bar had good sandwiches, too...) I put away a whole lot of wine. Here's what happened:

 Jeneva, Harald and I, thinking we were leading a much larger group, headed out from the bar toward Main Street to  get our glasses and join the Wine Stroll. When I turned around to reconnoiter with the group, I discovered that nobody else was coming with us. Since Jeneva and Harald are two of my very favorite people in the world, this was fine but a little surprising mainly because I really don't think martinis taste all that good...Apparently that was not the majority opinion.

Wine glasses were sold in an art gallery that had some really pretty watercolors and photographs adorning the walls. I got a watercolor still life and Jeneva got a beautiful framed photograph of Yosemite in addition to our glasses. We were tutored on Wine Stroll procedure, ergo - any store displaying purple balloons was a participating store. Each participant served a taste of wine and some hors d'oeuvres.

By the third or fourth store, we had figured out the system - the wine was kept in the back of each shop. This necessitated a thorough examination of all the very cool merchandise by lots of progressively drunker and drunker shoppers. It worked! The shops were awesome and doing a land office business. I totally want to run a store there, now!

Early on, we also noticed that the wines were paired with shops that suited them. For example, the sweet shop served a port. They also gave out samples of their caramel apples. We bought some. We figured that there was no reason to check out the store that was serving Two Buck Chuck, but we kind of just wanted to poke our heads in and say..."Really?"...

The only problem with tasting wine this way (20 small sips - one after another) is that you get really drunk and you can't read any of your notes when you get home. Plus you might try to sing along with the couple from The Lawrence Welk Show in the clock shop and get shushed. And when you meet everybody back at the bar for recon before you go home, you might think it was a really good idea to order two orders of onion rings and eat most of them yourself...sparking a bout of heartburn that could torch a barn.

All in all, it was a really fun HEAD trip and made me appreciate what a cool little berg Martinez is! That and the pre-cookie walk we did with the Westendorfs today made me excited for our next outing - The Italian Christmas Cookie Walk on December 10. It's a lot of walking and you'll need a bag to carry your pastries in, but it is gonna be FUN!!! See you there!

HEAD Society Martini March

HEAD Society Martini March

Saturday, November 5, 2011

3pm

The cocktail is an American creation. Many of these tasty concoctions have roots right here in the San Francisco Bay Area. The Pisco Punch, Mai Tai and the Martini are all natives. Perhaps the most famous is the Martini. New York and San Francisco both claim to be the birthplace of this drink but little Martinez is the rightful home to this cocktail classic.

Following the California gold rush (sometime between 1862 and 1874), a miner came into Julio Richelieu’s saloon in Martinez. To celebrate his new found wealth, he ordered champagne. None was available but Julio offered him “something better” a “Martinez Special”.

There are two versions of the original recipe:

#1) 4 parts Old Tom Gin (which had a strong juniper flavor), 1 part sweet vermouth, 1 part bitters and cherry elixir.

#2) 2 parts gin, 1 part vermouth, a dash of orange bitters.

Whichever recipe the original followed, the customer loved the drink and ordered a round for the house!

The recipe was published in O.H. Bryon’s 1884 Modern Bartender’s Guide. Three years later Professor Jerry Thomas published it in The Bon Vivant’s Companion: Or How to Mix Drinks. Thomas was perhaps America’s first celebrity bartender. He, of course, claimed credit for the drink while traveling through Martinez.

It is said that the name changed from Martinez to Martini since the “z” was too hard to pronounce after drinking a few.

Julio’s original saloon was at 414 Ferry St. at Marina Vista. For many years it was Amato’s restaurant. Today it is the Royal Thai restaurant. The Royal Thai lacks a full bar so the HEAD Hunters’ recon mission found an appropriate substitute just down a block down at the Ferry Street Station. After close examination, it proved to be a martini-rich environment.

The Ferry Street Station is located at 600 Ferry Street in Martinez. It’s in the historic McMahon-Telfer Building which was built in 1914. It replaced the Curry Livery Stable and Social Hall that burned in 1904. The Royal Theatre was upstairs and the upper hall was used for prize fight arenas, dances and traveling shows. According to the crack HEAD Research team there’s been a bar on this block since the 1890s.

Martinez History Timeline

Since time and memorial, the  Karkin peoples lived and thrived in this area.

1824 – The area becomes part of a 17,000 acre land grant awarded to Don Ygnacio Martinez for services rendered to the Royal Spanish and Mexican armies.

1847 – General Mariano Vallejo grants permission for Dr. Robert Semple, a dentist and Lieutenant in the Bear Flag Revolt, to operate a ferry across the Carquinez Straight to Benicia.

1849 – A town springs up near the ferry to serve gold seekers heading for the Mother Lode. It’s named Martinez.

1851 – The California legislature recognizes Martinez as the first town in the District of Contra Costa (later Contra Costa County).

1869 – Dr. John Strentzel (later John Muir’s father-in-law) develops a method for keeping pears fresh when shipped long distances by rail.

1870 – Italian and Portuguese immigrants arrive in Martinez. A vineyards are planted and fishing industry is born.

1862 -1874 – The Martini is born! Bartender Julio Richelieo makes the first “Martinez Special”.

1877 – The Trans-Continental Railroad arrives in Martinez.

1879 – The Christian Brothers open a school and plant a vineyard.

1880 – John Muir marries Louisa Strentzel in Martinez.

1882 – 12 fish canneries now operate in Martinez.

1899 – The Santa Fe Railroad arrives in Martinez.

1901 – Martinez establishes an 11pm closing time for town saloons.

1914 – Joe DiMaggio, Joltin’ Joe, the Yankee Clipper, is born in Martinez.

1915 – Shell Oil opens a refinery.

1930 – A railroad bridge across the Carquinez Straight is completed.

1957 – Martinez’s fishing industry comes to an end as Sacramento River and Delta waters are closed to commercial fishing.

1962 – Ferry service from Martinez to Benica (that started in 1847) is discontinued as a highway bridge is completed.

MARTINEZ MARTINI MARCH

Yesterday, El Sueno and I got up at the crack of 9:00 and tossed around ideas on what to do, when to do it and, most importantly, what to eat when we were doing it…Ok, now that sounds dirty, but you get what I mean. After all, you are a HEAD Society member!

Anyway, we decided it was a perfect day to pre-Martini the November 5 trail (also, I needed to make a trip to the teacher store to San Leandro which is about halfway there and it was greener to combine trips…”Greener? Why not take the train?” you ask, “It goes right to downtown Martinez!” To which we reply, “We checked into that, but Amtrak costs $18 per person EACH WAY to go from Fremont to Martinez and we love all you HEAD Trippers, but that’s a LOT of cash to drop on an investigational adventure! That said, we’ll be happy to meet you at the train station on the actual Martini Day. Martinez is a tiny town and it’s only a short walk from anywhere to anywhere else there. Carpooling is also an option…) So we hopped in the car and headed north.

An hour (or so) later, we arrived in the teeny, tiny town of Martinez. In only a minute we found that the home of the original Martini, now a Thai restaurant, was closed on Sundays. On peeking through the window, we noticed that there is not a full bar there, so we were unlikely to get Martinis with our pad thai. We started scouting the street for substitute bars.

There were two that we thought might fit the bill until we heard crashing and yelling sounds coming out of one (might’ve just been a dropped tray, might have been a homicide, we didn’t wait for details.) There were two sweaty guys in motorcycle leathers having a political discussion in front of the other one. They raised some good points, but they were really sweaty and we didn’t want to go there. So we chose the Ferry Street Station for our Martinez Martinis. It meets out stringent requirements for HEAD appropriateness. It has a full bar, beer, wine, a clean bathroom and bar food. Plus there are big flat screen TVs so those who choose to do so can sit in the bar enjoying Martinis, beer and college football while the rest of us walk around and peruse the myriad…

ANTIQUE SHOPS that line all the adjacent streets! Ladies! This is gonna be fun! Clear your calendars (and your credit card bills) I smell a shopping trip. And a Head Trip. Oooh – a martini-fueled shopping trip…See you on the 5^th!