Half Moon Bay Memories & El Granada Observer

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.

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

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.

“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…

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…

[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…

Mr. Ed called a “Community Meeting” on February 26, 1974—was it held in the offices of a colorful dentist, now long gone?

Ed was a husky fellow with long hair hanging like a crown of feathers from his head. In the center of the crown was a neat, clean bald spot. He was always good natured.

In the early 1970s there were different layers of Coastsiders– the locals who had lived here all their lives and the newcomers who could be broken down into sub-groups of environmentalists, seclusion-lovers and hippies.

The Coastside was a temporary haven for the hippies.They had their eye on a place that was most often simply identified as “up north”–was it Said Valley? Some of them had already left Half Moon Bay and made a new home there.

It was the “growth” that was was pushing the Coastside hippies away– the appearance of the Alpha Beta supermarket for starters–they knew the very first traffic lights couldn’t be far behind.

The Coastsider hippies I encountered were mostly family-oriented, working hippies–woodworking and cutting down trees and selling slabs of pretty redwood burls for tables.

Within the hippie group, Mr. Ed held a special position not only because he was very smart– but he also said he had “visions”. One time, for example, he was watching the sun set when before his eyes it changed from a big orange ball of fire into a pyramid–for some folks a powerful and magical shape.

In 1974 Mr. Ed sensed hard times coming–President Nixon was facing certain impeachment–and Ed feared a financial depression. He said the Coastside hippies needed to be organized work-wise, moving their logs and wood products efficiently to the point of sale– and he was the one to do it.

Thus the “Community Meeting” was called in the dentist’s office.

Mr. Ed brought together the creme de la creme of Coastside hippies. His main goal, he said, should times get tough, was to ensure that the communal- loving hippies had plenty of work. He proposed a $3 million project–a new trucking enterprise that would involve driving “up north” to pick up shingles from the former Coastsiders who had relocated and bringing the wood products back to Half Moon Bay for sale.

At the time there was no construction going on “up north” and the hippies who had moved there from Half Moon Bay were in dire straits. There was some building on the Coastside, but on the sidelines, just waiting for the green light,were plenty of heavy-hitters, pocket books open, ready to fill in the beautiful open space with houses and subdivisions. And that was what Mr. Ed believed would make his project turn into gold at the end of the rainbow.

Communal as they might have aspired to be, the Coastside hippies resisted organization. They admired Mr. Ed’s plan and considered it–but the timing was all wrong. The hippies and the small builders and the heavy hitters were all thwarted by a big, successful “Save the Coastside” campaign–which ultimately resulted in no building at all.

And then the first signal light was put in–by then the Coastside hippies had moved to the mysterious “up north”…”Mr. Ed” vanished and there were no more flyers on the front door announcing “Community Meetings”.

Photo: Dino, (left), seen here with his friend Elizabeth, was one of the “hippies” who attended Mr. Ed’s Community Meeting in 1974.

Announcement reads:

Community Meeting
Tuesday, Feb 25th [1974]
6:30 PM
2830 Cabrillo Hwy
& Roosevelt
Hope you can make it
on time

Love
Mr Ed

(Note printed on Encyclopedia Britannica Press paper)

…More to come….

Connection With Two Gang Murders In Ohio

“James T. Fratianno, who resided at —— in Moss Beach, was arrested in San Francisco on Monday by the FBI in connection with two Ohio gangland killings. He is known as ‘Jimmy the Weasel’.

“Fratianno gave no resistance and was brought handcuffed into the FBI office in the federal building. He was one of eight persons named in the complaint filed earlier in the day in the eastern city.

“‘The Weasel’ was out on bail for nearly two weeks. He gave himself up to the FBI on the day before Thanksgiving after charges were announced aainst him for alleged crimes in the L.A. area.

“A federal racketeering criminal complaint alleges one charge of murder and conspiracy to commit two murders.

“Roy McKinnon, special FBI agent in charge, said a .22 caliber revolver was found in a secret under-the-seat compartment of Fratianno’s car. He had a prearranged meeting at the motel but was alone when arrested.

“McKinnon said the complaint alleges Fratianno was ‘an arranger in the murder of two men in the Cleveland area’.

“The agent said that the slayings were ‘gangland motivated: a struggle for power’ in Ohio. U.S. Magistrate Richard Goldsmith set his bail at $50,000.

“Fratianno, who moved to San Francisco last Friday, said he will post bail and go back to his hometown of Cleveland for a hearing set for defendants Friday.

“‘I wasn’t an actual participant in whatever happened. I wasn’t even there,’ said Fratianno. ‘I understand there is word I talked to someone. I can prove I was not there at the time’.

“The FBI affidavit identified one victim as John Nardi, a Cosa Nostra member from Cleveland and the other as Danny Greene, head of the ‘Irish mob’ in the area. Nardi was killed last May 17 by a bomb in a vehicle next to his car, while Greene died when a remote control bomb was detonated in his car on Oct. 6

“The FBI affidavit alleged that Raymond Ferritto, charged with participating in the Greene murder, told them he was a long time associate ‘of La Cosa Nostra member James ‘The Weasel’ Fratianno, who resides in California.

HMB Review, December 1977

I’ll have more on “Jimmy the Weasel” later….

Not only was the artisit Sybil Easterday’s home at Tunitas Creek, the end of the Ocean Shore Railroad’s line– but her husband Louis ran the rustic saloon there. Louis, whose drinking was anything but recreational, often barricaded himself in his office at the back of the saloon. During these serious drinking bouts, he surrounded himself with “firearms from a complete arsenal,” making it clear he wanted to be left alone.

Until her marriage, Sybil’s life seemed to have been orderly. The house, landscaped with pretty flowers and shrubs, had been built with money from her commissions. It stood in a secluded spot beneath a bridge. Valuable antiques, handcarved furniture, as well as statuettes and paintings, examples of her work, filled the rooms.

But suddenly her life took a dark turn.

Just before Valentine’s Day in 1916, Sybil, now 40, faced a horrible domestic crisis. She later recounted that the 33-year-old Louis had been drinking heavily as usual and had shut himself up in his office–but this time he did not respond to her pleas to open the door.

Some locals thought it unusual that instead of calling the police, she summoned Dr. Clarence V. Thompson. A county supervisor, Dr. Thompson resided with his wife in a big two-story house in Pescadero. He had set up a “hospital” in his home but few if any patients were admitted there.

When Dr. Thompson arrived at Tunitas Creek, he found the doors of the saloon broken in and rushed to the back office.

Before him, Sybil’s husband Louis was slumped over, a gaping wound in his chest. A double-barreled shotgun lay on the floor.

The official inquest called it a suicide.

After Louis’s death, Sybil and Flora, her invalid mother, pursued a reclusive life. Sybil, who died in 1961, was seldom seen but there were those who remember the vision of a lonely figure wandering around her property at Tunitas Creek, a rifle in her hands.

[Examples of Sybil Easterday's sculpture can be viewed at the San Mateo County History Museum in Redwood City--but the artist's eccentricity has provided her most enduring legacy.]

Photo: Sybil Easterday, courtesy San Mateo County History Museum

Photo: Poodle, is that a black cat, too?– and Belinda with Fayden. Photo: courtesy Fayden

Hi June! Just busy fixing, building, being a grandpa, being a dad, being a husband, being a good worker, being being being etc. (Baba Ram Dass would have liked those last three words).

There is this really nice man who just moved to the coast named Charles, who owns Coastside spa repair in Princeton– he is very interested in coastside history (military, mainly, I think). What building did what kinda thing and where.

I told him about the pedestrian overpass in Montara going over to the lighthouse for the enlisted men– from the end of what is now Serra St. in Moss Beach– and about the gun turrets in front of the Distillery– and that most of the horizontal (small lap), lap strake homes on the coast were probably officers homes.

Then I had this great idea, and I suggested he read your articles. I loaned him your book (I really want you to autograph it), and told him perhaps you would know more about the coast in this regard.

This picture is of Belinda Balaski and me the day before I left to go to Europe on tour in 1970– she starred in and acted in a bunch of movies and now runs an acting school in L.A.. Belinda was a local on the coast in the late sixties, worked at the Miramar Beach Inn– although it was called the Spouter Inn for awhile, then the Shelter Inn. Belinda is a great gal! She was one of the rare coastside poodle owners as well.

She always had Muffin, her poodle, with her wherever she was– and apparently has always had one to this day. I like guitars better, I don’t have to feed them, take them for walks, or hold them unless I want to!

Anyway, got back from my European tour…the first morning back I’m walking south on the beach from El Granada, and I see Belinda running in front of the Miramar Inn across the beach. My hopes arise that she and I will pick up where we had romantically departed. She sees me… smiles, comes running up to me, gives me a big hug, and kiss– and in the same moment tells me excitedly she is living with Mike Mindell! My heart was broken…….. well not really, but I was forever jealous of Mike after this moment.

Mike, by the way, was one of the managers from the Spouter Inn days. He and Belinda moved to Manhattan beach where Mike recorded for Kapp records while Belinda launched her acting career. Mike is a great guy too, reminds me of Peter Adams in a way.

So there is a part of coastside history before you moved here, my friend, that was apparently important for me to share with you.

By the way, I fell in love with you the day you brought two plastic dog puppets that operated from squeeze handles into the kitchen by the back door. Do you remember them? You sat across from me at the kitchen table, and did a puppet show with them, you being the voice for both! You won my heart forever!

F

was a competitive foot racer who kept in shape by running up to the top of Devil’s Slide and back everyday. That’s Devil’s Slide in the back of this amazing photo, taken when? I don’t know, early 20th century?

Photo courtesy San Mateo County History Center. Visit the museum at the historic Redwood City courthouse.

In 1975 one of the more colorful characters that lived at Princeton-by-the-Sea– drat! I can’t remember his name or his face—but I do remember what he did—I guess, in his search for spirituality.

He stopped talking; he stopped communicating verbally. He didn’t speak to anybody.

He wore a small square chalkboard on a leather cord around his neck and if you wanted to ask him something he gave you a piece of white chalk to write with. His response, if he chose to answer, was on the reverse side of the chalkboard.

Obviously questions and answers had to be short because the chalkboard wasn’t big enough for long back and forths.

This went on for months. I don’t know how many months. The last time I saw him wearing the blackboard around his neck was at the Ketch JoAnne–and that was 30 years ago.

There are a couple of things I wonder about:

1. Is he still around and using his chalkboard?

2.Did he throw away the chalkboard—and find spiritual peace?