"A saloon, of course, for the transaction of men"- Heinold's First and Last Chance Saloon, Oakland

Heinold's on opening day, June 1st, 1883.

     In Jack London’s 1913 novel, John Barleycorn, the title character purchases a boat from the oysterman, French Frank, in a place that is referenced often in London’s literature and played an important role in his life: “We met by appointment early Monday morning, to complete the deal, in Johnny Heinold’s ‘Last Chance’- a saloon, of course, for the transaction of men.”1  This was event taken directly from London’s life when he bought a small sloop, which he named the Razzle Dazzle, at fifteen years old to sail along the coast of the bay and collect oysters (not always legally).2

Johnny Heinold and his dictionary

    Heinold’s First And Last Chance Saloon, still standing today where Webster Street meets the Oakland harbor, has often been referred to as Jack London’s Rendezvous for good reason.  The author and the bar have fates that indelibly linked.  London was born in San Francisco the same year, 1876, that a young man named John (often “Johnny”) Heinold arrived there from Philadelphia.  Heinold worked along the waterfront for a couple years until he moved to Oakland and opened a bar on San Pablo Avenue.  This was apparently too far inland for the seafaring type so he paid $100 for a tiny bunk house that was built from the hull of an old whaling ship and was only spitting distance from the Oakland estuary.3  In 1884 the J.M. Heinold’s Saloon opened for business, but a nickname was quickly attached that stuck.  For sailors shipping out on a long voyage or returning from one, this bar made a convenient stop to get a quick buzz before going on.  Similarly, the commuter ferry that ran between Oakland and Alameda was near by and Alameda was a dry city for a long time, so Heinold’s had many customers that would make a morning and evening stop in for a drink to either prepare themselves for or shake off the day.  Hence, the bar was your “first and last chance” to get a drink in Oakland.4

Young Jack London and his dictionary

    Jack London had also moved across the bay, living in Alameda and then Oakland, spending most of his days collecting driftwood and bits of metal of the beaches for his family.  In 1888, Heinold noticed the boy sitting out on the cold docks teaching himself to read with a pocket dictionary.  The bar owner invited the boy inside to sit by the pot-bellied stove and gave him proper dictionary to study.  On that same day, Robert Lewis Stevenson happened to be at the bar, his ship Casco moored in the harbor preparing for his last voyage to Samoa, and he bought the young London a sarsaparilla.  Over the years, London and Heinold became close friends; the older man further aided the younger’s education by lending him money to go to high school and college.  Many of London‘s novels were partially written, as he poured over his notes made traveling and working around North America, at the same table he first sat at in the corner of the bar.5

    When you walk into Heinold’s First and Last Chance Saloon today, you’ll walk passed the outdoor mall shops that always struggle to stay open in Jack London Square; you’ll walk passed the umbrella covered café tables in front of the bar that are filled with Oakland’s growing middle class of hipster mommies (have you not heard?  Oakland is the new Brooklyn [at least that’s what we Oaklanders tell the people who think of our city as the prettiest place in America catch a bullet or get tear gassed]); and then you’ll almost trip as you step into the bar’s famously sunken floor.  The pilings under the saloon collapsed in the 1906 San Francisco and every attempt to shore the bar up eventually failed with the floor sinking back down.6  The result is about a three foot droop in not just the floor, but the actual bar sits at about a 20 degree angle, so don’t let go of your beer.

    It was no surprise that the bartenders were too busy to talk to me on a Friday afternoon and after sitting at the bar for awhile I could see how their patience probably wears a bit thin.  Every jerk who orders a drink has a inane question, or worse, a quip they hope will make the grizzled old bartenders smile (very few are successful).  I had a couple exchanges with the bartenders that were brief, but interesting when put into the context of my research.  I’ll get to those in a bit, but for now I’ll just say they were as impressed with my aspiring historian credentials as they were with the guy in the Ron Paul shirt who asked to have the music turned down outside so he could play his guitar to the crowd (which is to say, not at all).  So I drank a couple of the beers on tap from the Linden Street Brewery only eight blocks away (delivered by bike and so hoppy that it tastes like drinking a joint) and talking to another patron about country music, the lunacy of libertarians and how both our grandparents who came to California in the Dust Bowl migration. 

    I began my research on the First and Last Chance at the CSU East Bay library and was surprised that there were two books were written about the bar on the library shelves.  The first was a skinny memoir love-letter to/history of the bar by a man named Otha Donner Wearin.  The second was an even shorter book, authored by George Heinold, the son of Johnny and successor of the bar when his dad died in 1933.  This book was in the Special Collections room.  I had never considered myself special enough for the Special Collections room and I think I harbored some deep fear of accidentally tearing a page or sweating onto a rare book that ignites from my body heat, burning down a whole wing of the library and destroying all recorded history.  We’ll call this insecurity the Alexandria Complex.

    Of course, it was remarkably less dramatic when I got to the Special Collections and the librarian found the book for me and set it out with a set of white cloth gloves to protect it from my devastating bodily oils.  The book was almost a pamphlet from 1936, but was filled with plainly written, great stories of Johnny Heinold and the saloon.  I snapped a picture of each page with my iPhone.

Poem dedicated to John Heinold upon his death in 1933

     Much of the historical information used in the Wearin’s book was directly quoted from Heinold the younger’s book.  Aside from London and Stevenson the bar also hosted many other literati, including Ambrose Bierce, Rex Miller and Joaquin Miller (the “Poet of the Sierras” who would often get lost in Oakland and end up at the bar, saying it was due to “being out of my latitude”).  Two term and longest sitting Oakland Mayor, John L. Davie was a friend to the Last Chance.   In the 1890’s the populist mayor supported London and the other salty patrons sneaking out of the bar at night to tear down the fences the railroad company put up so as slow progress until Davie could complete the wharf he was building.  Once the wharf was done it ran a ferry to San Francisco for only a nickel and this forced the railroad to keep their rates low as well7 (don’t ask me how exactly this makes sense, I’m chalking this story up to the bizarre web of corporate interests, local government corruption and class conflict that was turn-of-the-century politics).  Wearin expands on Mayor Davie’s relationship with the bar, mentioning the mayor once took President William Howard Taft to the Last Chance for “refreshment and a moment of relaxation”8 (insert your own fat Taft joke here).  In 1893, a passenger train crashed through an open drawbridge nearby killing many people and dropping injured survivors into cold bay waters.  As the wounded people were pulled out of the estuary, Johnny Heinold closed the bar to his packed-holiday crowd and converted it into an ad hoc hospital.9

    It was the heroism of George Heinold that put me a little bit of hot water with one of the bartenders last Friday.  Both books mention George’s winning of French Croix de Guerre during World War One for single-handly capturing twelve German soldiers and a lieutenant.  This fact is also typed on a piece of laminated paper attached to a display case in the Last Chance, but inside the case are a score of captured Nazi pins.  I asked the bartender about this and he said something to the effect of, “George Heinold was a war hero.”

    “In World War One,” I said.

    He paused a moment, eyed me suspiciously and said, “Right.”

    “All those pins are from World War Two,” I told him, doing my best not to sound like a smart-alec.   Never the less, I was given a long, cold stare that men give other men half their age that says, “You don’t know what your talking about, kid, so stop talking.”  But he came out from behind the bar, walked over to the case, looked it over, read the laminated paper and gave me another long, cold stare.  “See, the swastikas?” I asked timidly.  “Those eagles are Third Reich.  I was just curious who captured them.  If it was patrons who fought in World War Two, or something.”

    “Who are you again?” the bartender asked.

    “A history major at Cal-State East Bay.”

    “I got work to do,” he said and was done talking to me for the night.

    I mention this story, not to show off my smarty-pants, I felt quite the asshole sitting back down at the bar wearing those pants.  I tell this because it was a reminder in how people’s history is not just something that exists in books for me soak up and sprout off later.  History is something that exists in the minds and memories of people who lived through it or were told by somebody else first hand who lived through it.  I don’t know how long the bartender has worked at Last Chance, but he was certainly old enough to have known George Heinold, who died in 1970.10  At the least, he had been given the history of the bar from people who had been around it for a very long time.  He accepted what he knew and clearly took a certain about a pride in the history of the Last Chance, the whole bar is practically a museum dedicated to its proud history .  Granted, he was a grump about it, but who was I to come along during a busy shift and start poking holes in how they venerate their past?

    George’s war record was also involved in another lesson I learned in memory and history on this outing.  In his book, George remembers his dad as telling customers that he strictly respected the 18th Amendment prohibiting of intoxicating liquors in 1919 because, “If my boy can fight for the constitution [sic], I guess I can uphold it,” when they came in with “a hint they’d like a little of ‘the old stuff’."11  Wearin quotes John Heinold as saying, “If the Heavenly Father did not want the human race to have alcohol, for one reason or another, He would never would have allowed fruits and grains to ferment.”  And he suggests that Heinold may have looked the other way when customers used a flask to Irish up their coffee and sarsaparillas.12  Finally, the bartender (the other one who I didn’t piss off) told me when I asked about Prohibition that there were a couple liquor bottles kept around for the trust-worthy friends.  “I’m sure Johnny knew everything that went on in his bar, but he never poured,” he said.  This man obviously was not working for the bar in the 1920’s, but I have no reason to doubt the accuracy of his tale.  It is probable that all three of these varying degrees of respect for the law are true.  When I use my imagination to connect these stories I can see people’s motivations and attitudes, fleshing them out as real people and I have a more realized picture of what this bar, and surely many bars like it, was like during Prohibition.

    In the both the bars I’ve highlighted so far we’ve seen much of their fame being tied to the American authors who spent a good portions of their lives drinking themselves to death there.  Both London and Kerouac are venerated at these establishments with a notable absences in mentioning their flaws and complexities.  Jack London was very prolific and unarguably one of the most gifted writers our country has produced.  His novels so transported his readers to the vast and adventurous world that he was considered a hero and set the template for the rugged, manly American writer for Hemingway, Kerouac, Sebastian Junger to pick up.  The fact that I was assigned White Fang to read in the 5th  grade and recently has Valley of the Moon assigned in an upper division university class speaks volumes to his broad appeal and depth.  The man was also a complete racist, misogynist, xenophobic and, as usual, a uncontrollable drunk.  Some people might also speak against his socialism and subsequent disillusionment with socialism, but I am not one of those people. 

    I’m not saying we should always focus on the faults of all our historical celebrities, but we should use them to help us remember they were actual people who had lives that did not revolve around the tiny bits of trivia that we carry around with us.  When reading Valley of the Moon I was struck that in the middle of a tender discussion between loving husband and wife the husband suddenly drops, “…I ain’t going to be too proud to borrow it off ‘m, if he is a Chink.  He’s a white one…”13, but it was one of those moments that made me remember all racists are not all bad all the time.  It must be considered how many white Californian men  in 1910 weren’t Nativist and vaguely sexist?  So should the First and Last Chance have a caption below the author’s picture that read, “Jack London: Great American Novelist and Casual Racist”?  No.  Should there be plaque next to his table that reads, “At this spot Jack London taught himself to read, wrote Sea Wolf and puked up on himself on more than one occasion”?  That would be awesome, but no.  The truth is I don’t know what I want to say on this subject yet, but I see patterns emerging and sense something on the horizon.  In the coarse of researching and writing this blog I hope to learn a little bit more about the way we venerate people and places, then in the end, be able to tell you something profound about it.  Hopefully it will both deep and clever, earning my own plague that reads: “Mike Burton: Minor Historian and Kind of a Jerk.”

Footnotes-

1 Jack London, John Barleycorn (New York: The Century Co., 1913), 70. 

2 Otha Donnee Wearin, Heinold’s First and Last Chance (Hastings, IA: Wearin, 1974), 31.

3 George Heinold, John Heinold and His First and Last Chance (Oakland: International Press: 1936), 9-10.

4 Wearin, First and Last Chance, 25-27.

5 Wearin, First and Last Chance, 28-34.

6 First and Last Chance website, History page, accessed  October 10, 2011, http://firstandlastchance.com/hew/history.html.

7 Heinold, John Heinold, 13-15.

8 Wearin, First and Last Chance, 3.

9 Heinold, John Heinold,  14.

10 Wearin, First and Last Chance, 21.

11 Heinold, John Heinold,  15.

12 Wearin, First and Last Chance, 19.

13 Jack London, The Valley of the Moon ( Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999) 406.

Photos-

1 J.M. Heinold's Saloon, taken from First and Last Chance Website.

2 Johnny Heinold, taken from First and Last Chance Website.

3 Jack London, taken from MF Kron Louisiana Melancholic blog at http://mfkorn.blogspot.com/2009/03/jack-london-ambrose-bierce-and-robert.html

4 photo taken by author from George Heinold's John Heinold and His First and Last Chance.

5 First and Last Chance at an unidentified point I'm going to guess near the 40's, taken from First and Last Chance Website.