Well, fuck.
Some History
My neighborhood tavern, which I have been a near-daily regular at for over eighteen years, is going away. I mean that both figuratively and literally. Come September 17, the Buckaroo shall be moving to a new location down at the bottom of the hill in Fremont. The reason for this is that they lost their lease, and were unwilling to sell the business to the land owners, who wanted to buy the bar and keep running it as is. The Buckaroo has been in its present location since 1938. Seventy-two years of history and legacy and memories, all about to be pissed away. To my recollection, the Buck has only changed ownership twice in all that time — Once in the early 1960s, and again in 1982. In ‘82 the family that owned both the bar and the building it’s in sold the tavern to the current ownership, and about five or six years ago they sold the building itself to the current landlords. When the current landlords came on the scene, it was no secret that they also wanted to own the bar and run it pretty much as is. This is their business model, they also own other building/bar combinations, such as the 9-Pound Hammer. About five years ago, current bar ownership decided to get another five year business lease, even though the man who owned the Buckaroo was in poor health. As I understand, it was a joint decision between he and his wife, and shortly afterwards she took over day-to-day operations of the Buck, and things went steadily downhill thereafter. Fast-forward to five years later, today: Time’s up.
A Thoughtful Stab At The Reasoning For Current Events
The current owner of the Buckaroo is now a widow, her husband passed away a few years ago. She loved and loves him dearly, to this day. The bar is her only way to hold on to him, which I think is the single reason she’s unwilling to sell, and would rather move it away in order to preserve his memory and legacy. The current landlords didn’t have any inclination to let her renew the business lease from the get-go, and I think they may have been counting on old age and poor health to weigh in their favor for the transaction, allowing them to offer a good price to an elderly couple who could then retire. The bar owner’s grandson, who tends bar at the Buckaroo, is a bit of a fuck-up. More of a colossal fuck-up, but he has gotten a little better in the last year. Not counting the jail time he served for willingly missing a court date concerning a charge of domestic violence against his own grandmother, the self-same owner of the bar some sort of parking offense or offenses. Wonderful family, I tell ya. It’s my belief that she simply has to keep the bar running so that her grandson can remain in her employ, since he’s not that much good at anything else. She’s fired and re-hired him several times in the last five years, and to paraphrase her, “I have to hire him back, otherwise I’d have to give him money for doing nothing.” So as a result, she’s moving the Buckaroo down to across the street from the big Adobe building, letting him and two of the other current bartenders run the show from then on. And you know, I actually think this is commendable, and I can’t fault her for not wanting to let go of what she feels is her husband’s legacy. On the other side of the coin, the current landlords would be fools to let her continue business in their building, she’s a terrible business manager, obviously prone to nepotism, the bar itself pretty much sucks, has no food, is in a continual state of disrepair, and has lost a large portion of its regular clientele in the last five years due to the ownership and management of the bar itself.
Don’t Believe A Word You Hear
So, the story as I got it from someone on the Buckaroo side of things goes like this: Lease wouldn’t be renewed, she wouldn’t sell the business, they’re moving down the hill, the landlords are set to lease the space to someone who wants to set up a mediterranean restaurant. That last part is more than suspect. Attempting to establish a niche restaurant in upper Fremont in this economy instead of a, you know, bar, seems foolhardy to me. Not that others aren’t trying to establish niche restaurants around here. One just went out of business, and an even more hoity-toity joint is in its place. We’ll see. But given what I know about the current landlords and what they’ve done elsewhere, it’s not adding up, and it’s my opinion that the mediterranean restaurant story is a smokescreen, either on the part of the Buckaroo owners or on the part of the landlords. A quick explanation: - The bar ownership wants their regular clientele to follow them to their new location, so the story of a ridiculous new business is seeded and spread; - The building ownership is merely using the idea of a restaurant to get a full liquor license in place, and afterwards will set it up as a normal bar. Add to this that no one has gotten a straight answer from the grandmother and grandson about anything at all in the last five years, and I’m gonna stand pat on any expectations as to what happens next. Hell, it’s likely that the bar ownership hasn’t got the foggiest notion of just how much work and money it’s going to take to cart 70+ years of crap and memory a half a mile away, and they will fail miserably at it or balk at it completely in the days and weeks to come. Some folks are of the mind that she simply won’t be allowed to take the bar name and sign away from that building, from a purely historical society perspective. Might happen, Fremont can be pretty weird that way. As a result, until I see it all happen, I’m not buying a good deal of this story. Perhaps in the next few days more information will trickle out and we, the regulars, can get a better bead on it all.
Whither The Buckaroo?
What makes a bar a bar? What makes a neighborhood bar what it is? Obviously, the people who go there. Five years ago the Buckaroo took a pretty massive hit to its business when a large number of regulars forsook the place when good bartenders were fired to make room for the worthless grandson. A couple of years ago, the same thing for the same reason. When they get set up in their new space down the hill, they’re going to lose pretty much all of the remaining regulars. We don’t go to the Buck because we like how it’s run or want to line the coffers of the current management, we go because that’s where all our friends go. We go because it’s the neighborhood haunt. We go because we can comfortably get very drunk indeed, and share a smoke out back, and relax with our friends in a place where everyone does in fact know your name. Regular and semi-regulars alike have been meeting this news with the same level of incredulity: “You can’t take the Buck away! They can’t do this!” The new location? No available parking, no hidden-away space out back to smoke a quick bowl or joint, not exactly the prime location to set up a dark, rough-and-tumble dive bar. Good luck with that. I’m sure they’ll have fun serving cosmopolitans and martinis to the white-collar Adobe and Getty and Google employees, but it won’t be the Buckaroo, not by a damn sight. And the future of 4201 Fremont Avenue North? Remains to be seen. If the landlords do the right thing, there’ll be some downtime and then hopefully it’ll get back to business as usual. God, if we’re lucky they might even serve food. And liquor. And fix every last thing that’s broken about that bar while they’re at it. And keep the homeless drunks and drug abusers and Aurora prostitutes at bay. That’s my hope at least. It wouldn’t be the Buckaroo (unless that bit about not being able to move the name due to historical significance proves true), but it’d still be the Buck. Still the same bunch of idiots hanging out, getting drunk, having a good time. Those regulars that made the exodus some years ago may even come back, and that would make me happy.
And Where Do I Go?
Not sure as of yet. There isn’t a plain-ol’ bar up at the top of the hill, and I am loathe to go to the bottom. I might stop by the new location after they’re set up just to see it and what they do with the space, but probably only once. There are some empty business fronts here in this neck of the woods, if the rumor of mediterranean fare is true perhaps someone will try to set up a less boutique-y bar and grill type place. In any case, I’ll go where my friends all wind up at.
EMENDATION: As evidenced by the strikethrough above, I was incorrect about the reason for jail time. At the time, we only got the one story, which was what I originally relayed. Since this post was basically a brain dump on my part I wasn’t too particularly worried about correctness, however since it has been linked to by local media I feel the need to clear things up and what-not.
