The Fort Bragg Fires, Part I: The Money Trail
The Fort Bragg Fires
Part I: The Money Trail
by Mark Heimann and Bruce Anderson for the Anderson Valley Advertiser
February 3 rd, 1999
Publisher’s Note:
In a remote Northern California logging and fishing hamlet, hidden in the inky autumn blackness before either moon or sun would rise on September 20 th, 1987, an unknown group ignited three brazen and near-simultaneous arson fires that destroyed the Ten Mile Justice Court, the adjacent City Library and, just two blocks down Main Street, the venerable Piedmont Hotel and restaurant (seen right). No one was ever prosecuted for the blazes, spectacular and disheartening as they were, and only much later would residents learn the motives behind them and the rest of the series of arsons-for-profit that plagued the small coastal community of Fort Bragg in the late 1980s.
In a later entry the arsonists are identified by name, as are those who stood to gain the most that paid them. Several of them never left Fort Bragg, and some even stayed until death took them. Two were prominent local citizens.
The first three installments of this five-part series can be confusing, consisting mostly of background information that’s needed to understand the people involved, how they came to be associated and the motives for the illicit financial schemes carried out by this brazen but clumsy band of conspirators. Their increasing desperation was all orchestrated by a rogue loan officer in the Fort Bragg branch of the Savings Bank of Mendocino County. They became known because their activities eventually involved too many people, some of whom talked too much and one or two who still haven't shut up. After thirty years and no criminal or even civil repercussions, they must think they got away with everything, hardly an unreasonable conclusion given the circumstances.
Yet though the statute of limitations elapsed many years ago for the fires, the State of California has no such time limit on indictments for murder. Thus, while the opportunity to dole out punishment to those who set several cherished town structures ablaze may have been squandered, it can never be too late to lock up a killer. The bumbling of the authorities at first delayed and then ultimately prevented the prosecution of the "Gang of '87," as they might be called. The county's indifferent district attorney would opt to sacrifice the safety and well-being of Fort Bragg’s residents over a failed budget dispute with four equally indifferent members of its five-seat Board of Supervisors. Only the representative for the Fourth District in which sits Fort Bragg, Liz Henry—much maligned by the social milieu in whose midst the perpetrators continued to prosper—tried to push the investigation forward, though thwarted at every turn by an indefensible series of 1–4 votes.
In this series we will revisit the scenes of those crimes and name the people responsible for them. Law enforcement at every level—local, state and federal—had known their identities even before the town's all-volunteer fire department could manage to extinguish the last smouldering embers left in the wake of the most spectacular of the arsons. Before long, plenty of ordinary area residents had learned who did it, and soon, you'll know too. We will also describe the arsons which preceded but still related to the destruction of the City Library, the Ten Mile Justice Court and the Piedmont Hotel in the heart of old Fort Bragg, all integral members of the town's history and collective memory.
Copies of the story have already been made available to the authorities. We are prepared to defend it, and ourselves, if challenged regarding its contents or conclusions. The investigative work required to accurately compose it left no illusions about the ruthlessness of the people we are about to reveal as the guilty parties.
From the comfort of the three Noyo Harbor restaurants, fishermen on reprieve from the trials faced by all who negotiate the river’s treacherous mouth would closely watch its rhythms and tantrums, hoping to calculate when they could make a safe run into or out of the Pacific Ocean that lies beyond it. Salmon fishing was then, and is now even more so, a fiercely competitive occupation filled with loners. It was in these restaurants, through long days and nights of bad weather, that knowledge and experience were cultivated and freely exchanged among the fishermen who regarded those establishments as their homes away from the sea.
The Wharf Restaurant, built on pilings over the Noyo estuary by Jim Cummings and eventually leased by Tom Wisdom, was the social epicenter of this free flowing cash-heavy activity in the harbor. The Wharf had tie-ups for salmon boats and a row of motel rooms for visiting fishermen to play with their girlfriends. A fisherman could unload his catch, take on fuel and ice next door, then step off his boat into a full bar where he was greeted by popular bartenders and attractive waitresses. Behind the welcoming crew at the bar was an upscale dining room that served several course dinners (prime rib being the specialty of the house) and a dance floor to work off the overindulgence. Bankers in town knew that several million dollars, easy, would flow into the Wharf every fishing season.
Competing restaurateurs thought that by imitating the Wharf’s high-end formula they could steal its customer base and get some of the fish money too, especially if the competing places had picture windows overlooking the entrance to the harbor.
In the late 1970s Jim West, part owner of two of Inez’s coffee shops, one located in Willits and the other in Fort Bragg, wanted in. But West saw himself as the host of a fine dinner house serving Fort Bragg's solid citizens, not necessarily fishermen. In 1980, West traded his mother his part ownership of Inez’s in Willits for Inez’s Cliff House overlooking Fort Bragg’s busy little harbor.
West's first move was to close the Cliff House’s popular breakfast service and scale back lunches; he thought he didn't need the coffee-drinkers who made the place their hangout. A second cup to anyone sitting at the counter during the dinner hour was prohibited. One waitress recalls,
“I was warned that if I gossiped with any of my regulars I would be fired. I wasn't allowed to seat anyone in working clothes in the dining room. After Jim ran everybody off, those of us who didn't want to ditch our uniforms and dress up were let go. It was awful, I'd only have four tables on a Saturday night. Everyone was gone, not just the old regulars.”
In 1981, West found his new enterprise overlooking the harbor mouth in survival mode. He needed money. He thought a re-model would revive his business, so he approached Bill Dunham, Assistant Vice-President and Bank Manager for Mendocino Savings Bank in Fort Bragg, for a loan.
Dunham was a young man in his middle 30s with a young wife who taught elementary school in town. He was amiable, seemed to know everything about money, had an energy that older people envied but younger people assumed was chemically derived, and he sported a groovy guy perm, then all the rage among fast track males, urban and rural. Dunham enjoyed hanging around with the fishermen down in the harbor, especially when the fishing fleet was in. There were lots of unattached women around and enough cocaine to keep all of Mendocino County boogieing for weeks on end. The young banker was right where the action was.
It was a wild time, and Bill Dunham fit right in. Although married, there were trips to the exotic spas of the Caribbean and Mexico (which were also known as major money laundering centers) with ladies who did not appear to be Mrs. Dunham. The madcap whirlwind of the Savings Bank’s Fort Bragg loan desk so alarmed a young assistant who'd just joined the bank that the new man called his strait-laced superiors at the bank’s Ukiah headquarters and told them that either Dunham had to go or he would resign. “We'll all go to jail if this keeps up,” the young banker told Ukiah in a plea to the main office to rein Dunham in because Dunham was making what appeared to be large loans to businesses with no visible means to pay them back.
One of many bizarre episodes with Dunham at the center occurred when Dunham was briefly placed under arrest by federal authorities on charges which quickly disappeared, along with the records of the detention. It wasn't only Dunham's young assistant who was suspicious of the banker, law enforcement was interested in him, too.
Dunham was eventually sent down the road by the Savings Bank. The bank officers refused to say why their Coast money man was fired. Banks seldom fire a manager; a sudden dismissal at the management level shakes confidence in the prudence and, by extension, the stability of the institution.
But Dunham was fired.
Meanwhile, back at the Jim West’s Cliff House, with banker Dunham at his elbow just before Dunham was sacked by the Savings Bank, West wanted to redecorate the place, his thinking being that its decor was the reason he couldn’t attract customers. West was a non-drinker who discouraged the sale of beer and wine to his dinner customers, a fatal miscalculation in hard-drinking Fort Bragg. According to a lawsuit against the Savings Bank later filed by West, West said that Dunham had told him he would qualify for a $400,000 loan. Even West knew this was a ludicrous amount of money for a property and business worth — at best — about $200,000 in the market of 1987. Nevertheless, according to West, Dunham urged him to take out the loan, assuring West that he would have great success in what had been merely a coffee shop when it became a “fashionable restaurant.” Dunham told West he had experience in the restaurant business and would help West manage the place.
West was hooked.
Dunham went to the Small Business Administration without West’s knowledge of the details of the ensuing transaction and got a guarantee from the SBA to back up the Savings Bank’s outsized $400,000 loan to West. According to West, Dunham then inserted himself into the renovation of the premises and distributed portions of the loan where the banker thought it should go. It finally occurred to West that Dunham had become his de facto business partner.
West received $125,000 for the renovations and $235,000 to purchase new kitchen equipment — walk-in refrigerators, enough stainless steal pans to cook for a hundred customers at a time, several commercial ranges, enough dishes to host half the fishing fleet, and a brand-new cash register to ring up all the new business. West was also promised $40,000 in cash as working capital to pay the more immediate bills, and to tide over his cooks and waitresses until the “up-scale” dinner crowd began arriving.
West claims he was never informed what his interest payments were going to be on the $400,000. Running a traditional loan amortization schedule at 8% interest, West would have needed to come up with around $7,000 per month, which is a lot of shrimp cocktails. But according to the recorded deeds on Inez's Cliff House, West also had a payment to make to his mother, and another one to Crocker Bank on a mortgage of about $36,000 with payments for both totaling $3,000 a month. West, then, had to generate some $10,000 a month, every month, in a town that literally closed down (except for the bars) during the six-months that salmon fishermen and loggers were at home either living off their savings or drawing unemployment.
No banker would make this loan. No rational loan recipient would want it. But West thought somehow he could handle it.
The energetic Dunham also helped West run the business. Under Dunham's direction, West changed the menu from "deep fried to sautéed." A waitress recalls that West had a chart on the wall on which waitresses and dishwashers were to record the number of dishes they broke. More than five plates was grounds for dismissal unless the fumble fingers responsible paid for the broken crockery. "We all thought the chart was a hoot because there were no customers. The only way dishes are broken in a restaurant is when the place is jammed with people and dishes are moved at warp speed in order to keep up with the business."
West never got the $40,000 cash draw Dunham had promised him to pay those first bills. West also claims that Dunham informed the SBA in 1982 that "West had a problem generating sufficient sales as a result of increased competition in the area."
And the competition did increase, thanks to banker Dunham.
In 1982, through the Mendocino Savings Bank, Dunham had also gone into business with long-time Mendocino County restaurateur, Vince Sisco. He lent Sisco $140,000 via a 90-day promissory note payable on demand for Sisco to buy the defunct Sollini restaurant located on the north side of the harbor, directly opposite West's struggling Cliff House restaurant. On whichever side of the Noyo he happened to be standing, Dunham could see a restaurant he and the Savings Bank were funding.
Sisco had been a business partner with Patrick Finnegan in the Wharf Restaurant down in the harbor, but had suffered a falling out over lease payments with Finnegan and the property’s owner, Jim Cummings. Finnegan, born and raised in Ukiah where he was a high school football star, was described as "brilliant" by people who know him well and became an attorney with a thriving practice in Ukiah. However, the cocaine devil got ahold of him and Finnegan self-destructed in a blizzard of legal trouble, including a terrible automobile crash near Fort Bragg. He was sought for years by various creditors, including a Ukiah bail bondsman.
Finnegan sold Sisco's interest in their business at the Wharf to Tom Wisdom, who jealously guarded the Wharf's popularity by requiring a "covenant" from Sisco to not steal his customers by owning or operating another restaurant within ten miles of the Wharf.
Sandra Tonstad, Sisco's daughter, provided cover for her slippery father. Since dear old dad had agreed not to operate another restaurant within ten miles of the Wharf, loyal daughter Tonstad would front for dear old dad. She soon negotiated the purchase of the Sollini Restaurant and Bar just a short five minute walk up the hill from the Wharf. She negotiated directly with Sollini, but her dad, Vince Sisco, was the real owner – in violation of the deal he'd signed with Wisdom promising he wouldn't run another restaurant in the area.
The grossly inflated purchase price for the crumbling, ramshackle Sollini property was $460,000 at 13% interest. But Sisco, who knew first hand about the success of the Wharf, nonetheless found the usurious deal attractive. According to a Mechanic's Lien filed on the Sollini enterprise, Sollini had halfheartedly tried to renovate the place after a fire damaged the building in 1981, but couldn't come up with the $20,000 to complete the job. Sisco lent his daughter Tonstad the $75,000 down payment to buy Sollini's. Sisco, always strapped for cash, especially large amounts of cash, got the money from the promissory note fronted by banker Dunham. Sisco and Tonstad finished renovating the restaurant, bar and dance floor and renamed the place Agustino's and, of course, were in instant competition with both the lucrative Wharf and Mr. West's clueless Cliff House.
Banker Dunham and Vince Sisco were in business. Dunham was now funding competing restaurants on both sides of the mouth of the Noyo, thus betraying his other client, Jim West, while Sisco, disguised as his daughter, betrayed the deal he'd made with Tom Wisdom not to compete in the local restaurant business.
After the flurry of renovations and optimistic grand openings were over at the two eating establishments at the mouth of the river, West's Cliff House and Sisco-Tonstead's Agustino's, the bleak reality of impossible monthly payments for both establishments became obvious. Dunham had engineered loans for mortgages totaling twice the value of the Cliff House and Agustino's properties and the failing businesses inside them. The Mendocino Savings Bank could only sit and wait for the inevitable collapse of both.
Dunham didn't have to wait long.
West filed for bankruptcy in 1983 on Inez's Cliff House. According to West during the bankruptcy proceedings, Dunham informed the SBA that "the reason for West's nonpayment was that West was a poor business manager and was not operating his business with good business judgment or efficiency."
Like West, Sisco and Tonstad also had some $10,000 a month in payments to make on their respective mortgages and loans. Unlike the straight arrow West, Sisco had other ideas about how to hold on to his restaurant besides filing for bankruptcy.
Lurking around the periphery of this cut-throat game of restaurant Monopoly was a new guy in town, Dominic Affinito. Affinito was from Sacramento where his family sits atop a small but lucrative real estate empire. Affinito brought more cash to Fort Bragg than any single individual since the U.S. Army had abandoned the original fort in 1867 and enterprising loggers began building and operating sawmills on the freshly-vacated Indian reservation the garrison had been there to manage. It was the loggers that dredged the harbor and made it deep enough for the schooners which hauled their timber to San Francisco and beyond.
The schooner captains began boasting of the skill and bravery required to cross the bar at the new harbor's narrow entrance, as sailors are known to do, which is how the salmon boat captains working the waters between the big city and distant Eureka learned of it. Certain that they could sail their boats twice as well as the shipping schooners and conveniently having roughly the same draft requirements, soon they too were mooring in Noyo Harbor for supplies and to sample the hospitality of the little town springing up around the mills that rough estimates say consisted of 40% salloons and boarding houses, 40% churches and 20% brothels. Finding an abundance of the Gold Rush spirit that drew many of them to the state originally along with steady catches, within only a handful of years they began moving into town and calling Noyo Harbor their homeport, giving birth to the fishing community that was the core of the clientele the three restaurants would fight over.
Affinito immediately purchased the Tradewinds Restaurant and Motel on Main Street in Fort Bragg for $2 million cash; the sale was made in 1981. By the end of 1982, Affinito had completed construction of the motel's new meeting room and swimming pool. Located on Highway One in the center of town, and within walking distance of the harbor, the Tradewinds offered 60 inexpensive rooms and a bar at the entrance to its coffee house and restaurant. The Affinito complex caught the overflow business from Noyo and the long-haul truck drivers and low-budget tourists passing though town. With the closing of the once popular Cliff House breakfasts, the Tradewinds became the place for lots of fishermen and working people to meet and have coffee in the mornings.
Less than a mile to the south, overlooking the Noyo, West's new kitchen was the talk of the town. “We had more people visiting the kitchen than we had customers,” recalled a waitress.
West claimed Dunham, in 1983, brought Dominic Affinito, the new guy in town, into his restaurant to show him the new $235,000 kitchen. Affinito liked the kitchen, liked it a lot, so much so that he wanted to own it. Meanwhile, Dunham thwarted West's only opportunity to redeem his investment via bankruptcy proceedings by treacherously asserting that West “was a poor business risk.” Dunham had doomed West's chance, albeit a slim one, to redeem his business via financial reorganization but, in the Savings Bank-friendly county courts West was denied that slim opportunity. Ironically, West had looked good enough to Dunham for the original $400,000 loan, so good Dunham himself took over much of the re-modeling of the restaurant, but Dunham stabbed West’s chance to recover with a lower repayment schedule by describing him as a poor businessman.
The Savings Bank of Mendocino soon foreclosed on West, lock, stock and well-equipped kitchen.
Guess who bought it?
Dunham, in 1985, then sold West's remodeled Cliff House to Affinito for $340,000, considerably less than the value of the property, which now had a brand-new kitchen and other essential improvements. West lost everything and finally gave up completely in 1990, withdrawing the suit he brought for fraud and usury against Dunham and the Savings Bank in 1987. West had gotten in way over his head in deep water with big sharks. Affinito got a state-of-the-art restaurant overlooking the Noyo. With tourists beginning to arrive in greater numbers year-round, Affinito came out way ahead, as he would in lots of real estate deals in and around Fort Bragg in the years to follow.
Right from the beginning of their false front enterprise on the bluff opposite Affinito’s new restaurant, Sisco and Tonstad were having a tough time making their monthly property payments to Sollini, and just as tough a time paying their help. They borrowed heavily from their bookkeeper, Ruth Johnston, in order to try to stay current. The ubiquitous restaurant lender, Mr. Dunham, helped them out by lending them another $53,000. This sum was in addition to the original $140,000 loaned in 1982 on which Sisco had never made a single payment. Sisco and Tonstad, father and daughter, went ever deeper into the red. Sollini, who held the first mortgage, was going to foreclose and take back the restaurant which, like the Cliff House, had been substantially remodeled.
With Sisco, the Savings Bank was in a much more dangerous financial position than the dubious deals Dunham had done with the unsuspecting West. In West's case, Savings Bank was in the “largest lender” driver's seat, pushing the outcome to where West lost his $200,000 equity while Affinito acquired the property and improvements for $100,000 less than they were worth; the Savings Bank of Mendocino, SBA and Crocker would also come out whole in the end. West lost everything.
Lenders who engage in ruthless acquisition lending do so in order to make money from the interest and sale profits based on an increase in the new appraised value of property enhanced by the duped entrepreneur — West, in this case. But when West went under, the interest realized by Mendocino Savings was a pittance because of the short term of the loan. The property sold for less than the value of the loans and West's equity, hence no profit for Savings Bank. One must look at who benefited most to understand what Dunham was up to, who he was really working for, and it wasn't the Savings Bank of Mendocino.
In Sisco's case, the Savings Bank was in precarious second position behind Sollini's $385,000 first mortgage on Dunham's $193,000 unsecured loan to Sisco. If Sollini foreclosed on Sisco and Tonstad it was likely that Mendocino Savings would lose the $193,000 it had loaned Sisco. Tonstad and Sisco had virtually no other assets other than their heavily mortgaged Sollini's, re-born as Agustino's. Sisco had lost his Redwood Valley home to foreclosure some years before, and Tonstad's home was mortgaged to the hilt. The Savings Bank would have to purchase the $385,000 Sollini note in order to protect its $193,000, but this wasn't an attractive proposition because the property and failing business couldn't be sold for an amount totaling the combination of the two loans — Sollini's and Sisco's — of almost $600,000. Worse still for the Savings Bank, per a lawsuit filed against Sisco later on, the Savings Bank, through Dunham, had advanced Sisco that $193,000 on promissory notes with no collateral to back them up. Sisco never had a better friend than Dunham, and the Savings Bank was about to eat it for $193,000 plus the interest on the cash that Sisco had never paid.
Dunham tried to rescue the deal before everything went to hell when Sollini foreclosed. Savings Bank filed suit against Vince Sisco in 1985 for fraud even though the Bank's boy Dunham had facilitated the Bank's relationship with Sisco, a man whose ability to get money from banks and insurance companies bordered on the miraculous.
The Savings Bank claimed that Sisco never did have an ownership interest in Agustino's and had misled Dunham into making the purchase and renovation loans back in 1982. The bank refused to believe that Sisco's daughter, Ms. Tonstad, was fronting for her father. But she was.
In reality, the suit against Sisco by the bank was to get a court judgment that legally tied the $193,000 loan directly to the Agustino's property and business, the first step necessary to take over the property. The Savings Bank prevailed in 1986. But by then Tonstad was $135,000 in arrears in her mortgage payments to Sollini.
In May 1986 the Savings Bank, apparently unaware of Tonstad's relationship to her father, the man the bank had just sued, lent Tonstad $120,000 (payable at $1,000/month interest) to help bring first mortgage payments current and to stop Sollini from foreclosing. This reduced the principal on Sollini's first mortgage, and also brought the Savings Bank a little closer to equal loan positions with Sollini. But the only possible way Dunham could make Savings Bank whole on his loans to Sisco and Tonstad (now totaling $313,000) was for Sisco and Tonstad to pay off Sollini. This would move Savings Bank into the first mortgage position where it would either be paid off or it would get title to the property through foreclosure if Sisco and Tonstad defaulted on their loans from the Bank. Through Dunham's scheming, Sisco and Tonstad would, in essence be paying for the Agustino's property twice, once from Sollini and again from Savings Bank.
On September 19th, 1986, Agustino's burned.
The cause of the blaze was attributed to a smoldering cigarette. The restaurant was badly damaged. City of Fort Bragg records show that Sisco and Tonstad soon obtained approval for $75,000 worth of fire damage remodeling. After completion of the work Agustino's re-opened in April of 1987 as the Waterfront Bar and Grill.
Affinito, again Johnny On The Spot, bought the Waterfront Bar and Grill in 1991 after its series of suspicious fires and duly paid insurance claims as suspicious as the fires. The property was assessed at $244,000. Affinito purchased the property for $425,000, $35,000 less than what Sisco/Tonstad had paid nearly ten years earlier. Affinito now owned the restaurants on both sides of the mouth of the Noyo. Sollini's mortgage seems to have been partially paid off through Tonstad's financial recovery from fire insurance and was finally paid off by the Savings Bank. The Savings Bank then foreclosed on Tonstad and sold the property to Affinito.
The Savings Bank was owed at least $313,000 and probably more when it paid off Sollini. It the bank made any money from its mercenary transactions it wasn't much. But Dunham was out from underneath what could have been a $300,000 lending deal gone very bad, and Affinito had himself another piece of prime real estate on the north side of the Noyo to go with his prime piece of real estate on the south side of the Noyo.
Following the Cliff House fire August 4th, 1987, Affinito received "no hassle" approval from the City of Fort Bragg through its city manager, Gary Milliman. Milliman, also acting as head planner at the time, gave Affinito the go ahead to renovate the Cliff House based on plans partially approved by the City six months before the Cliff House fire. Affinito expanded his new acquisition by 50% during a building moratorium for the south section of Fort Bragg. The moratorium prohibited all businesses from expanding more than 10% of their existing square footage because (ironically) there was not enough water pressure in the City's water lines to comply with fire code requirements for fire suppression.
At the same time Milliman was doing everything for Affinito short of back rubs, he put Sisco and Tonstad through the City regulatory wringer. Milliman refused to sign off on their building permit on various construction items, disconnected Agustino's from water service because it was allegedly "out of compliance" with city codes, conducted hearing after hearing alleging that the business had opened without an occupancy permit or a business license. Already in way over their heads, thanks to Dunham, Milliman now pushed Sisco and Tonstad right over the bluffs and into the river. There is no evidence that the City ever exercised its regulatory muscle as zealously with any other business in Fort Bragg before or since. In fact Affinito's currently non-compliant Cliff House North motel, (built where the Sollini's/Waterfront/Agustino's used to stand) "approved" by the City in 1991, is now an infamous example of the City's arbitrary regulatory blind eye.
After engineering several subsequent tax funded "business deals" for Affinito, in 1996 Milliman went into the Skunk Train business with Affinito after being removed from his City Manager's job for routing public redevelopment money to a private enterprise he partially owned.
If Affinito had a better friend in Fort Bragg than Gary Milliman, it had to be the Fort Bragg City Council. The fire gods were also good to Affinito.
In the late 70s, Fort Bragg's Noyo Harbor had three homey restaurants with panoramic views of the mouth of the picturesque Noyo River. Viewing the ocean was not, back then, a big draw for the well-to-do Mendo-tourist we see today lingering over truffle mousse and brandy in view-less Mendocino. The people who got the best ocean views where hard working locals who made the water's edge restaurants, and especially bars, an integral part of their working and social life. Fishermen made up the bulk of the patrons at Fort Bragg's ocean view bars and restaurants
Noyo Harbor was once a busy port for the West Coast salmon fishing fleet before big timber wrecked the salmon spawning rivers. Not only was the little harbor busy with the seasonal fish runs, any small boat that ran into trouble or a big storm had no choice but to seek refuge in Noyo, the only harbor in the 350 miles between Bodega Bay and Eureka. During rough weather, the Noyo break at the mouth of the river is one of the most dangerous wave formations off the Pacific coast. Negotiating the break in a 45-foot fishing boat is a matter of life and death, a test of nautical skill even many experienced fishermen have failed.
Inez's Cliff House, with its huge wraparound picture windows, was perched on the south cliff overlooking the mouth of the harbor. Sollini's Restaurant and Bar (mostly bar) sat on the north side of the river on its overlooking cliff. The Wharf Restaurant, down in the basin, provided an eye level, head on view of the break.
On land, it was the proprietors of the restaurants who carried on a fierce competition. Not for the fish, but for the fishermen. Fort Bragg, with around 5,000 year-round residents, many surviving on off-season unemployment checks, couldn't sustain any restaurant year round. Bed and breakfast tourism of the type now thriving on the Mendocino Coast was, in 1987, just beginning.
From May to September catching fishermen's wallets was the primary goal of Noyo's mini-food service industry. Loyal followings were chummed by local restaurateurs who broke out all the stops catering to the needs of their sea-going clientèle during the salmon season.
The major patronage of Inez's restaurant were mostly the coffee-house fishermen, fishermen who had retired and fishermen who just couldn't quite get it together to actually go out and fish. Along with the working fishermen, the landlocked fisher-folk would enjoy leisurely breakfasts and talk about fishing while consuming gallons of coffee in the morning and gallons of beer in the afternoon, all the while looking down at the mouth of the river to see whose boat was coming, and whose boat was going.
Perched on the cliff opposite Inez's, was Sollini's, a bar and rock 'n’ roll dance hall where the younger deck hands and inland loggers spent their fat pay checks on Friday and Saturday nights.
When the fish were biting off Fort Bragg, as they often were back then, the cash flowing through these three in Noyo Harbor restaurants was unreal. The tiny port would be awash in cash. Boats would come into the harbor to unload their catches all about the same time. Checks were cut by fish buyers right on the piers, and upwards of $10,000 per boat was paid out, every seven to ten days over the six month season. And there were a lot of boats. Captains would pay their one or two deckhands in cash. Fuel, bait, ice, supplies and repair accounts were also settled in cash. And the party was on.
Comments
Post a Comment