BRISBANE’S 7 MILE HOUSE CELEBRATES 160TH — AGAIN
Roadhouse dates back to California’s stagecoach days
On Friday, they’ll tell tales of old Brisbane over beers and pork adobo as they celebrate the 160th anniversary of the 7 Mile House.
For the second time.
You see, the first 160th anniversary bash was held five years ago, before owner Vanessa Garcia embarked on an exhaustive research project into the joint’s history.
Turns out the roadhouse dates to 1858, not 1853, hence the party, to which the public is invited, and the launch of Garcia’s new commemorative book, “See You at the 7.”
She’s been the guardian of the 7 Mile House’s rich — and sometimes tawdry — legacy since buying the property in 2004 and transforming the dive bar into, well, a terrific dive bar with good Filipino and American food and live music most nights.
“Let’s value the old. Let’s support the old,” Garcia said Monday to a bar and restaurant packed with longtime customers, musicians and employees past and present whom she thanked by name. “This place needs to stay — because I’m not going to live for 160 years!”
That history dates back to the early days of Peninsula transportation. Long before Google buses and Teslas inched along Highway 101, another breed of weary traveler roamed the bayshore. They were stagecoach riders and drivers, and they needed frequent breaks during the jostling,
arduous trek.
They stopped at the Mile Houses, named for the distance in miles from the city center, in this case San Francisco City Hall. Brisbane’s 7 Mile House is purportedly the only Bay Area one still standing — and operating — in its original location.
After its initial years as a toll gate, the business became a saloon serving the popular “steam beer,” a restaurant, a boardinghouse, then a Prohibition-era speakeasy and a gambling haven. (In those early days, the book says, San Mateo County was considered a rather lawless land.) Later, it became a popular hangout for the local Teamsters and, when many of those jobs disappeared, a biker bar.
Today the place is a restaurant, a sports bar, a music club — with a lively mix of memorabilia. Photos from the county’s pugilistic past cover one wall while headlines from recent San Francisco team victories hold down another. Taps dispensing trendy microbrews
line a worn bar that’s seen decades of customers.
If Garcia, a Filipina immigrant, seems an unlikely keeper of the flame, consider the history and diversity of Brisbane and neighboring Daly City, attendees said. Brisbane’s oldest establishment was originally part of a Spanish land grant, Mayor Clarke Conway noted. Owners have included many immigrant families: Micheli, Testa, Nieri, Frugoli, Stuehler, Flynn, Villacarlos and now Garcia. As co-author Regina Abuyuan added, “We’re all outsiders. This book is made up of their stories.”
Old-timers and newcomers jammed the tables on preview night, trading story after story as 17-yearold musician Ramona Baker played saloon piano for the festivities.
That’s how Estelle Bertolucci, the San Mateo County recorder who helped research the 7 Mile House deeds, came to be sitting next to Brisbane businessman Tyrone White, a regular who frequents the place
because of the conviviality. “I’m here every day. As soon as I walk in the door, it’s ‘Hi, Tyrone! Hi, Tyrone!’ ” Next to him was San Francisco State history professor and food historian Dawn Mabalon, who loves the “spirit and life” of the place and notes that the 7 offers a rare blend of Filipino food, live music and a bar.
Longtime customer Bill “the Goose” Legasse came by and grabbed a bar stool. A racetrack fan, he and his buddies hung out at the 7 for decades. Now, he says, he’s one of the last “horse players” left from that era.
Joni Walker, stepdaughter of former owner Al Flynn, drew howls of laughter when she told the crowd of a quirky tradition from decades ago: Brisbane customers used to come in the door and sit on one side of the eatery, while Daly City residents would occupy the other side — and “wave to the Brisbanians over there.”
She’s one of many who found spouses at the 7 Mile House. (“It’s a love machine!” Garcia said.) Mayor
Conway met his wife here. And Lucille Stone reminisced about chatting up a fellow who spilled a drink on her 52 years ago; they soon married.
Ron Moore was the only patron in the place sporting a 7 Mile House tattoo. It’s really a tribute to his father.
As Moore recounts in the book, he and his brother would hang out here after school until their father got off work from his bartending gig at the Mile House — his second job of the day. Then-owner Camille Stuehler would tend to them, giving them sarsaparillas and Shirley Temples — while they learned life lessons from watching their father and his work ethic, seeing how he treated customers and, in return, how they liked and respected him.
“Those early years taught me to get after what I was getting after,” he wrote. “That’s a birthright born right here in 7 Mile.”