Community Guide 2017

Community Guide 2017

Frannie’s Beer Joint

by Lenna Matzen as told to Bruce Wick Pop Conrad and Frances Tedsen were “very good” friends. Frances was a former madam here in Woodacre, where she had the girls and ran rum during prohibition. (There was another “house” in the Valley at the trailer court before the Yerions bought it. They had a peep hole in the side of the store so they could see if an angry wife was coming.) Frances ran her beer “joint” until the mid-sixties. Her eyesight was bad by then. Beer (that’s all she sold) was a quarter. She would put the beer in front of a patron and keep her hand on it until she could feel the money.

She lived in the west side of the building. The entrance to the bar was through the corner door. The bar itself was facing the door; to the left was the bathroom, cesspool. Frances left the bar to Elmer “Skipper” Schivo about 1965 or so. About 1975 Skipper sold or gave it to Frank “Speck” and Dorothy McAuliffe, owners of Speck’s Irish Coffee in Lagunitas. Skipper tended bar for them. For a short time, Fay McNeily had use of the building and a bike shop also used it.

“Pop” Conrad in front of the Flying A Gas Station and Frannie’s Beer Joint at the corner of Railroad Avenue and then-Sir Francis Drake Blvd. (today’s San Geronimo Valley Dr.). There were two other gas stations at the time, one in San Geronimo, called the Bull Rushes, between the church and golf course, and one in Lagunitas. The building’s current owner, Bruce Wick, plans to convert it into a recording studio.

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SGVCC

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