No Name Bar, Sausalito
Sometimes a weary scribe just wants a cold beer without any analysis paralysis in the way of ordering it. The selection on draft at Sausalito’s No Name Bar features a quintet of the usual suspects, which eliminates at least one of the many aggravations I try to avoid when “working in the field.”
Another plus is the working exterior electrical jack just over one’s shoulder when sitting against the southside wall of the backdoor garden. There’s nothing worse than being on deadline with a deader laptop. Add to the above a copious amount of legit literary history and it’s understandable why I’m canceling my co-working space.
A mere two blocks from the ferry terminal, the No Name Bar is one of the last vestiges of southern Marin’s bygone days as a bohemian enclave. Its storied history includes hang-time with such Beat-era marquee names as poet-and-publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti and poet Allen Ginsberg, holy scroller Jack Kerouac and controversy-courting comedian Lenny Bruce. Look no further than jazzman Charles Mingus for a soundtrack, or if you prefer something a little more Boomer-friendly, Jefferson Airplane, Bob Dylan or Alice Cooper.
Not all of No Name’s visiting luminaries have been writers and musicians, however—local eccentrics have likewise bellied up to the bar for its famous Irish Coffee. As Theodore Carl Soderberg recalled in his memoir, The Summer of ’72, “The No Name, in addition to its name, or lack thereof, was an unusual place, and terrific for meeting and watching people… to my amazement I found I was seated next to W.C. Fields.”
The man in top hat, tails and spats was not the real Fields—he died in 1946—but a functioning facsimile. But I have faith that the No Name still rates as a character study. Or, to quote Fields himself, “Everybody’s got to believe in something. I believe I’ll have another beer.”
No Name Bar, 757 Bridgeway, Sausalito. 415.332.1392. thenonamebar.com.
