John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row: More Than a Literary Pilgrimage

It is a street of memories and ghosts, this place called Cannery Row--a waterfront avenue where John Steinbeck’s earthy characters roamed, loved, drank and died in an era of stink, grime and wealth. --Jerry Hulse

Fact and fiction blur and overlap on the tough, resilient street John Steinbeck dubbed Cannery Row. The Nobel and Pulitzer laureate called it “a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light . . . a dream,” and described the purse-seiners coming into Monterey Bay laden with sardines, the cannery whistles screaming and everyone hurrying to work.

But the year that the book “Cannery Row” appeared, 1945, was the last great year of sardine catches, when 250,000 tons were harvested. In 1946 the take dropped to 25,000 tons, and soon they had disappeared.

Ed “Doc” Ricketts, Steinbeck’s real-life friend and the marine biologist hero of “Cannery Row,” had discouraged overfishing and preached conservation for years, but no one listened. “Where the sardines went is obvious,” he finally shrugged. “They are all in cans.”

Steinbeck’s book, built from incidents and memories that dated back to 1930, immortalized the lovable eccentrics who gathered around Rickett’s laboratory during the Depression and World War II years, and drew the curious to Cannery Row.

To walk down Cannery Row today, using the 1945 novel as a guidebook, is a new experience, because in the past year or so the row has become more than a literary pilgrimage, a tourist sideshow or an evening out on the town. Until now the dreams along the row were modest ones, a gentle gentrification of the remaining buildings into shops and restaurants.

But suddenly this raffish, snaggle-toothed street, still dotted with vacant lots where pampas grass blows in the fresh salt air, has been bracketed with $100 million worth of bookends, the wildly successful new Monterey Bay Aquarium on one end of the row and the just-opened, 290-room Monterey Plaza Hotel on the other.

The aquarium, now the nation’s largest, honors the memory of Ed Ricketts with its spectacular exhibits devoted exclusively to Monterey Bay marine life. The luxurious hotel has dedicated its site to John Steinbeck, who would probably be both flattered and wryly amused to be remembered amid so much marbled elegance.

Nevertheless, taking “Cannery Row” in hand and setting off through glass doors whisked open by the Monterey Plaza’s white-liveried doorman, you shift almost at once into the reality of the row. A few feet away from the corner of the building, up the hill where Drake Avenue and Wave Street intersect, Ed Ricketts’ car collided with the evening Del Monte Express train on May 8, 1948, and he died three days later, just before his 50th birthday.

Ricketts had never complained about being used in Steinbeck’s books, even though he was a sensitive and private man, but the three years that elapsed between the tremendous success of “Cannery Row” and his tragic accident must have been uncomfortable if not downright painful for him.

He and Steinbeck had collaborated earlier on “Sea of Cortez” (Steinbeck had studied marine biology and gone on collecting trips with Ricketts between 1930 and 1940), but a rift developed between them over a screenplay Steinbeck was writing that “Doc” criticized in his usual outspoken fashion.

Walking along Cannery Row you’ll get tantalizing glimpses of the bay and hear the omnipresent barking of sea lions. On the right, at McAbee Beach, a Chinatown community stood until 1924. The large galleried Spindrift Inn at No. 652 was originally the Ocean View Hotel (Cannery Row’s previous name was Ocean View Avenue), built in 1927 by Maen Chang Wu.

Bizarre Attractions

Just beyond it, also on the right, a bust of Steinbeck gazes across at the two-story white Edgewater Packing Co. building, now containing a carrousel and a sundry collection of bizarre attractions that include a live chicken that will play tick-tack-toe with you for only a quarter. (The chicken often wins.)

The heart of Steinbeck’s Cannery Row begins a block or so farther. Look first for a two-story brown building on the left and The Old General Store.

“Lee Chong’s grocery, while not a model of neatness, was a miracle of supply,” Steinbeck wrote, and the old market, opened in 1918 by Won Yee and 11 Chinese investors, is still a “very remarkable store.” Depression-era dishes, unused sardine can labels, dusty used books, clothing that covers five decades or more, and all the heterogeneous mishmash it held in Steinbeck’s day still fill the shelves and cases.

If you walk to the back and go through the door on the left, you’ll find the Remembering John Steinbeck Room, an informal museum that contains, among other exhibits, a ledger page with Steinbeck’s tiny, left-leaning handwriting from the “Cannery Row “ manuscript.

Doc’s Place Is Private

Cater-corner across the street is a blank brown wooden facade with the numeral “0” still affixed by the door. This is Ricketts’ Pacific Biological Laboratories, called Western in the novel, which supplied specimens for biology classes to dissect. “You can order anything living from Western Biological and sooner or later you will get it,” Steinbeck wrote. (“Doc’s laboratory” has been used as a private club for years and is not open to the public.)

The “vacant lot” where Mr. and Mrs. Sam Malloy lived in an empty cannery boiler is across the street from the laboratory building. “Why it is called vacant,” Steinbeck said, “when it is piled high with old boilers with rusting pipes, with great square timbers, and stacks of five gallon cans, no one can say.”

Behind it, going up the hill, is “Chicken Walk” where Cannery Road Memorial Park is slowly being constructed, and back of that the site of the “Palace Flophouse” where Mack and the boys lived in an abandoned fishmeal shed. Dora and her cheerful ladies of the night occupied the “Bear Flag Restaurant” across the street from Ricketts’ lab. (In real life, this was Flora Wood’s Lone Star Cafe.)

Steinbeck enjoyed the whimsical choice of a name. “In a moment of local love, Dora named her place the Bear Flag Restaurant and the stories are many of people who have gone in for a sandwich.”

The real Flora Wood died penniless in 1948; her bordello had closed in 1941. Her burial and Doc Ricketts’ death signaled the beginning of the end for the old Cannery Row.

Fact, Fiction Confused

In the capricious way that fact and fiction are often confused along the row, another building named Bear Flag is across the street from the Spindrift Inn. Its roof is crowned with a pink tower dated 1929, and it was the Marina Apartments, also used sometimes as a bordello.

So you’ll find bars and restaurants named for several of Steinbeck’s characters, as well as a Steinbeck Lobster Grotto on Cannery Row.

At the end of the row, design magic and $50 million has turned the last operating cannery, Hoveden (called Heliondo Cannery in the book) into the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Inside, it’s pure enchantment, from the massive and dramatic kelp forest tank to a two-level sea otter habitat that allows you to watch them cavort above and below the water. Hands-on exhibits let you touch anemones and bat rays, and there’s even a corner upstairs that runs period films from the sardine canneries.

The fish are back on Cannery Row, at least in the aquarium, and the colorful, raffish old street that Doc once strode, tipping his hat to dogs, is alive once again with music and laughter and a rich, bright future.

As for Steinbeck’s book, dedicated to Ed Ricketts, it reminds us at the beginning that “The people, places and events in this book are, of course, fictitious and fabrications.”

Amtrak’s Coast Starlight stops in nearby Salinas, where there is frequent bus service to Monterey. John Steinbeck’s birthplace and grave are in Salinas.

The Monterey Plaza Hotel on Cannery Row is the newest property of A. Cal Rossi Jr., the San Francisco developer of the Stanford Court Hotel and Donatello Restaurant/Club/Hotel. Double rooms range from $120 to $180, and toll-free reservations may be made by calling (800) 334-3999 in California and (800) 631-1339 in the rest of the United States.

The Spindrift Inn on Cannery Row charges $129 to $179 for a guest room with continental breakfast and afternoon tea. For reservations, call (408) 646-8900 or toll-free in California, (800) 841-1879.

Eat at Ristorante Delfino in the Monterey Plaza for luscious and stylish northern Italian cuisine, including risotto with fresh porcini mushrooms and lobster-stuffed ravioli with pesto; the Sardine Factory at 701 Wave St., since 1968 one of Cannery Row’s most honored restaurants, for tournedos Regina with asparagus spears; the simple and casual little Coast Cafe on the hill above the aquarium, serving homemade sausages, hearty egg dishes, sandwiches and salads in the sunny garden patio; La Provence, on Ocean View Avenue just across the border in Pacific Grove, for light French dishes, and Hammerheads at 414 Calle Principal in Monterey for the novelty of a serve-yourself chocoholic dessert bar.

Wine, Cheese, Calamari

Look for mild and melting Monterey Jack cheese, fresh artichokes from nearby Castroville, local calamari and delicate little sand dabs, and Monterey County wines. Be wary of abalone; much of it is frozen and imported.

Monterey Bay Aquarium is open daily except Christmas from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; admission is $7 for adults, $5 for students and seniors and $3 for children 2-12. After May 1 you are requested to have reservations and ticket purchases for weekend attendance. Call (408) 375-3333 for further (recorded) information. A free shuttle bus runs between the aquarium, Fisherman’s Wharf and the downtown area.

Old Monterey’s “Path of History” is an easy walking tour that covers many of the city’s fine old homes. Some are operated by Monterey State Historic Park (a $1 fee covers entrance and/or guided tours, hourly on the hour); a map and brochure is free at any of the park buildings, or the headquarters at 210 Olivier St.

Within easy driving distance you can visit Carmel, Pebble Beach, 17-Mile Drive and Point Lobos Marine Reserve.