On the lookout for a bar with a sense of turf and tradition.

On the way home from work the other night I stopped by the Cal State Northridge campus for a quick beer.

This was part of an ongoing mission I work at from time to time.

I’m looking for a bar.

Though I can give the search only haphazard attention, so far I have found nothing to my liking.

On someone’s advice, I once met a friend at Whomphopper’s. It turned out to be a giant yuppie spot on top of Universal City in a new building made to look like an old mine in Randsburg. The thing that makes old mines fascinating is testimony to the folly of inflated hopes. I can’t imagine who would want to contemplate that thought in a bar.

Anyway, Whomphopper’s was so crowded we had to patrol it like commandos to get a table. It was so noisy we couldn’t talk. After we left, my friend had to walk back to have her parking ticket stamped. I paid. I just wanted to get out of there.

I avoid all those imitations of Old Mexico and Cannery Row that have cropped up with tract houses in the West Valley.

I’m looking for a place that has a sense of its own turf and tradition, like the bars of Europe where friends chat for hours over a glass of beer, unharassed, and people come in alone merely to watch the parade of life go by.

The closest the Valley has to this, I think, are the small neighborhood bars squeezed into mini shopping malls.

On assignment once to infiltrate the blue-collar world, I discovered one that is still my favorite Valley bar, though its name now escapes me.

It was in the auto body shop district on Sepulveda Boulevard. A single fish swam listlessly in a built-in tropical fish tank. A television told the news, unobserved. About a dozen men and women talked in buoyant voices. The bartender made two chili dogs for a young mechanic, still in his blue uniform. A companion threw his arm over the mechanic’s shoulder and they laughed together as he ate his dinner.

The trouble is, it takes nerve to walk into a place like that without a pretext. You never know whether the first person you see is going to throw his arm around you or punch you in the nose.

I ended up next to a fellow with a distorted face. He noticed my suit, looked me in the eyes and asked, “What brings you here?” I didn’t tell the truth.

I had a more sentimental reason for my visit to the bar at Cal State Northridge.

In my college years, I never had the chance to walk into the campus bar and order a beer. For reasons that became inoperable soon after I left, alcohol was prohibited on campus then.

Taboos that die away like that can leave a permanent a sense of loss behind.

So I took advantage of the campus observance of Oktoberfest Monday to finally end my wait.

Oktoberfest, I thought, is a festival that has something to do with fall and is used as temporary unlimited license to drink beer.

To my surprise, the patrons of CSUN’s bar, The Pub, didn’t seem aroused. The place was almost dead.

The Pub is a large, square hall under a massive wood beam ceiling. There are long tables and enough seats for a hundred or more.

Not many more than a dozen were there. They were concentrated in a corner around the big-screen TV for the beginning of the Chargers-Seahawks game.

A towheaded bartender named Scott Olson served me a Hussong’s, The Pub’s beer of the week.

For an hour, Olson did a steady but modest business, selling scantily from the bar’s excellent stock of imported beer. Mostly he poured pitchers and half pitchers of draft for young men in shorts and T-shirts who carried Styrofoam plates from the commissary stacked with slices of pizza. No one stayed long at the bar. They took their beer and pizza out to a table to watch the TV.

Olson didn’t volunteer a lot. But he answered questions in a friendly manner.

He said it was an average Monday, The Pub’s best night of the week.

The Pub, it seems, has some tricky marketing problems because of the drinking age.

For about three years the bar has been off limits to students under 21.

At the time that prohibition went in, the Student Union pulled the rock performances that used to be there and moved them to another hall so that all students could go.

Now The Pub’s main attraction is sports.

On top of that, CSUN remains a commuter college. Most of its students drive in and out just to go to class.

Olson said the place often clears out just before 7 p.m.

“A lot of people come in before the 7 o’clock class,” he said.

On Friday, The Pub closes at 6.

“There just weren’t enough people showing up,” Olson said.

After one Hussong’s I considered my inquiry over and left.

The campus was beautiful at twilight. Hundreds of students strolled under its trees and lay on its grassy fields in front of the elegant arches of the Oviatt Library.

On the north side of campus, a long line of cars was stalled at the parking-lot entrance. Evidently, the lot was full and each car coming in had to wait for another car to leave.

None of those students would be stopping in at The Pub. They were already late for class.