‘Every Night Here Has Been a Night of Good Music’ : Old Time Cafe’s Last Refrain Is Likely to Be a Sad Note for Folk Fans

For years, it has been the mecca for folk music fans in San Diego County.

Perched on the edge of Old Highway 101, amid the vegetarian restaurants and plant stands of Leucadia, the Old Time Cafe has been a virtual institution, providing first-rate music with a dash of progressive politics thrown in for good measure.

But now, eight years and countless bittersweet ballads after the first guitar was plucked on the stage that owners Pearl Wolfe and Bill Goldsmith nurtured with the pride of parents, the Old Time Cafe is closing.

On Jan. 31, when the last lilting refrain is but a distant echo, Wolfe and Goldsmith will shut the doors for good to the cramped, 49-seat building they rented and move on to new challenges. The Old Time Cafe will then be demolished by the owner of the property and a 53-unit hotel will rise in its place.

And so will close a chapter in the music annals of the region.

These days, the memories come cascading back for Wolfe and Goldsmith. The husband-and-wife team established the cafe in 1979 after arriving in San Diego to discover there was no place offering the folk music they cherished.

As with most small businesses, the first years were especially tough. The pair routinely put in 80-hour weeks with no days off. But the combination of hearty meals and top-notch music soon began to pack people in.

The cafe drew the top names as well as the no names, but always endeavored to provide an enjoyable evening.

“Every night here has been a night of good music,” said Goldsmith, a bespectacled man with a dark billowing beard. “We’re not working in a system that breeds stars.”

Early on, the pair decided to hold annual 36-hour folk music marathons, monumental events that helped fortify the cafe’s reputation as a center for the best. Typically, the place has been filled even at 3 or 4 a.m. during these fetes, Wolfe recalled.

Indeed, the fans have always been devoted. Wolfe said the business has maintained a mailing list of 5,000--many of whom paid the $2 one-time fee to cover postage--for its flyers announcing upcoming performances.

Wolfe recalls one woman, in her 80s, who used to attend performances several years ago, but eventually stopped coming because of her health. When the woman read in a local newspaper that the Old Time Cafe was closing, she called up the couple.

“She thanked us for what the music we had brought into her life,” Wolfe said. “It meant a lot to get that call.”

The whole point of the place has been the music. For many years, the couple did not even serve alcohol, figuring it would not draw the serious, respectful crowd they wanted.

A few years ago, they began offering beer and wine, but after a customer has a couple glasses “they have to fight to get another,” Wolfe said. “It’s not like we’re anti-alcohol, we just don’t want people getting loaded, driving away and killing themselves or someone else.”

“We don’t have a bar, we don’t hustle drinks, we don’t book on the basis of whether a musician sells,” Goldsmith said. “We never wanted to get bigger. We’ve always wanted to remain small enough that a local singer could play here in front of 15 or 20 people and feel comfortable.”

Indeed, musicians love to play the cafe. On its small stage, a performer can strum a guitar and feel the crowd nearby like a happy family hunkered in a living room. Many times, Wolfe recalls, musicians of various stripes would meet at the cafe and agree to form bands, tapping the non-competitive atmosphere of the place.

A round-faced, soulful woman with owlish glasses and a dazzling smile, Wolfe typically serves as master-of-ceremonies, taking the microphone to announce an act and talk for a few minutes about a political cause.

Both Goldsmith and Wolfe are unabashedly liberal, a rarity in conservative North County. In the beginning, the couple wondered if it would be wise to espouse their beliefs on stage. Ultimately, Wolfe said, “we realized that if it’s your stage, you should be able to do what you like with it.”

The political messages have rarely jarred their customers. One evening, however, a pair of singers offered up an anti-Nixon ditty. A couple who had been regular patrons approached Goldsmith and asked how he could put up with a song of such disrespect for a former president.

“I think it’s wonderful,” Goldsmith replied. The patrons have not been seen since.

Benefits Held

The cafe has also served as a sort of headquarters for the National Organization for Women’s North County chapter. Moreover, numerous benefit concerts have been held there, raising money for the Peace Resource Center, Children of War, the Committee Against Registration for the Draft.

As Goldsmith sees it, the progressive message fits the medium of folk music perfectly.

“Folk music is about how to overcome exploitation, about how to survive the system,” he said. “One way people deal with all that’s hard in life is to sing about it. The best folk songs come out of political struggles.”

Although Goldsmith spent 10 years in the business world, he quit his job during the Vietnam years and devoted his life to progressive causes. These days, he works during the day with the Central American Information Center while Wolfe completes her master’s degree in sociology at San Diego State University. Nights are spent at the cafe.

The pair learned earlier this year that the spartan building housing the cafe was destined for destruction when a newspaper reporter called to tell them about it. The building’s owner hadn’t said a word.

“What’s happening to us is symptomatic of what’s happening all across North County,” Goldsmith said. “It’s getting harder and harder for small businesses to maintain their integrity in the face of rising property values.”

Goldsmith and Wolfe considered moving the establishment to new quarters, but the months passed and they could not find a place with either the proper ambiance or the right price tag.

“Let’s face it, we’re not shopping-mall material,” Wolfe said. “We didn’t want to be in one of a group of little boxes with all the signs the same. Try to picture the Old Time Cafe in Horton Plaza. It just wouldn’t work.”

Time to Move on

Instead, they decided to shut down for good, to pursue new goals, to “take back part of our lives,” Wolfe said. “We’re going to do things we haven’t been able to do all these years, like go camping, go out to brunch, spend time with friends, have people wait on us , not cook for 120 people, sleep in.”

But the pair will not leave the North County bereft of folk music. They are organizing a nonprofit organization that will sponsor concerts at local meeting halls once or twice a month. When they leave the area, as they expect to do when Wolfe moves on to get her doctorate, the folk tradition will continue without them.

In the meantime, Goldsmith and Wolfe are operating their business as usual, looking perhaps a bit more wistfully at the calendar as the days stream by.

On Jan. 31, they plan to hold a special public concert at the cafe. Everyone will be invited. For those who can’t squeeze in, loud speakers will be placed in the doorways.

Sam Hinton, the venerable father of folk music in San Diego County, a man who has played the Old Time Cafe more than 100 times, will perform the second-to-last song. Then W.B. Reid, the first person to take the Old Time Cafe stage back on Nov. 16, 1979, will do the last number.

“I think it will be really pretty heavy at the end,” said Wolfe, glancing at the floor of her cafe, her voice softening. “I think there will be some pretty serious sadness . . . We’ll have Sam and Bruce, and then we’ll say good night.”