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Renovating a Rough-and-Tumble but Trendy Pasadena Tavern

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Hoder is a regular contributor to San Gabriel Valley View

For almost three decades, no beer in a bottle has been sold at the thirtyfiver. The proprietors were afraid that a barroom fight would mean broken glass and bloody heads.

Now, though, the owners of this windowless, smoky watering hole are determined to attract a crowd more accustomed to Brie than brawls.

Indeed, the thirtyfiver’s impending switch from cans to bottles is just one sign of the changes taking place at the rough-and-tumble tavern--and, in a grander sense, to all of Old Pasadena as it continues to shake its Skid Row past and move forward with a trendy transformation.

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The changes won’t come easily. For Jennine and Vince Terzo, who inherited the thirtyfiver from their father and grandfather, the challenge is how to renovate the bar without losing the grubby, blue-collar feel that has endeared it to its patrons, both young and old.

But even if the face lift means hanging ferns and brass rails--which clearly it does not--the thirtyfiver’s day drinkers would continue to show up. They have been coming, after all, since the two-story structure at 12 Colorado Blvd. was bought by the late Vincent Terzo and his son Freddie in 1962. They sold shots of whiskey for 35 cents then, giving the bar its name.

“This is our place,” says Larry Mesa, 55, sipping a $1 draft beer one recent Sunday. “It’s a family.”

Still, there is concern that an upscale look will alienate some of the bar’s newer clientele: students from the nearby Art Center College of Design, who have dubbed the thirtyfiver “the dirtydiver” and embraced it as their own.

“It’s become ‘in’ because it’s not ‘in,’ ” says Justin Bua, a student from the art center who was hanging out with friends on a crowded Saturday night recently, listening to loud rock music on the jukebox.

But even that has changed. Compact discs have replaced the 45s.

Although they are keenly aware that the unpolished ambience is precisely what draws the college crowd, the Terzos say the bar’s deteriorating equipment can’t keep pace with its new-found popularity. “The crowd is overwhelming,” says Jennine Terzo, 27. “It’s a hangout.”

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Terzo adds that she feels pressure from city officials to keep up with Old Pasadena’s metamorphosis. The bar has no building or health code violations and is not considered a problem by police, city officials said. However, John Andrews, a senior planner in the city’s Housing and Development Department, says it is no secret that the city would like to see the thirtyfiver spruced up.

“The city has frowned on this bar for a long time,” Jennine Terzo says. “Old Town is being called the ‘Westwood of the east.’ We don’t fit in.”

But fitting in could be their ruin, says Ray Oldenburg, a sociology professor at the University of West Florida whose new book, “The Great Good Place,” bemoans the loss of hangouts such as bars, coffee shops, pool halls, beauty parlors and general stores in America.

“They have a healthy night-time crowd because of the way the bar is now,” Oldenburg says, after learning in a phone interview about the thirtyfiver’s situation. “With the remodeling, they could be just another bar. If they start competing with posh places that sell imported beers, they could well go under.”

Oldenburg says that in the past 40 years, the number of taverns in the United States has shrunk from 152,000 to fewer than 50,000. And, he adds, as city planners and developers continue to restore old neighborhoods, the tavern--as local hangout--could disappear.

That, of course, would be unfortunate for those who have come to think of the thirtyfiver as a place “where everybody knows your name,” the same as “Cheers,” the famed television bar. Make no mistake, the thirtyfiver is far dumpier than the sitcom saloon. But, like it, the Old Pasadena haunt attracts people of different classes, ethnicities and ages, all of whom have found a way to get along.

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“The bums, the artists, the oldsters, the preppies, all feel comfortable here,” says Tom Taylor, 22, who regularly shoots pool in the back room.

Consider the recent Saturday night. The bar was filled with the likes of Leon Yantz, a homeless man who used to work in the steel mills of Pittsburgh; Ray Hall, a hard hat who is doing work on a nearby building; Tom Coston, who promotes local artists, and Sarah Bennett, a 42-year-old Pasadena native, clad in a Kelly green slicker and Top-Siders. “It’s a not tea place, it’s not a cappuccino place,” Bennett says. “It’s a real place.”

But since inheriting the tavern about two years ago from their father, the Terzo children have added a few imported beers, blush wines, diet sodas, fruit juice and bottled waters to the menu.

They also have plans to replace and extend the bar, and want to tear the red carpet from the walls and replace the ripped Leatherette bar stools. With the help of an architect, there also are plans to turn the basement, now used for storage, into a hangout with a second bar and more pool tables for “the kids,” while renovating the upstairs as a lounge.

Although Jennine Terzo vows “it won’t be a ritzy, fancy place,” the scruffy hardwood floors may be replaced “with something that’s easier to clean.”

And while the details are as yet unclear, the Terzos say they’ll also try to make the thirtyfiver’s dreary stone and black-glass facade more welcoming. “Some people are afraid to come in here because the place looks scary,” says 25-year-old Vince Terzo.

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But many who have frequented the thirtyfiver despite its forbidding appearance say there isn’t a friendlier bar in town. “It’s a place where people care about each other,” says John (Jaybird) Legat, 56, who has been drinking bourbon and Coke at the thirtyfiver every day for more than a decade.

The tavern’s day drinkers, mostly senior citizens who live in the area’s retirement hotels, are especially loyal to the Terzo family. That’s because the late Freddie Terzo always let customers run tabs when they had no money. As one story goes, he even paid for the funeral of one regular customer who had no family.

Their father’s legacy is something that will not be lost in the changes, the Terzo children pledge. Yantz, the homeless man who has been coming to the thirtyfiver for about eight years, still runs a tab each month. “If I have money, I pay,” Yantz says, sipping a Jack Daniel’s and Coke. “If not, I pay at the end of the month when I get my disability check.”

And like their father, the Terzo children help out when they can. When their uncle recently died, they packed a box full of pants, shirts, shoes and socks and gave it to Yantz. “It was enough clothes for a year,” he says.

Although most patrons say they like the thirtyfiver just the way it is, there is one change in the works that no one seems to mind. The bar’s new logo, on bartenders’ T-shirts and the sign outside, will read: “freddie’s 35er.”

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