Gulp! Finally Last Call for Ol’ Swallows? : Crusty Capistrano Saloon May Get Heave-Ho From City Soon

The Swallows Inn has been this historic mission city’s unlikely alter ego for the last five decades. It has hosted festivals, weddings and wakes, even a scene in a Clint Eastwood movie.

Now a bid to sell the building has left many patrons bawling in their Budweisers.

They include people like 53-year-old Jack Rotar, who once owned an interest in the tavern and drops in a few times a week. Rotar sat at the bar one morning last week with a bunch of buddies who were swilling down beer from frosty long-neck bottles.

“How could you sell your own home from under you?” asked Rotar, thumping his fist on the table. “This is the last of the Mohicans . . . the last saloon of this type in Orange County and in these parts. It would be a sad day if it was turned into another Taco Bell.”

Officials of the city of San Juan Capistrano, which owns the structure housing the tavern, say they don’t want to boot the Swallows, but that there are no guarantees. They desperately need funds from the sale to boost the city’s dwindling coffers.

Patrons have been sitting on the edge of their stools ever since the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency invited the public to bid on the building a few weeks ago. Bids are due in by Wednesday.

“It’s pretty much like when someone dies,” said Swallows Inn owner Tacy Lee, whose family has leased the building for the last 14 years. “No one wants to talk about what will happen. They fear the worst.”

Aside from wetting a good many whistles over the years, the Swallows Inn has served as a bulwark against the new restaurants and gift shops that have flooded the city’s historic downtown.

Lawrence F. Buchheim, a former councilman, remembers riding horses and motorcycles through the bar when it was across the street from its present location, jammed between an antique store and cafe next to the hallowed Mission San Juan Capistrano.

“You had to be careful when you rode your horse through,” said Buchheim, 65. “Some guys didn’t duck when they were coming through the door. They got a good knock on their head. During the days when I imbibed, I myself was thrown out (of the bar) a few times.”

City councilmen would often recess from their meetings and head for the Swallows when City Hall was located next to the bar, said Buchheim, whose brother, Carl, now 79, was San Juan’s first mayor.

Buchheim remembers the tavern as an “old country bar, a place where people would go to dance, to meet each other and just talk for a while.”

That was back in the late 1950s when the city had only a thousand residents, he said. Since then, the population has grown 25 times larger, and the bar has become the favorite watering hole of Marines, cowboys, even a few city slickers. The Marines were the ones who recommended the Swallows for the bar scene in Eastwood’s “Heartbreak Ridge,” which was filmed mostly at Camp Pendleton.

The tavern’s famed decor, a collage of craziness, is a major attraction. An old sewing machine, a broken telephone and stuffed animal heads have been nailed to the walls. An old, cracked leather saddle, rusty lanterns, endless street signs and battered license plates from almost every state cover the walls. A spent artillery shell that a group of Marines from Camp Pendleton contributed several years ago dangles near a pair of pantyhose.

“Look at this place,” said Rotar, flashing a broad grin. “People like it so much because it’s a surreal scene of lunacy and disorder (that exists) in everyone’s mind. They all had a hand in it.”

Rotar explained that he and his partner would hold decorating parties where patrons would go to the dump, pick out their favorite piece of junk and add to the collection on the bar’s cluttered walls.

The Swallows, named after the birds that make a fabled annual return to the mission, has managed to keep its character as an unofficial community center. Over the years, the tavern has become a venue for many of the city-sponsored festivals: Hoosegow Day, Swallows Day, Rancho Days.

It has also been a meeting spot for participants in the exclusive Portola Ride, an annual event in which some of the county’s top business leaders and politicians ride horses along the trail blazed by Don Gaspar de Portola, the Spanish explorer who arrived here from Mexico in 1769.

Patrons say the Swallows Inn is one of the few places where ranch hands rub shoulders with ranch owners, developers and ranchers-turned-developers.

Tony Rogers, a heavy-equipment operator who lives in town, said he and his wife visit the bar regularly to “just to chew the fat.”

“It’s a getaway, a gathering,” Rogers said. “You know the people here and they know you. We enjoy it. I can’t imagine it not being here.”

The bar has been less of a loony bin since Rotar sold his interest to Tacy Lee’s mother. But it occasionally lives up to its rough-and-tumble reputation. Two months ago, a 26-year-old Marine partying inside was shot in the chest. Another Marine stationed at Camp Pendleton was later arrested on suspicion of attempted murder.

San Juan bought the building in 1985 for $375,000 with the hope of including it in a historic town center. But that plan has since been shelved. The city cannot afford to pay rising mortgage bills for the Swallows and other city-owned property, said Mayor Gil Jones.

Several prospective buyers have inquired about the structure, which was appraised at $650,000 two years ago.

Lee is also planning to submit a bid. If she is not successful, she would consider selling the Swallows to any interested buyer “for the right price” or relocate to another part of town.

Jones said that he would like to see “the present owners swing the deal.”

If that does not happen, “the whole appeal of the bar is its character,” Jones said. “I don’t think anyone would be foolish enough to change that character.”