Days Are Numbered for a Colorful, Scruffy Tavern : Thousand Oaks: Across from the new Civic Arts Plaza, the Yukon Belle is a remnant of the past.

The Yukon Belle Tavern has endured the antics of rowdy ranch hands, numerous fistfights, lovers’ quarrels, even drug dealing from the pay phone, in its 40 years on Thousand Oaks Boulevard.

Long and squat, it has weathered these storms, acquiring a new beer sign or rattlesnake skin above the bar now and again, but otherwise changing little.

Now, with the new $64-million Civic Arts Plaza looming over it, change is at hand.

The massive building across the street has not done much for business. Occasionally a few dressed-up people might wander in after performances at the swank new theater, but unless it is a star the likes of Willie Nelson up on stage, beer sales are unlikely to increase on performance nights.

If anything, the dawn of the Civic Arts Plaza era might even signify the end of the bar. After all, how long can a hole in the wall, a down-home place like the Yukon Belle, survive in the face of all that glamour across the street, especially when the property it sits on is for sale?

The land, which includes a deserted lumberyard as well as the rambling, somewhat shabby length of the Yukon Belle, is part of a special zoning district reserved for businesses that will enhance and bolster the neighborhood around the arts plaza.

While owners Tony and Barbara Sauceda love their little bar, they doubt it will be considered compatible with the monument to modernity they see from their front door. They know that from watching theatergoers scurry into the performing arts center with barely a glance toward the Yukon Belle.

“Seems like the people who go out to see a show there have tunnel vision,” Barbara Sauceda said. “You can see them: It’s like a line of little birds crossing the street.”

So the Saucedas assume that within the next few years they’ll have to uproot the four pool tables, take the old rattlesnake skins down from the ceiling and empty the coolers of all those long-necked domestic bottled beers one final time.

“We’re thinking it’ll take two years for the landlord to sell the property,” Sauceda said. “Then for whoever is going to build on it to get permits should take a few more years. Hopefully it’ll be another five years, and I’ll be ready to retire by then.”

Sitting as it does right across from the new City Hall and arts center, the Yukon Belle offers a prime example of the contrast between old Thousand Oaks and new Thousand Oaks.

The only games in the Civic Arts Plaza are political, and not that much fun. Across the street at the Belle there is pool to be played, lottery tickets to be scratched and pinball machines to be whacked.

The Belle’s walls are covered with beer signs and color photographs of cheery parties past; at City Hall staffers can look up from their desks and see tasteful, arty, black-and-white photographs.

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The Belle’s windows are covered over, and only the front door lets in an occasional, jolting burst of light from the outside world. The Civic Arts Plaza is light and airy, with vistas of green hills and twisted oaks from almost every window.

History at the Civic Arts Plaza is stuffed into filing cabinets, memories of decade-long Planning Commission battles and shades of ordinances passed and past.

At the Yukon Belle, history is preserved by thumbtacks. A dollar bill stuck to the ceiling above the bar announces “I’m Pregnant 10-14-94” in Magic Marker. A rusty horse bit, perhaps half a century old, hangs next to it.

In the old days, long before the Saucedas bought the bar and christened it the Yukon Belle, the saloon was called the Thousand Oaks Tavern, and it was not the kind of place a person in a suit might want to stumble into.

“It was kind of rough,” Tony Sauceda said, remembering the first time he stopped off at the bar in 1953. He was driving from Los Angeles to San Francisco and took a detour. “There were a lot of contractors.”

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Before the contractors, there were the ranchers. And they left their marks, quite literally. During a “branding party” sometime in the late 1950s, ranchers from around the area sizzled their brands into the walls with hot irons.

When the Saucedas bought the bar about 12 years ago, the rowdy cowboys had been replaced by drug dealers, who camped out at the Yukon Belle, doing business on the pay phone while buyers clustered in the bathrooms and corners to sample the wares.

“I had a heck of a time getting rid of them,” Sauceda said.

He bought the bar, despite its rundown condition and troubling clientele, after retiring from the Xerox Corp.

“Like every male in creation, I always wanted to own a bar,” he said.

He put an extension to the pay phone into the office and started listening to the calls, weeding out the dealers one at a time. It took him three years to clean the place up.

Now the bar offers snacks to discourage its patrons from becoming completely drunk, and the Saucedas hold fund-raisers for hospitals and the Muscular Dystrophy Assn.

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But even with the changes, the Yukon Belle still has somewhat of a shady reputation around town, fostered primarily by people who have never been inside. According to the Saucedas, part of that originated with a Harley-Davidson parts store next door.

When the motorcycle shop customers park their bikes out front, passersby assume they are all hunkered down at the bar in the Yukon Belle, even though the Saucedas say they are not.

City Hall staffers do not frequent the Yukon Belle as a rule, although Tony Sauceda said that during tedious public hearings some applicants do occasionally run across the street for a quick beer.

“Sometimes we have some of the developers who have a long wait ahead of them,” he said. “They come in for a beer and then go back.”

Now the toughest customers to be found in the Belle are the pool sharks, who roll in for twice-weekly tournaments. Chris Davis, 22, a car salesman and aspiring actor, and Jamie Osbrink, also 22, a pharmaceutical salesman, tote their own pool cues in almost every night to take advantage of the friendly atmosphere and low price per game.

“I always had this impression growing up here that this was really rough, biker kind of place,” said Davis, watching as Osbrink racked the balls for yet another game. “Then I came in, and I’ve been coming just about every night for the last five months.

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“In this place, there isn’t a lot of attitude flying around,” he added. “A lot of bars you have to act a certain way, and you don’t have to do that here.”

But even though Osbrink might be discussing multilevel marketing while he lines up his shots, the Yukon Belle is by no means a yuppie bar. The clientele is varied and still includes many old-timers, who usually trickle in during the late afternoon.

While the number of fights has dwindled, there are still tussles from time to time.

“Over a spilt beer probably,” Tony Sauceda said. “Probably over a woman. Or husbands and wives. You know how that goes.”

Movie makers sometimes use the Yukon Belle as an authentic dive bar setting. A religious group once borrowed the bar for a commercial encouraging alcoholics to give up drinking.

“They were the only ones who ever used real beers instead of props,” Tony Sauceda said. “The whole crew got pretty pie-eyed in here.”

City officials say they have no particular plans to revitalize the Yukon Belle, but acknowledge that radical change on that lot across the street is likely in coming years, especially in light of zoning restrictions.

Even though Assistant City Manager Mary Jane Lazz says she has never set foot in the bar, she nonetheless has a few kind words for the place.

“It has a charm all of its own,” Lazz said. “It’s kind of a down-home tavern.”