Dive Survives the Stuff of Fame
Mission Viejo has been named one of America’s safest cities. Disneyland, the Happiest Place on Earth, is in Anaheim.
And Tustin, a city normally snubbed by superlatives, is the home of what the men’s magazine Stuff calls one of the country’s 20 best dive bars.
Nestled in Old Town Tustin between an architect’s office and the city’s one-room history museum, the Swinging Door is usually the only sign of life past nightfall in a city the magazine characterized as an “unlikely backwater town.”
The distinction lured throngs of what regulars deride as “yuppie types,” transforming the bar last spring into a trendy scene that was the antithesis of the dive-y allure that had merited the magazine’s honor.
But in the months that have passed since the January listing, the bar has regained its “Cheers” appeal, and the crowd has thinned to the regulars and a few holdovers drawn by the Stuff listing.
Heather, one of two bartenders hired to handle the post-Stuff weekend surge of customers, now works by herself on the more placid Tuesday nights. Although she appreciates how a busy bar makes her shift go by faster, she conceded that a crowd made up of the Stuff demographic reduced the bar’s appeal.
“It was insane,” she said. “It stopped being a dive and became a destination for people from L.A. or San Diego. Now it’s back to the mellow vibe that got us in there in the first place.”
In a bar where everyone is on a first-name basis and a second visit elevates a person to regular status, the customers are breathing a collective sigh of relief that their getaway has escaped from the clutches of national fame with no permanent damage.
The clientele, which includes people at every point in their legal drinking years, resent the listing’s perfunctory, flawed assessment of the place -- “All the bartenders have implants! Everyone is on Prozac!”
They mourn that no editor or writer thought to set themselves down on one of the worn brown stools, soaking up a 34-ounce mug of beer or a rum and Coke (there’s not much Chardonnay served here) while soaking in the stories that give the place its character.
They could have met Ray, married five times and each night sidling up to fading middle-aged women in an attempt to meet No. 6.
Or Rick, a custom-car buff whose salt-and-pepper Santa Claus beard swings like a pendulum as he runs the pool table.
Or maybe Frank, a Carlos Santana look-alike in a polo shirt and khakis who first came to the Swinging Door on a Monday night in 1974. One of the many happily married men who frequent the bar, he has brought his in-laws in for Thanksgiving evening pool games from the time his children were small until they were old enough to come, too. (Many of the regulars shy away from giving their last names, saying that getting into identifying details takes away some of the oasis-like feel of their haven.)
Men like these prop up the bar at every neighborhood drinking hole, so it’s unclear at first glance why this spot in what Stuff described as “a comatose bedroom community south of L.A.” was pulled into a list with dives in state capitals and such cities as Chicago and New York.
Other notables included the Burgundy Room in Los Angeles, where the bar lights up whenever Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” plays on the jukebox. At Madam’s Organ in the Adams-Morgan neighborhood of Washington, D.C., redheads drink Rolling Rock beer for half price.
The Swinging Door has no such shtick. There’s nothing you can point to in the weathered room, its ceiling plastered with alcohol and sports team promotional posters and its walls cluttered with street signs and an incongruous autographed photo of porn star Peter North, that elevates it above any other neighborhood bar.
But that may be the point.
Defying description beyond being an unpretentious place that’s cool without trying, a good dive is like former Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s definition of pornography: You know it when you see it.
Customers say they come to the Swinging Door for the people, both those in front of and behind the bar. The patrons include beer-softened men in softball uniforms relaxing after a weeknight game, businessmen with rolled-up shirt sleeves avoiding rush-hour traffic and twentysomething women in tight jeans and T-shirts folding themselves over one of the three pool tables for a shot.
The bar, which has been operating under various names for 30 years, didn’t always have such a diverse clientele. When it changed ownership almost five years ago, the new proprietor made a hiring policy change that completely transformed the bar’s customer base and permanently solidified old-timers’ loyalty.
That hiring change had to do with the bartenders.
These days, most of the bartenders come equipped with a Sunset Strip intensity of beauty -- rumor says one posed in Penthouse -- and a Midwestern level of kindness, making them an attraction on their own. Bartender Heather, on a recent night sheathed in a white tank top and a pair of blue shorts that could fit into a beer can, is the enticement for Tim Heuermann to come in on Tuesdays.
While taking in a Lakers game recently, Heuermann alternated between throwing back mugs of Coors Light and trying to tempt Heather into a dinner date.
A restaurant manager who lives in Foothill Ranch, 34-year-old Heuermann started coming to the Swinging Door six months ago.
“Going to most bars is a total production. You have to dress the part, and everyone is there to pick up people rather than relax,” he said. “This is a come-and-unwind kind of place.”
As each night wears on and singles supplant the happily wed, the jukebox choices switch from Jethro Tull-esque classic rock to current artists such as Janet Jackson and Coldplay. Come-hither looks are exchanged with increasing frequency, but even the men pushing hardest for dates shyly admit they don’t care if they strike out.
“Honestly, as long as I can play some pool and chill while I’m here, it’s been a perfect night regardless of whether or not I get someone’s number,” said Alex Golden, 25, a Marine.
Golden started driving up once a week from Camp Pendleton after seeing the Stuff listing.
“This is a place where you don’t want to burn bridges with other people because you’re all regulars,” he said.
