Coastal brews and views

It’s 7 on a Sunday night in the Haight. Outside the Magnolia Gastropub & Brewery a few ghosts from the ‘60s occasionally glide by, but inside the food is contemporary -- whole roasted quail and moules frites on the menu -- despite the old wood bar, stained walls and worn tile floor.

It was the fifth night of a weeklong trip with Steve Dollar, a friend of 25 years, who wanted to travel Highway 1 from near Santa Barbara to where it ends at the edge of the Humboldt County redwoods. As a loyal resident of Brooklyn, N.Y., Steve doesn’t have a driver’s license, so he dragooned me into serving as his wheelman for the trip. It was an easy sell; I’ve long wanted to do a beer aficionado’s trek up the coast.

The trip was also a good way for Steve and me to reconnect. This was not the first road trip we had taken together, but it was the first since the Reagan era, and we were looking forward to it. Envision “Sideways” without the sex.

We technically began in Orange County, where I live, but the true adventure didn’t start until Ventura, where we stopped for a late lunch. As we pulled into a parking spot in front of a local diner on East Main Street, Steve spotted the Anacapa Brewing Co. next door. We took that as a good omen.

The space is carved out of an old retail building in the heart of downtown, with high ceilings, brick walls and the bar backed by racks of labeled vats filled with beer-in-progress -- a maternity ward for ales. The food was good, basic pub fare, but the beer was inspired. I had a short glass of the Pierpont India Pale Ale (as the driver, I was destined for short glasses for much of the week), which was bright and crisp with a pleasant lingering back-taste of hops.

A good omen indeed.

We cruised through Santa Barbara, but passed up the Santa Barbara Brewing Co., which I’ve visited with mixed results. In San Luis Obispo, we pulled into the Downtown Brewing Co. and had the first disappointment of the trip. I’d been here years before, when it was the SLO Brewing Co., maker of some memorable ales. But the business had changed hands three years ago, the barmaid told us, and I found the IPA lacking, too sweet with an unpleasant sharpness. Steve, who usually finishes everything, didn’t finish his.

Our destination for the night was Morro Bay, and after checking into a nondescript Best Western -- selected for bar proximity -- we walked a few blocks to the Morro Bay Brewing Co., a Spartan room in a renovated building. A cluster of musicians at a table was whirling through an Irish reel, part of a weekly get-together that made us feel as though we were crashing a private party or band rehearsal.

The beer, a pale ale, was good but the vibe was flat, so we headed across the street to the Fuel Dock, a local watering hole that doesn’t make its own beer but serves just about everyone else’s.

The feel of the bar was much better than the brew pub and got me thinking about the similarities between a good bookstore and a good bar. They have to get the basics right -- good beer and food for the bar, good books for the bookstore. But they also must embrace something more intangible. They must be the hub of a community.

The Fuel Dock -- no menu, but you can bring in food -- is such a place. Steve and I -- strangers to the bar -- were welcomed as though we were regulars by John the bartender, a commercial fisherman until the fishing grounds were closed. We stood at the bar near the pool tables as a young woman occasionally danced past, stopping to gyrate when the jukebox warranted it.

We cracked jokes with strangers at missed pool shots and ordered another round until a bunch of clean-cut sixtysomething men in pressed Harley-Davidson shirts showed up. Not our crowd. So we headed back to the hotel.

After meandering through Big Sur for a day -- there’s a lot of fun in watching an Easterner experience it for the first time -- we wound up in Santa Cruz at the Seabright Brewery, which also got the balance just right. Dinner was basic bar fare, but its Pelican Pale Ale was among the best beers of the trip. And the place was packed with regulars, including families with young children, who greeted one another by name and with the occasional hug.

The next morning we cut through San Francisco, bookmarking it for the return trip, and picked up Highway 1 in Marin County. We had our sights set on Guerneville, an old logging town about 15 miles inland from where the Russian River spills into the Pacific.

There isn’t much to Guerneville. As you drive upriver, you cross a bridge over a small creek and the main drag plays out ahead of you, roughly paralleling the river for a few blocks before the buildings peter out into wilderness.

We were looking for the Russian River Brewing Co., which an Internet guide said was on River Road. It shouldn’t be hard to find anything in a city with one river, one creek and a handful of roads, but we couldn’t find it. That’s because the brew pub is in Santa Rosa, nowhere near where the online list said it was. A second Guerneville brew pub, Stumptown Brewery, was right where it was supposed be -- and locked up as tight as a drum.

So for lunch we wound up in a little eatery called Pat’s, a split building with a diner to the left and a bar to the right, where the barmaid and two regulars were reliving the previous night. We listened in amused silence as they topped one another with stories of forgotten moments, including the barmaid’s confession that she had spent the night sleeping in a truck after leaving her house keys at a party.

“We’re choice people,” the barmaid said, drawing laughs.

Neither Steve nor I had been to Mendocino, so we stopped on a gale-lashed afternoon, thinking maybe we’d spend the night at the old Mendocino Hotel & Garden Suites. But the town felt too much like a museum, so we kept heading north, to Fort Bragg and the North Coast Brewing Co., which operates a Tap Room & Grill across the street from its downtown brewery.

This was Steve’s favorite stop, based primarily on the freshness of the Brother Thelonious Belgian Style Abbey Ale. I had a Red Seal to wash down the large order of nachos we shared. We chatted with the bartender about the history of the brewery, which turned 20 last year. As a purist, I was less enthusiastic about the place; it felt as if it were part of the retail brewery’s marketing, like a vintner’s wine-tasting room, rather than a stand-alone brew pub.

But the Red Seal was good.

The next morning we were up and out early, the gales still puffing and kicking up the surf. Once Highway 1 cut inland toward Humboldt Redwoods State Park, the air settled and it was a glorious day of bright sunshine filtered far above the forest floor. Though I’ve seen redwoods, standing among them in the hushed ancient forest can still mesmerize, but they also had me wondering how big the wood nymphs would be in a forest of such giants.

We had juggled our itinerary so that we ended in San Francisco with several days to spend with friends of Steve’s.

The Bay Area, with a mass transit system that let us park the car, is home to a pleasantly robust brew pub culture, though many of the pubs, such as the ThirstyBear near the Moscone Center, are forgettable.

But there are some gems. My favorite: the San Francisco Brewing Co., just down the street from City Lights bookshop, is a brew pub that pays close attention to the art of making beer. And it has the feel of community. The bartender, Michael, had a penchant for 19th century literature, and the two waitresses -- a young blond Irishwoman and a raven-haired American -- spent their time bantering with the bartender and customers at the bar, both regulars and people like us, strangers stopping by.

The other gem: The Magnolia Gastropub & Brewery on Haight Street. I sat alone that Sunday night as Steve caught up on some work. The seats to my left were empty until two Danes slipped onto the bar stools as I was finishing a pint of the Proving Ground India Pale Ale (smooth and subtle on the first sip, then a pleasant and slightly bitter aftertaste) and thinking about heading out.

Then Soren-Henrik Hansen, an ambulance dispatcher, asked a question about the beer, which led to other topics and another pint. Hansen and Mikkel Jensen, an IT technician, are childhood friends, Hansen said, and had been planning their epic, five-week road trip through the U.S. for more than a decade. Their itinerary began with a week in Miami and the Florida Keys before flying to Phoenix for a slow drive through the Grand Canyon region and into Nevada -- Vegas, baby! -- before angling for Yosemite, which was to be the capstone of the trip.

But winter storms had closed the road into the park. Disappointed, the two friends had continued on to San Francisco for a few days. Missing Yosemite hardly ruined the trip, though. As they told tales of flying white-knuckled over the Grand Canyon and a similar buzzing of the Florida Keys, the warmth of their friendship emerged in laughs and shared details. Even the closed road into Yosemite would become a highlight of stories they would tell for years.

We chatted a few minutes more before I pushed back from the bar and stepped out into the night. Walking down Haight, I rousted Steve by cellphone and we agreed to meet at Nopa, one of his favorite restaurants, to resume our road trip. And just maybe pick up a few more stories of our own to tell in the coming years.

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travel@latimes.com

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Brewery tour of the coast

THE BEST WAY

Driving is the only way -- and is the whole point. It’s a much more interesting coast when you stay off the big roads. Use Highway 1 and U.S. 101 whenever possible.

WHERE TO STAY

The Beachcomber Motel, 1111 N. Main St., Fort Bragg; (800) 400-7873, www.thebeachcomber motel.com. Decent prices and a first-rate location -- the ocean right outside your door. Rooms from $109.

TOP STOPS

Magnolia Gastropub & Brewery, 1398 Haight St., San Francisco; (415) 864-7468, www.magnoliapub.com

San Francisco Brewing Co., 155 Columbus Ave., San Francisco; (415) 434-3344, www.sfbrewing.com

Seabright Brewery Inc., 519 Seabright Ave., Santa Cruz; (831) 426-2739, www.seabright brewery.com

Anacapa Brewing Co., 472 E. Main St., Ventura; (805) 643-2337, www.anacapabrewing.com