By Kevin Wilkerson, PubClub.com San Diego Editor
The problem with living a place as cool as San Diego is figuring out what to do of its many options on a sunny afternoon.
I was faced with that on a Sunday, the last one in June. My options were many: go for a bike ride around Mission Bay, go to the Adams Avenue Street Festival, listen to the pipe organ in Balboa Park or hang around the Gaslamp Quarter where later that night there was a concert at the spectacular Randy Shell on the bay and Blink-182 played at Petco Park where the atmosphere would be electric.
After some mental debating I decided to head to North County (see, even more options!). It had been a while since I had been there and my specific objective was beautiful Cardiff-By-The-Sea. That is a small stretch of beach between Solana and Encinitas where water runs from a lagoon under a bridge to the ocean and a few restaurants and watering holes sit on both sides of a not-too-busy highway.
My objective was the Kraken, a dive bar that has been there since the mid-70s (tho it looks much older than that, quite frankly) with live music on Sunday afternoons. It’s kind of known as a biker bar (they hang in the back) but it also gets in a lot of beach bums from the area. It is pronounced Crack-en, not Krake-en, by the way. I learned this to be so because a friend is a neighbor of the owner.
I was not going to drive, knowing I would be having a few beers (how many? Who knows; I was playing it as I went, not planning it). I had a couple of options to get there from the Gaslamp Quarter: take Amtrak or the Coaster to Solana Beach and then take the coastal 101 bus the 10 minutes or so to Cardiff, or take the Blue Line trolley to its ending point at UTC and take a longer ride on the coastal bus. Both choices are covered by my San Diego transportation Pronto card. I opted for the latter mainly because I can catch the Blue Line a couple blocks from my apartment and it runs more frequently than the trains.
When I got on the bus I asked the driver how close the stop is to the Kraken. He kind of chuckled and said “right at the door.” Sure enough, it pulled up mere steps from the entrance. Wen I got off and thanked him for the ride he said, “I wish I was going in there with you!” Cool dude.
Inside, the band was playing and I grabbed a beer and walked around the place, surrounded by funny sayings from bumper stickers behind the bar (“I’m Not An Alcoholic. I’m A Drunk. Alcoholics Go To Meetings”) and signs on the walls (“Swimsuits Optional Beyond This Point” at the door). It’s a pretty big place, certainly for a dive bar. It has a main room with the band, a middle room with pool tables and the back room with the bikers.
I was drinking a draft beer, which was a mistake for two reasons. One, this is a bottled beer kind of place. And secondly, it cost $9. The next round(s) I switched to a bottle, which was a more wallet-pleasing $5.50. The beer selections were on a scribbled piece of paper on a wall above the bar. Hey, I said this is a dive bar!
The first time I went to the Kraken was several years ago. I walked in with a group on a Sunday night at about 9 o’clock and after we got a round of drinks the bartender got on the microphone and said “last call. Last call for alcohol.” We looked at each other as if to say already!?, and then he got back on the microphone and joked, “in three hours. So drink up!!!” My kind of place.
That’s when I lived in L.A., and while I went to San Diego on occasion, I never made it back to the Kraken. Now that I live here I can’t believe I had not been to it again. That’s the thing about living in San Diego – you really have to force yourself to experience all of it because it’s easy to get into a routine at other cool spots and areas.
Other than a dozen or so bikers in the back the crowd was not what I was expecting. There were beach bums, all right, but no ladies you would want to see in a bikini. Maybe 40 years ago, but certainly not today. The Kraken definitely gets in a young crowd but not on this Sunday afternoon.
Still, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed being in a cool dive bar across the street from a beach listening to a band on a Sunday afternoon. I was somewhere different and that was refreshing. It was almost like being on vacation (living in San Diego is a whole is sometimes like being on vacation).
After a while, I stepped outside and walked over to the beach to get some fresh air and look at the ocean. I then hit what Jimmy Buffett once called “the port of indecision,” which meant should I stay and have a margarita at the Los Olas cantina there or head back to the Gaslamp and catch some Blink 182 action at those bars?
I did what I should have done – take advantage of being there because who knows when I would go back again – and as the coast bus breezed by me on the highway, stepped into Los Olas, a long-standing Mexican restaurant and somewhat of a landmark for North County residents.
It’s not as big as I remember (seems to me it had an extra room) and I wiggled my way past the families in line at the door and sat down at the bar. I could get a margarita for $9 or a large for $11. No brainer! The large came in a glass about the size of a pint of beer and I thanked the bartender for not forgetting the tequila. My reaction to the first sip was a very pleasant “whoa!” It also tasted quite good and was not the least bit bitter, which is how cheap margaritas (and most of them in Old Town, quite frankly) taste.
It was dinner time and I looked at the menu. The prices were quite reasonable, almost old school: $12.99 for a burrito (most are in the $17-18 range now) and $10 or so for other choices. I immediately locked into the chicken & rice tortilla soup. You don’t see tortilla soup on many menus and it was outstanding. The broth exploded with flavor and there was tons of shredded chicken in it. It was a large bowl, too, almost a full meal. It cost 8 bucks. Next to me, guy with his date saw my soup, said “if you say it’s good, I’m getting it,” and then had the same experience. It’s worth going into Los Olas just for its tortilla soup.
Later, I added a crispy taco to it; the tacos there are not the tiny street ones that take four or five to even begin to fill you up but with shredded cheese and lettuce all over it, it looked like a clam shell.
And so, after the sun set over the Pacific and darkness came to the sky, I made my way back across the highway to catch the next coast bus and the trolley back home. I left happy – happy that I had gone to Cardiff and happy that I had finally taken advantage of one of the many great places to visit in San Diego.
It was a Sunday Funday indeed.