Thirsty customers turn to bingo fundraisers to keep an East Sac staple afloat
It’s quiet inside a place where you normally have to raise your hand or voice to be heard.
This is where large volumes of good cheer are the norm. But the new normal doesn’t fit in social settings.
Club Raven is the cozy bar on J Street that has served up cold drinks and hot gossip since 1946. It had a cameo appearance in “Lady Bird,” Greta Gerwig’s love note to her hometown. It has been shuttered since March 17, reduced to lonely neon lights flickering inside.
The dive bar remains open only through Zoom happy-hour sessions with longtime patrons and bingo games over cellphones to raise funds, awareness and spirits. Bingo proceeds this week will go to for payroll and rent. The coronavirus pandemic swept through the state this spring, leaving a swath of closed doors, dimmed lights and grave concern for business owners trying to hold on.
Dave Anderson and Shannon Barnes-Arguijo met with The Sacramento Bee on Monday to talk about their challenges, hopes, concerns and expectations.
They miss their customers. Those customers miss them. This explains why a longtime regular surprised the Club Raven owners with the Bingo tournament of 30 patrons. Anderson and Barnes-Arguijo came up with their own idea. They designed and ordered COVID-19 drink tokens that “patrons can redeem when we reopen,” Anderson said.
“We’re blown away with more than $1,000 worth already coming in for those tokens,” Anderson said. “The grace and generosity of the people at our bar, in this town, and from as far away as New York, to help us through this is amazing. We’re so fortunate.”
Why do people grow attached to a bar and those serving drinks, here, there or anywhere?
“This is their extended living room, a place to come in and talk, to socialize, to confide,” Barnes-Arguijo said. “We’re the perfect neighborhood dive bar. It’s just so cool in here, and we’re darn proud to have it.”
Anderson and Barnes-Arguijo are the third owners of Club Raven. They have had the place for 10 years. Their ears would ring and feet would ache after many whirlwind weeks of duty. They long for that sort of fatigue again. Anderson and Barnes-Arguijo do not want to lose their bar, a thought they refuse to embrace. They have met payroll and paid rent and bills tied to the place through the middle of this month, barely. But they cannot sustain for long.
Anderson and Barnes-Arguijo applied for no-interest loan from a $1 million COVID-19 economic relief fund set up by the city but were dismayed to hear funds had run out. So they’re trying again, and they await encouraging news.
“We’re angry that we didn’t get that loan and we need it, but we’re hopeful,” Anderson said. “I’m 65. I have some money stashed away but not a ton. We need this place. We need to get back to normal. Of course, we’ll make it. We have to and we will. We know that. Waiting is the hardest part.”
Anderson and Barnes-Arguijo said they will not reopen until the Sacramento County health department and Gov. Gavin Newsom allow it. They read The Bee story about the owner of El Dorado Cafe reopening for full in-service business despite the shelter-in-place order over the weekend and can understand the argument for doing it. But they will not reopen Club Raven early. They anticipate a celebration when they do. Club Raven seats 45. It is 1,300 square feet of charm and activity.
“It’s not safe to reopen yet,” Anderson said. “We don’t want to be part of a next wave of the virus, if that happens.”
Said Barnes-Arguijo, “We’d like to reopen when all the other bars in town reopen, to be united, to do it together.”
More than drinks
Anderson said people that frequent Club Raven don’t just need a drink. They need to share their stories and to hear others’ stories.
Anderson and Barnes-Arguijo think of 83-year-old Jimmy, a longtime patron who gave up alcohol years ago. He was still a regular until the joint closed. His drink in the morning was coffee and thirst quencher in the afternoon was a diet soda and a full menu of chatter.
“We can’t wait to have Jimmy back,” Barnes-Arguijo said.
Anderson and Barnes-Arguijo became fast friends more than 10 years ago. Both have tended bar at Club Raven. Barnes-Arguijo grew up in Sacramento and turned down a basketball scholarship offer out of Sacramento High in 1992 to study in Turkey. The first time she tended bar, she said, “I knew I wanted to be a bar owner. What fun!”
Anderson grew up in San Luis Obispo. This feels very much like home, he said, comparing East Sacramento to the Central Coast.
Anderson gave away Barnes-Arguijo at her wedding four years ago. They work hand-in-hand with “maybe three disagreements over all these years,” Barnes-Arguijo said with a laugh.
“I’m the face of the bar but she’s the brains behind all of it,” Anderson said with a laugh, pointing to his business partner.
Cheers and tears
Mostly, the Club Raven owners laugh in this setting. They have cried their share lately, too. No one saw this sort of shutdown coming. No one knew how to prepare.
“I cry more than Dave, but we both have hurt,” Barnes-Arguijo said. “We know this pandemic is temporary. We know we’ll get through it.”
Patti McNulty agrees. She’s a longtime patron of Club Raven, having gone dozens of time with her father Jerry, known for his charm and singing voice.
He died nine years ago, but a part of him remains in Club Raven.
“There’s a box of my dad’s mementos, enshrined, on the ceiling of Club Raven,” said Patti McNulty, a lifelong resident of Sacramento and a longtime Realtor. She helped organize the Club Raven Bingo tournament this week.
“Club Raven means everything to me,” McNulty continued. “Friendships are are formed in places like that, and some last a lifetime. I get misty talking about it. Club Raven is a neighborhood bar where people go when they’re happy or sad, and where people care.”
McNutly said that the Club Raven owners have for years been givers to the community, so why not given back to them?
“They have stepped up, so it’s our turn to step up, to donate, to help,” she said. “People want to do something. The only way to get through this pandemic is through kindness. Kindness has to lead the way. Let’s think of others and be thankful for what we have, and give a little.”