Gail Dick, longtime owner of Back Door Lounge in Old Sacramento, dies at 74

Gail Ann Dick, the longtime owner and operator of Old Sacramento’s beloved Back Door Lounge, died Tuesday. She was 74.

Born Aug. 28, 1946, to Frank and Marjorie Alvernaz, Dick grew up on a Natomas ranch and continued to live there for the first 55 years of her life. She left Sacramento only for vacations and family dinners, tied to the city by her bar and its community.

“It’s been probably her hugest thing in her life,” daughter Lisa Peters said. “She always said it was all she knew and all she had, as far as why people knew her and how they would remember her and what she built. It was her blood and sweat in that place.”

For more than 40 years, Back Door Lounge has endured as a locals’ oasis in a sea of kitsch and tchotchkes. It’s the second-longest continually running business in Old Sacramento, trailing only the Firehouse Restaurant, its neighbor across Firehouse Alley.

Frank Alvernaz opened his first bar called the Double Play when Dick was 2 years old, only to see it bulldozed when Interstate 5 was built in 1964. He opened Back Door Lounge, then simply known as Back Door, in 1968 but suffered a massive heart attack shortly after and sold the bar to a group of four businessmen.

Alvernaz still owned the Railroad Exchange Building that housed the bar, though. When the men’s concept didn’t work out, he bought back the bar at 1112 Firehouse Alley on his daughter’s behalf in 1980.

Dick was a 34-year-old mother of two by then, married to Forrest “Buddy” Dick, her husband for 22 years. But bar management was in her blood — her relatives owned The Hereford House and The Distillery before their closures — and she felt an obligation to extend her family’s legacy, Peters said.

Back Door Lounge ran a well-respected dinner service and hosted many a legislative liquid lunch at that time, daughter Kathy Derrick said. As times changed, the bar seemed to stubbornly root deeper into yesteryear.

Renovations covered the walls with exposed brick, fake windows, red velvet wallpaper, giving it an old-timey New Orleans feel. Lee Diamond became the house crooner, belting out 1950s hits from a stage several times a week, and octogenarian night bartender Nick “Nick At Night” Stathos developed a following of his own.

“It was a very prominent, well-established business run successfully for many years that turned into a dive bar,“ Derrick said.

Dick’s family sold the building in 2000, four years after her father’s death, but Back Door Lounge stayed open from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. seven days a week. If she wasn’t pouring drinks, she was usually parked on her favorite stool at the end of the bar.

The “Cheers” line gets thrown around a fair amount, but Dick really made Back Door Lounge a purely Sacramento watering hole where everybody knew your name, if not more than that, Peters said. She remembered Bottle & Barlow owner Anthony Giannotti was a Chico native, for example, so he got a Sierra Nevada pale ale on the house every time he came in.

“That bar is (an) escape from the modern-day rush,” Giannotti told The Bee. “Not only does the decor take you back to a time (known) for three-martini lunches, the location has terrible cell service so you can really check out of the day-to-day rush. She knew all the regulars by name and did her best to keep the old school in Sacramento bars.”

A few things could tear Dick away from Back Door Lounge, though. She loved dogs and took in many strays over the years. Camping and beach trips — in her younger years, that meant water-skiing — were special excursions on top of the weekly dinners she had with her family. Bartenders at Reno’s Atlantis Casino Resort knew her from poker outings with friends, as did some at Thunder Valley Casino Resort near Lincoln.

Dick gradually worked less as she struggled with COPD and heart failure over the last three or four years, according to her daughters. She left no will and while Back Door Lounge remains open for the time being, its future is in jeopardy. Derrick and Peters have a cousin who’s interested in taking over, but the bar will likely close if that doesn’t work out, they said.

Dick is survived by her longtime partner, Don Adversalo; her daughters, Lisa Peters (Jake) and Kathy Derrick (Jill); her three granddaughters, Mackenzie, Taylor and Madison; and her great-grandson, Nixon.

Funeral services will be held at 11 a.m. April 28 at the Good Shepherd Catholic Church, 9539 Racquet Court, Elk Grove.