Underground Carlsbad and the Secret Speakeasy

This is a tale of moonshining and bootlegging. Of the Monte Carlo of North America and glittering celebrities of the roaring twenties. It involves one Mexican President, one son of an American President, and one grandiose ship that flanked the Venice canals. It’s about a WWII battleship destroyed by Japanese torpedoes and a fresh-out-of-the-Academy navy officer who survived in enemy waters without a life vest. This is the tale of a large blue Victorian mansion that has been presiding over the 101 in Carlsbad for 129 years. And if the walls of this mansion could talk, this is the story they would tell.  

Like all good stories, this one starts at the end instead of the beginning. So we start this tale on St. Patrick’s Day 2016 with a St. Germain-infused Grand Piano and a Moscow Mule perusing the completely sustainable and organic selections at Land and Water Company in Carlsbad. Carlsbad was a mass of marshy lagoons in 1883 when a retired sea captain named John Frazier set up shop on the land and found the main ingredient to successful western expansion was fresh ground water. Upon further inspection, they discovered this water had the same mineral content as the famous healing waters of Karlsbad, Bohemia (now the Czech Republic), and the moniker stuck. 

The (now) Santa Fe railroad had just began its expansion south, and it asked Frazier if a train stop could be built in the town; he agreed and Carlsbad was on the map. In 1885, a German investor, Gerhard Schutte, stumbled upon Carlsbad and dreamed of the possibilities of a beachfront hotel with artesian mineral water. Two matching Victorian mansions were built along what is now Carlsbad Blvd as the homes of Schutte and his business partner, and their company was called The Land and Mineral Water Company. What was once marshy wilderness was now one of America’s first wellness spa resorts. The dream didn’t last; a decade-long drought forced the businessmen of Carlsbad out of town, abandoning the mansions in 1906. But at the same time, just a bit north in a small ranch town called Vernon near a new metropolis called Los Angeles, a man named Baron Long was inventing the modern nightclub.  

The elusive Baron Long. Do an internet search for Baron Long, and there is little to find. Baron Long was at the helm of Southern California’s most esteemed landmarks, was business partners with the President of Mexico, single-handedly saved the family of a Civil War General and US President from financial ruin by investing in a stagnant hotel project, had all of Hollywood in his back pocket, and yet is somehow a ghost in the wind. He was an inventive real estate flipper who created experiences and made fantasy a reality. He brilliantly built an elaborate casino resort oasis called the Agua Caliente in Tijuana, when Tijuana was merely an empty beach on the other side of the border. 

Agua Caliente was no small Mexican hotel; it rivaled only the Monte Carlo for its immense size, opulence, and flowing amounts of cash. When it opened in 1928, it was a flooded by Hollywood stars, mobsters, and sin-loving Americans seeking to get away from the puritan confines of prohibition. To put it quite simply, Agua Caliente was the prototype for Las Vegas (according to Las Vegas founding father Bugsy Segal himself). Not his first foray into inventive culture shaping, he turned a cheap restaurant into the world’s first modern-day nightclub in 1905 by introducing music, dancing and copious amounts of flowing liquor; the club was the first to be open all hours of the night. 

An overnight sensation, the Vernon Country Club lured Los Angeles’ wealthiest residents to Baron Long’s doorstep. By 1917, Baron Long had traded up and found himself the owner of a restaurant/nightclub/hotel called the Ship Cafe perched on the Abbot Kinney pier, and a different kind sea captain was dazzling the Los Angeles elite in the Venice canal. Baron Long quickly transformed the Ship Cafe into the hottest ticket in town; it became the elite, hot spot known around the world. Venice, California became known as the alcohol capital of America, and it was no doubt because of the free pouring, late night hours of the Ship Cafe. In 1919, Baron Long had his sights set on his next project and sold his stake in the Ship Cafe. His specialty chef, Eddie Kentner, traveled south looking for a place to call home when two twin mansions on Old Highway 101 in Carlsbad caught his eye. On November 5th, 1919, Kentner purchased the homes and began his 60-year reign over the hotel and restaurant called The Twin Inns.

Eddie Kentner, having studied under the original nightlife and real estate tycoon, wasted no time in marketing his Twin Inns to the masses, but a few short months after opening, the prohibition era began. Lucky for Kentner, his good friend and old boss was working just south in San Diego on a little project called the U.S. Grant Hotel. The bootlegging of the U.S. Grant is of legend, with a speakeasy spanning the entire lower level of the hotel. Baron Long funneled liquor through the tunnels under downtown pipes meant for steam and salt water from the bay. Likewise, in 1920, the Twin Inns ushered in their own guests to the underground speakeasy with no shortage of illegal supply. The rise of the Twin Inns’ popularity was steep. Driving was a new and dangerous mode of transportation, and Kentner had an open door policy to get a hot meal on the table at any time of night for automobile drivers who made it to his door. Kentner’s Four Seasons of Service philosophy coupled with the train station located directly behind his hotel drew customers throughout prohibition, and in 1929 when the nation was slapped in the face by the Great Depression, Kentner drew from his training in Hustler U to salvage a business and a town.  

While the nation was gripped by poverty and hopelessness during the Great Depression, the small city of Carlsbad was none too shabby.  With a resort spa down the street from the Twin Inns called the California Carlsbad Mineral Springs Hotel opening in 1930 (it’s still there), Carlsbad consistently drew a crowd. The 1930s weren’t as hard-hitting in beachy Carlsbad as they were for the rest of the country. 

But let’s call a spade a spade, just south of the border, what has been referred to as "Satan’s Playground", the Agua Caliente, had just opened in Tijuana.  The brainchild of Kentner’s one-time boss, Baron Long, who collaborated with a few wealthy Americans and a future Mexican President, Agua Caliente burst onto the scene in 1928. Picture the grand moorish-Spanish architecture. Baron Long’s opulent Gold Room is the crowning glory: adorned in floor-to-ceiling gold, elaborate crystal chandeliers draping from the rafters, casino chips made of solid gold, the minimum buy-in was $500. Liquor poured in carefree, reckless splendor. It is here that the underdog and symbol of hope during the Great Depression, Seabisquit, wins the Agua Caliente Handicap, the richest purse in North America in 1938. And the Twin Inns sat princely as the halfway point by train and car between Tijuana and LA, welcoming fun-seekers as they came and went, whispering stories of another world beyond the border. Far from the warmth of the Southern California sunshine, World War II was raging on in Europe. And in 1938, a new Navy cruise ship tore through the Panama canal heading to port in San Diego.

During this time, a Navy seaman found himself violently treading water near the island of Savo as he watched his battleship, the USS Vincennes, take on water and sink. A coin toss earlier in the day won by the young naval officer landed him patrolling the ship’s bridge instead of below deck in the radio room, and when two torpedoes rocketed from a Japanese warplane hit the USS Vincennes, naval officer Charles Ruiz was plunged into the Pacific without a life vest for nine hours before being rescued. World War II would end two years later, but not before Officer Ruiz would earn the Presidential Silver Star and complete eight more war patrols on the submarine USS Pollack. 

Officer Charles Ruiz went on to become a decorated Naval Captain. In 2016, his grandson was one of 12 recipients flown to London to receive the Ocean Award, awarded by The Blue Marine Foundation and Boat International for the people and organizations worldwide who are doing the most to save the world’s ocean species from extinction. Chef Ruiz knows something about sustainable fishing; he made national headlines in 2013 when he introduced scannable barcodes to trace the source of the seafood he served as a lead chef at the revered Harney Sushi in Oceanside, and urged other restaurants to do the same. In 2014, Chef Ruiz opened his own restaurant called The Land and Water Company in one big blue Victorian mansion in Carlsbad. Like Eddie Kentner before him, Chef Ruiz co-founded a local farm dedicated exclusively to supplying The Land and Water Company but in 21st century fashion: the farm is USDA-certified organic and GMO-free.  

Currently, that big, crazy house operates as an ol' fashioned speakeasy located in the heart of Carlsbad. If you're brave enough (or clever enough) to find it, you'd better be sure you know the password...

On a cloudy St. Patrick’s day, a text was sent at 10:43am reading: "Password Please?" to a phone number found on Instagram. Water rolls were devoured. Grand Pianos flowed. "One of the Schutte great grandkids was here earlier," is overheard. And by the night’s end, modern day was reunited with a past that is long gone, but not forgotten; not discarded. A past that is very much respected in the same way that a sea captain respects the ocean. In the same way that a chef with the goal to return the sea to its natural order has honored and restored the glory to a local legend.