Last call for beloved Santa Rosa dive bar: Wagon Wheel closing its doors after seven decades

You don't have to go home, but you can't stay there.

The Wagon Wheel Saloon, a beloved, and sometimes notorious dive bar that opened in Santa Rosa some 70 years ago, will soon be gone. Its last day is Sunday.

"We survived the Tubbs Fire, we survived COVID," said Christine Mandoli, who along with her husband Mark became co-owners of the bar 35 years ago, along with Debbie and Rob Bunting, and John Guglielmoni. (Rob Bunting and Guglielmoni have since died.)

"New landlords took over a couple months ago, and they have some plans," said Mark Mandoli. "And we're not in their plans.

"But it's been a great run."

"It's been a ride," Christine agreed.

Before the saloon's blessedly dim lights go out for good, however - before its superb shuffleboard and jukebox and pool tables are removed, and the dollar bills stapled to the ceiling plucked down and donated to the Redwood Empire Food Bank - there's still time to assess its complicated legacy.

It's true that the Wheel, just north of Liberty Bail Bonds on Mendocino Avenue, has a colorful and sometimes checkered past as a biker bar - and that it has often been a first stop for patrons freshly sprung from Sonoma County's nearby Main Adult Detention Facility. (For years, customers who showed their release papers from the county lockup got a free drink, although the Mandolis put an end to that tradition.)

There was that FBI raid in 2017, when authorities arrested a half-dozen Hells Angels for charges that included racketeering and conspiracy involving murder, assault, robbery, extortion and witness tampering.

And there remain those dark smudges on the flooring where, years before, a biker named Billy rode his Harley through the doorway on the west side of the Wheel, executed a burnout, then gunned it through the bar to the opposite door.

Further burnishing Billy's legend, according to numerous witnesses, was the fact that he performed this feat while transporting a female passenger who was, for that brief journey, unclothed.

While acknowledging the bar's rowdy past, the Mandolis and other friends of the Wheel choose not dwell on or overly emphasize it.

Sure, there are still some bikers at the Wheel, particularly in its final weeks and days, but they are longer in the tooth and shorter in number than a quarter century ago, Mark Mandoli noted.

In those wild days, recalled a woman named Robin, who showed up with seven friends Thursday evening to toast the bar, the Wagon Wheel had a dirt parking lot that was much larger and served as a staging area for mass rides. "Afterward, we'd come back here for a barbecue."

What has remained constant, say the Mandolis, is the vibe in the bar.

While the "biking community" is shrinking, said Mark, "The atmosphere" in the Wheel has always been the same. "It's always been a warm place where everybody got along."

Brian Teager, a gentle man with an offensive guard's build who has tended bar at the saloon for 33 years, explained that those who enter are expected to "treat the place with respect, and treat people with respect. And if you don't, you're asked to leave."

Teager's final shift, on Wednesday, June 3, was a busy one. Some customers are venturing in for the first time, to see what they've been missing before it goes away. Others are dropping by to bid an old friend adios - including the married couple from England who first met at the Wagon Wheel, then moved to the United Kingdom, and returned to Santa Rosa two weeks ago for the express purpose of saying goodbye to the place.

"Who'd have known that going out of business would be so good for business?" Teager said.

Citing one of the Wheel's unofficial mantras, he described it as a place "where people can come who don't necessarily conform to the norm."

Asked to name a few of those nonconformists, he mentioned Kenny the Weasel - "Little guy, beady eyes. Lived in his car, liked to drink" - and Bill from the Hill, a retiree and morning person who lived on Calistoga Road. His habit was to be at the Wheel when it opened at 6 a.m.

"He'd drink 'til about 10, then he'd leave."

Jason Teats, whose baby face is belied by his salt and pepper goatee, has spent a quarter century working behind the bar at the Wheel.

He was drawn to it at first, he recalled, because "people were real with each other, and watched out for each other. Anytime you walk in with a long face, somebody is going to recognize it, and ask how you're doing, and what's going on."

Those with negative things to say about the Wheel, he believes, "are people who have heard things from people that barely came here.

"In my 25-year bartending career," he said, "I've only ever had to lay hands on three people.

"This is the safest bar in Sonoma County."

While that may be debatable, patrons credited Mandolis and their co-owners with creating a unique refuge.

"There are some rough people here," said a man, who had just won at the shuffleboard table. He identified himself as "The Barrel," although his lanky frame evoked a stave more than a barrel.

"But when they come in, they show (the Mandolis) appreciation and respect, because of the way they've run this business."

It would be a mistake, however, to go too far in trying to sanitize the history of the saloon.

The aforementioned Robin and her circle of friends, seated by the back wall - "The Real Housewives of Sonoma County," they called themselves - will quickly set you straight.

Has the Wheel been misunderstood, lo these many years?

"No, it was bad," replied one of the housewives. "It was a raunchy biker bar."

"It was bad, but it wasn't bad bad," said another. "It was GOOD bad."

All conversation ceased when the 26-year-old bartender Savannah Sisko, commemorating the end of her final shift, announced she would be giving her "dear friend Tim" a Hurricane shot.

"That's when a man takes a shot, and I throw a glass of water in his face, then slap the s- out of him," she explained.

A cheer went up.

Tim slammed the shot, and - to the bar's roaring approval - got his face slapped.

The applause grew louder when, after absorbing that blow, he reflected briefly on the matter, then said, "One more time." He was slapped again, droplets flying from his face.

After Sisko gave him a hug, signaling no hard feelings, Tim spoke again. He was talking to her but might as well have been addressing the bar itself: "I'm gonna miss ya."

As the raucous laughter subsided to a dull roar, the song playing on the juke box was Queen's "Fat Bottomed Girls," whose closing lyrics included one with special resonance in the waning days of the Wheel:

"Get on your bikes and ride!"

You can reach Staff Writer Austin Murphy at austin.murphy@pressdemocrat.com or on Twitter @ausmurph88.

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