Vladimir's Place

Vladimir's Place

Inverness, is a small hamlet on Sir. Frances Drake Blvd. beside Tomales Bay near the magnificent Point Reyes National Seashore in California. It is here you will find Vladimir’s Czechoslovakian Restaurant. Here you will find draft Pilsner Urquell on tap, an authentic Eastern European crystal chandelier to greet you as you enter, and, if you are lucky, Vladimir himself tending bar.

Vladimir’s Czechoslovakian Restaurant is not for the faint of heart or the hopelessly pampered. Your grandfather would have liked this place with its dark paneling, impossibly old photos on the wall and nick-knack,-in-every-nook and cranny decoration. It was hot inside. Furnace-like hot. Vladimir, somewhere in his 80’s, shuffled back and forth on the edge of lucidity sloooooooooooowly tending our beers, setting them aside for several minutes between each draw to let the foam settle. Legend says Vladimir crawled under a barb wired fence over 40 years ago to freedom; and, if you ask him, he will say he once worked for the KGB, FBI, CBS, IBM, FOB—or something like that. He maintains a quirky, irascible freedom in his restaurant/bar that is wholly unique. Some will find the restaurant too old and too much like a visit to a museum. They will find it uncomfortable and taxing to take a beer with Vladimir; and they would miss much for their narrow, needy ways.

We came to Vladimir’s Czechoslovakian Restaurant from a picnic on the seashore and hikes on the windy desolate beaches that make up the northern stretch of beach at Point Reyes. This area, like everywhere else in the park, is completely undeveloped except for bleak ranches named “A” through “H”, and a few commercial establishments that seem marvelously stuck in a time before marketing, standardization and branding took their toll. The scenery on the drive to the beach changes from deep wood, to scrub undergrowth, to grass and rock, creating the impression that one is driving to the end of the earth. Indeed, you get the sense you have left a lot behind to walk barefoot on a wild beach, hair blowing and waves roaring.

As a result of our beach visit, we came ready to Vladimir’s Czechoslovakian Restaurant. Life in the present tense offers its gifts as well as challenges. Today the gift was an accordion player, playing the restaurant’s borrowed instrument. He was a wine-maker from Napa who sat with his lady-friend at the end of the bar. He was skilled – amazingly so- and chose music to fit the mood and the day. He played music from the movie Amelie, and you could just sense the child-like main character Amelie, so afraid to love, so anxious to do good, so mischievous, and so ready to learn more about herself, sitting with us at the bar. Vladimir poured us a Czechoslovakian liquor in a blue stem martini glass to chase our enormous beers. It tasted faintly of cloves. We raised a toast to the accordion player. The train to the present tense left normal behind.

I asked for a Spanish Tango, which he played with enthusiasm, and we laughed, dancing with our eyes, tapping our feet on the bar rail, not sure and not caring what we understood. I would not take off my hooded sweatshirt even though it was maybe 100 degrees in the restaurant and wondered why. Perhaps it was to take what was offered as it came – something we so rarely get to do. Maybe it was my small sacrifice to pay homage to a moment I did not comprehend but enjoyed so much. “Be here now,” Bamma Rama Das would say, and I kept my sweatshirt on to enjoy the heat.

The stories from Vladimir’s Czechoslovakian Restaurant took us laughing/thinking down the road to San Francisco and on to Missouri. We are back now, but the accordion is still playing. That wild wonderful beach is still there; the friends, the days away, and their witness are here. Like a shocking big yellow moon over a verdant vineyard or a magical sunset in Mendocino, Vladimir’s place gave balance back to the hard mystery of life. Quirky and mystical, the playful charm of Vladimir’s Czechoslovakian Restaurant makes the road go on and the story turn a page. Our box of memories not yet full, we are thankful again for the chance to have a life.