Jul 13, 2008

THEN AND NOW: Evolution of St. Michael's Alley

By Matt Bowling / Daily News columnist

Editor's Note: This is part two of a two-part series on St. Michael's Alley that began on July 6.

St. Michael's Alley began to acquire a reputation.

When an 18-year-old Woodside girl was arrested on suspicion of selling marijuana to her high school friends in 1964, the judge spoke from the bench about her entry into "the world of pseudo-sophistication, the world of Saint Michael's Alley."

The local media ran with those comments and soon St. Mike's acquired a not-so-wholesome reputation. After the Palo Alto Police Department called St. Mike's a hangout for "narcotics users and homosexuals," the city attorney's office tried to strip it of its beer license. And in June 1965, a crackdown by Palo Alto police on what they called "a bunch of local beatniks" led to the arrest of four alleged frequenters of St. Michael's Alley on suspicion of drug possession.

Soon St. Michael's more affluent clientele began to fade away.

As Gates would later recall, "Most of my paying customers thought they would lose their security clearances (at work) if they came to the place, so I was virtually put out of business."

This might help explain the memories that the somewhat cantankerous Gates had of the musical legends he once hosted.

Of Joan Baez he recalled, "She would go on signing all night and everybody would hang around and not buy anything."

Of the early incarnation of the Grateful Dead: "The only thing I credit myself with is kicking them out and telling them to go home and practice."

In 1966, Gates closed St. Mike's and spent the next seven years designing silk screenings, writing metaphysical poetry and meditating "4-6 hours a day."

But although he called this the happiest period of his life, Gates made an entrepreneurial comeback in 1973.

He reopened St. Mike's on quiet Emerson Avenue, the former home of the city's modest auto row. This time, however, he catered to a new type of audience - and largely left the days of Joan and Jerry behind. The new St. Mike's was an attempt at three-star restaurant cuisine catering to "educated and professional people, lawyers and doctors, teachers and professors."

And as Gates told the Palo Alto Times-Tribune in 1991 "I made a conscious effort to drive away the people who destroyed St. Michael's Alley. They can't support the business. They were some of the finest people from Stanford, but they nickel and dimed us to death."

Then again, perhaps the new clientele was the old counterculture with new affluent identities. Gates seemed to consider this possibility later in the interview: "They grow up. All the people who might have contributed to the demise of the first St. Michael's Alley are middle-aged now. I have clients that have been coming in since we first opened 18 years ago."

Despite the higher prices, there was still an alternative feel to the place - Gates and employees hung their paintings in the windows and his dishwasher grew a corn garden out front. There were weekly poetry and open mic nights in the so-called "Waiting Room" next door - a kind of homage to the original St. Mike's.

But in 1994, the links to the past were severed when Gates sold St. Mike's and got out of the restaurant business. Now the "Waiting Room" is gone, and St. Mike's has taken an even sharper turn toward upscale cuisine and fine dining. But no matter how much St. Mike's changes to cater the capitalist Silicon Valley around it, the secret of St. Michael's Alley remains safe with us - it was once a pretty happening place.



To read the entire story go to www.paloaltohistory.com/stmichaelsalley.html. For more of Matt Bowling's articles go to www.paloaltohistory.com

Then and Now writer Matt Bowling can be reached at mtb324@gmail.com.