Paul Castech, publican of Paul’s Place, the last sailor bar in San Francisco, dies at 86
Paul’s Place wasn’t much, but it didn’t have to be. The attraction was Paul Castech, the publican who was willing to act as a bank where sailors just down from the union hall could leave their cash in the safe while they went to sea.
This meant Paul’s Place was the last stop before a mariner set sail and the first stop when he returned, six months later. The cocktails at either end were administered with a heavy hand. They did not come out of a blender or involve grinding leaves with a mortar and pestle.
Castech was never a sailor but he knew what it felt like to carry everything you owned in one bag because that’s how he’d arrived from the French Basque country at age 18. He turned an existing bar on First Street into a port in the storm for able seamen by changing the name over the door and having a ship painted on the wall in exchange for an outstanding bar tab.
A sailor bar is not a place for yachtsmen — nor longshoremen. Sailors don’t load and unload ships or work the docks. They operate tankers and container ships on the oceans.
“Longshoremen and sailors are both working stiffs. Different work. Different stiffs,” is how Chronicle columnist and waterfront observer Carl Nolte explained it.
The seagoing life in San Francisco dried up last century but Paul’s still drew them in from Oakland. It might be going still if the landlord had not declined to renew the lease, causing the bar to fold in 2003.
