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Frankie Frost/Special to the Marin Independent Journal

Essence Goldman and Danny Uzilevsky perform at the Pint Size Lounge on July 7 in San Rafael.

Frankie Frost/Special to the Marin Independent Journal

Pint Size Lounge owner Adam Violante passes the tip bucket for the band on July 7 in San Rafael. Lisa Luzzi and Heidi Adler contribute.

Frankie Frost/Special to the Marin Independent Journal

Nancy Morais dances to the music by the Pint Size Lounge in San Rafael.

Frankie Frost/Special to the Marin Independent Journal

Essence Goldman plays in front of the Pint Size Lounge on July 7.

Alan Dep/Marin Independent Journal

“Live music has been our life raft,” says Whipper Snapper owner Bill Higgins. “It’s been my savior.”

The pandemic was about to put the Pint Size Lounge out of business. After more than two decades in downtown San Rafael, Adam Violante’s little neighborhood beer-and-wine bar was looking at the beginning of the end in 2020.

In a kind of Hail Mary pass, he teamed up with the restaurant next door to build parklets for customers to eat and drink at curbside. But it wasn’t enough. He needed something that would lure cautious people out of their houses during COVID-19. He needed a little magic, a miracle maybe. He found it in live music.

After the city agreed to close his block of Fourth Street to vehicles in his West End Village neighborhood on Thursday and Friday nights, Violante began inviting his musician friends to come down and play on the street outside his bar. They were happy to oblige, needing gigs as desperately as he needed customers.

Two years later, the Pint Size Lounge’s block parties have become a phenomenon, a thing, a happening, one of the most vibrant and unlikely musical scenes in Marin County. On good nights, a couple hundred or more folks turn out to eat and drink and dance and listen to local bands.

“Adam has really created this awesome vibe in the West End that doesn’t exist anywhere else in San Rafael,” says Sarah Tipple, executive director of the San Rafael Business Improvement District. “I think it’s fabulous for downtown.”

It’s certainly been fabulous for the Pint Size, an unpretentious watering hole at 1615 Fourth St. with a nameless glass brick façade that keeps it so under the radar that it’s easy to walk right past it without knowing it’s there. Inside, there’s beer on tap, a pool table, a creatively stocked jukebox, a turntable that plays vintage vinyl, work by local artists and strategically placed kitschy paintings of clowns on the walls. A Yelp reviewer wrote: “This bar could be placed in the Mission and fit right in.”

The federal government’s Paycheck Protection Program helped keep the Pint Size afloat during the darkest days of COVID. But live music is the real reason it was able to celebrate its 25th anniversary last year.

“It saved the day,” Violante says. “I wouldn’t be here without it.”

And neither would Whipper Snapper, the California Caribbean-style eatery next door.

“Live music has been our life raft,” says Whipper Snapper owner Bill Higgins. “It’s been my savior.”

It’s also been a salvation for many local musicians, many of whom are still reluctant to perform indoors. They don’t seem to mind that there’s no stage, just a carpet of green artificial turf for them to perform on at Fourth and G streets. Violante pays them a standard fee, and, with tips, some of the more popular bands can make up to $1,000 a night.

“It’s been a lifeline during the pandemic,” says guitarist Josh Zee, who has played the Pint Size with the Starling Six band and considers it one of his favorite gigs in Marin. “For whatever reason, there’s a good energy on that corner.”

Singer-songwriter Susan Zelinsky, who performs as Susan Z, lives a stone’s throw from the Pint Size and has played there with her bandmates at least 10 times, including her 23rd annual benefit for Wine, Women & Song, a charity she founded to fight breast cancer.

“It’s revved up my whole musical  life,” she says. “It’s been so great for musicians, and it’s brought so much life back to the neighborhood.”

Violante has done surveys of bar patrons showing overwhelming support for his street parties and the community spirit they’ve brought to the West End of San Rafael. He’s found that more than 20% of attendees are from the surrounding neighborhood.

“We need to be out of our houses and outdoors,” says Zero Jacobsen, a 49-year-old IT worker who lives within walking distance of the Pint Size and is a regular at the bar and its block parties. “And the music is a good reason to do it.”

The San Rafael Chamber of Commerce is also a booster, taking notice of the good energy and fun its brought to downtown as the business community has struggled over the past couple of years.

“I know the block parties from last year were really popular on the West End,” says chamber president Joanne Webster. “It was very neighborhood serving and had a younger demographic, which is always a good thing. And so that’s been really exciting. It’s why they wanted to do it again this year.”

But not everyone has been so enthusiastic. The Business Improvement District has fielded complaints from some neighbors and businesses who object to the loudness of the music, the inconvenience of the street being closed and the need to reroute buses into residential neighborhoods during the events, which begin at 6 p.m. and end at 9. In consideration of nearby residents, amplified music must be kept at reasonable decibel levels.

“It’s a small handful who complain,” says the business district’s Tipple. “When I communicate with them, they seem satisfied. Otherwise, there’s huge community support for this.”

For the 53-year-old Violante, finding musicians to play on his block was hardly a stretch. Growing up in Marin, he’d played guitar in bands when he was younger and already knew most of the local musicians from booking them for his annual West End Village Celebration, a four-block neighborhood festival he founded in 2008.

At the start of the pandemic, he discontinued the Village Celebration and began his block parties after the city closed the east end of Fourth Street on Thursday nights for Dining Under the Lights, a program to support downtown restaurants and bars by allowing them to serve customers outdoors.

While Dining Under the Lights enjoyed early success, patronage tailed off when indoor dining returned. San Rafael also lost a major attraction when the farmers market, a Thursday night institution on Fourth Street, pulled out this year. In an effort to bring some life back to the East End, Dining Under the Lights has been rebranded as San Rafael Thursdays, a kind of summer street festival with live music, vendors and things for kids to do. Its debut last Thursday night was not encouraging. While the Pint Size party drew a festive crowd grooving to the country rock of Danny Uzilevsky and Essence Goldman, you could have fired a cannon down the east end of Fourth Street and not hit anyone. And that causes Violante to worry about his street party’s fate going forward.

“My end of town has a reputation for being a thing,” he says. “But on the other end of town, they’re not doing so well. It’s a double-edged sword. I’m happy I’m doing well on those nights, but I need the other end of town to do well to think that this can happen in the future. There needs to be a bigger picture for the city to keep this going.”

This year, Violante got permission from the city to begin his block parties in May and continue them through September. His fervent hope is that the city will make them a permanent part of the downtown scene instead of the pilot program they’ve been in the past. Whether that will happen depends on many factors, but it’s a safe bet that the Pint Size parties will be on tap again next year.

“It’s going well, but I think it’s something we want to observe and continue to get community feedback about at the end of the season,” says Victoria Lim of the San Rafael Department of Economic Development and Innovation. “It’s been a great way to get people out and to enliven the city. So, we’re supportive, that’s the bottom line.”

Contact Paul Liberatore at p.liberatore@comcast.net

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