About Apple Jack's

But for the locals, groups of bikers out on their weekend runs, and the occasional tourist coming home from a day near the coast, Apple Jacks is more than just a random stop along the highway. It's an experience all its own.

With its secluded setting, an adornment of vintage license plates lining the roof, and the reputation for being a resting spot for various groups of bikers throughout its history, Apple Jacks is more of a roadhouse than a dive bar. Don't get me wrong, it has all the qualities that encompass a good dive as well: a rugged pool table that's missing the cueball, a classic rock-churning jukebox, a food menu of assorted candy bars and chips, and a no-frills beer and liquor selection that is meant to get you drunk, not expand your flavor palate.

It might seem silly to make a trek all the way out to a secluded bar just for a basic drink. But Apple Jacks has a certain trait that the new-fangled industrial gastropubs in the Mission and Financial Districts only attempt to recreate: it has authenticity. The floors squeak from age. The interior looks were almost unchanged from when it was built over 140 years ago.

A tight-knit community of bar patrons will immediately know you're not from around there. But don't worry, you'll be accepted if you can adhere to their way of doing things. As my girlfriend tried to take photos of the front of the bar after we pulled up, she was immediately shouted down. "Come in and have a drink first," yelled a tall, elderly man in a stern and affirmative manner. "Be a human being."

By the end of the night, the principled veteran had told us all about his adventures riding motorcycles around the country, owning a bar at age 17, and had even invited us over to his house for a two-day party. All we had to do was cut our teeth in a game of liar's dice.

Apple Jacks is an old soul trapped in an even older log cabin. Where drinking your beer and making conversation with the person on the barstool next to you is favored over taking a picture of it and putting it on Instagram. In the words of the tall gentleman, Apple Jacks is a place to be a human being.

Limey was the area's go-to craftsman. Joan Baez hired him by showing up at Apple Jack's with a pickup truck full of bricks and beer. Neil Young used him for masonry work at Broken Arrow Ranch. If you needed something built in these mountains, you went to the bar and found Limey.

But Limey had a temper to match his talent. With Hells Angels regularly passing through La Honda on their way to and from Kesey's property, and with Limey's fondness for guns, motorcycles, and alcohol, trouble was inevitable. One day, Limey held a gun to the head of a Hells Angel.

For weeks afterward, Limey was on the lam, hiding out in the hills as the Angels hunted for him. The Hells Angels didn't let that kind of thing go. Back in Oakland, their leader was Sonny Barger, the man Hunter S. Thompson called "the Maximum Leader," the founding member who had unified the club's scattered charters into a single organization.

It was Limey's wife, Nancy Kay, who saved him. She reached out to her old friend Sonny Barger directly and asked for mercy. Barger, the most feared biker in California, agreed. He personally called off the manhunt, and Limey came out of hiding.

But Limey being Limey, he didn't exactly come back quietly. For a while afterward, he carried a pearl-handled .44 Magnum revolver with a single bullet in it, kept loose in his pocket. Local residents still remember the day Limey walked into Apple Jack's, laid the gun on the bar, and demanded a beer.

That was La Honda in those years. Folk royalty hiring bricklayers over a truckload of beer. Rock legends recording albums up the hill. Hells Angels partying with the Merry Pranksters down the road. And at the center of all of it, a moss-covered log cabin where a man could lay a .44 Magnum on the bar and nobody batted an eye.