'The bottles were like, dated from the 19-teens': Bay Area history unearthed at 110-year-old dive bar

Just by the train tracks near Fruitvale Station amid empty warehouses, auto body shops and old Victorians, you'll start to hear the familiar sound of laughter and music. That's because it's a balmy Friday afternoon at Aloha Club, the proud local dive with "the longest bar and the coldest beer."

Constructed in 1912, the family-run institution is a staple in the industrial East Oakland community, offering a curated selection of tequila and mezcal along with fresh, house-made mojitos and micheladas. But aside from serving vibrant cocktails at the notorious 53-foot bar counter, Aloha Club's "tight-knit" crew is literally unearthing the building's many past lives.

According to third-generation owner Dave Weltin, who's had Aloha Club in his family since 1986, they've served Oakland's blue-collar community for decades. As a small child, he and his father would open the bar at six in the morning, serving the many glass factory workers in the area.

"At 8 a.m., the bar would fill up with the graveyard shift coming off," he says. While some of these factories are long gone, Aloha Club is still a popular neighborhood locale, and it's pretty clear why.

Loaded with Tajin, lime juice and Tapatio, their micheladas — which are served in an enormous chalice with a sweaty bottle of Modelo — are tangy, spicy and refreshing. Similarly, their mint mojitos are bursting with flavor and brimming with bright natural herbs. Chris Jimenez, the bar manager, says that the premixes for these cocktails are made in-house daily. But it's not just the drinks that keep people coming back; it's the bar's dedication to providing a venue for the Fruitvale community.

"We have a very diverse clientele," Jimenez says. "We wanted to keep that neighborhood feel and make it welcoming to everybody."

Over the years, Weltin has seen it all. "We do birthdays, memorials, wedding showers, baby showers. It covers the whole spectrum of human existence," he laughs.

Today, the bar's surrounding district, Jingletown, is home to a wealth of Mexican and Latino families and working artists. Jimenez also says that Oakland's Latino educators frequent the bar, which hosts fundraisers for the local school district. In the corner of my eye, I see a sign from the recent Oakland teacher strike leaning by the pool table.

I ask Jimenez about one mixed drink on the chalkboard menu, "E One Four." He says that it's a "simple but refreshing" Don Julio cocktail paying homage to International Boulevard.

"If you go back to the early '80s, International was East 14th all the way down," he says. "If you're from Oakland, you never call International 'International,' you call it East 14th or E One 4."

His drink even won a competition held by the A's Treehouse and was subsequently on the Coliseum menu for one season in 2019. That same year, Weltin and Jimenez finished an arduous renovation project at Aloha Club. Together, they spent about four years opening up its low, 1970s-era ceilings, expanding a sunny back patio and uncovering "marvelous historic details."

"It was the diviest dive," Weltin says. "We've put a lot of work and effort into making the space," he continues. "I wouldn't say updating, but we brought it back to the original bar."

As he and Jimenez peeled back layers of gaudy fake brick and ripped up old floorboards, they unearthed a stash of clay porter bottles and beer cans dating back to the early 20th century.

"There's a bottle of bitters that hasn't even been opened," says Weltin as he arranges them on the counter. He speculates that workers must have hidden them during construction. "The bottles were like, dated from the 19-teens. We think that's when the bar started."

While Aloha Club's exact inception date is murky, the building itself has stood for well over a century. According to California's Office of Historic Preservation, the space "reflects the city-wide building boom of the Earthquake era, April 1906 to c. 1914," and could maybe become a historic landmark as long as its architectural integrity is properly restored.

Historic documents also say that German American real estate developer and financier Henry A. Pleitner originally occupied the building around the turn of the century. When he immigrated to the "sparsely settled region" of Fruitvale, he allegedly helped build hundreds of houses in the area and developed High Street — a major thoroughfare connecting East Oakland neighborhoods.

Today, Pleitner's former real estate office is just one of the few local dives in the neighborhood aside from El Gato Negro and La Llave de Oro. According to Weltin, this is because it's "virtually impossible" to open a bar in Fruitvale. He says that liquor licenses are prohibitively expensive and require approval from the city, making it difficult for the average Oaklander to start a business there. According to the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control's website, general liquor licenses cost $16,560.

"I think to open up a new full bar in East Oakland it's just, it's very hard. ... You not only need money, but you need political support," he says.

Despite the dearth of homegrown, neighborhood bars, Weltin says that the Fruitvale enclave offers a lot more than just mojitos and micheladas.

"I think it's a real authentic neighborhood of Oakland. And I think you get a true slice of Oakland life," he says. "When you come visit Fruitvale, you meet down-to-earth, wholesome folks who are proud to be Oaklanders."

And after meeting with Weltin and Jimenez, I knew exactly what he meant.