Looks Like Another Round for Chez Jay

The giant Cold War military intelligence think tank and the tiny hole-in-the-wall tavern have shared plenty of history during the past four decades -- the Pentagon Papers, legend has it, were leaked in the back booth, where Warren Beatty and Henry Kissinger once dined.

The RAND Corporation with Chez Jay in Foreground

So it is only fitting that when the City Council votes Tuesday night on whether to buy 11.3 acres of RAND's 15-acre property, Chez Jay will be part of the historic deal.

The dimly lit, ten-table, sawdust-on-the-floor watering hole -- where the homeless rub shoulders with the powerful -- likely will get a long-term lease if the city becomes its new landlord, according to sources close to the negotiations.

"With 18 employees, it would be disastrous if I had to close," Fiondella said. "Everybody at Chez Jay's has their fingers crossed."

"It's been tenuous," said Micheal Anderson, who has managed Chez Jay for 23 years and who has kept a milk carton model of Chez Jay his daughter built three years ago as a good luck token of sorts. "I don't know why I kept it," he said of the carton.

Ever since Santa Monica voters approved RAND's Civic Center plan six years ago, Chez Jay's employees have been living from lease to short-term lease. For the past six years they've lived six months at a time, hoping for a way to keep a job most have had for more than 15 years, and some for as long as a quarter century.

Now, they feel a part of a family that spends much of its days and nights at the converted coffee shop known for its free peanuts and dimly lit sense of privacy.

"There's a sense of continuity that this place provides in this transient place," said bartender Micheal Saad, who has worked at Chez Jay for 18 years. "It's been here forever. So many people have come through those doors. I have served transients and power brokers and they all feel comfortable here."

It's not just the employees who are pulling for the future of this tiny time warp on Ocean Avenue, where the colored lights put up 40 Christmases ago still adorn the dark wooden walls and where one of its peanuts once traveled to the moon.

"It's a real joint. It's real, and there's very little real in L.A.," said Earl Goldberg, who has been a regular since 1965, and who provides the restaurant's famous steaks. "It's rare that something exists for this long. It's funky, it's fun and if you fight long enough, the bar maids will give you a free slice of cheesecake."

"It is what it is," said J.J., a regular who lives and works across the street. "You take it for that and it's comfortable. There's no phoniness. Hey, I heard Springstein was here the other night."

You wouldn't know from the décor, but for 40 years Chez Jay has been a dark retreat from the spotlight for some of the world's biggest stars. But instead of framed autographed celebrity head shots, the walls are brimming with old nautical memorabilia. The few photos above the bar are of General George Patton; Jay's deceased mother, Alice, whose spirit still reigns in the place, and Lonnie, a former neighbor who was a long-time regular before his death last year.

"This has always been a show biz hangout," Fiondella said. "We never allow cameras or autographs. They know they won't be bothered at night it's so dark you don't know what you're eating. We get all the heavy weights."

Burton and Taylor, Redford and Newman, Dimaggio and Koufax all found refuge in the small stucco building in the shadows of RAND's Cold War-era headquarters. Micheal Keaton and Michelle Pfeiffer recently held a birthday party in the back room, and in the last few weeks Chez Jay's customers have included Sean Penn, Danny DiVito, Bruce Sringsteen, Al Pacino and Oliver Stone.

It is said that Marlon Brando once came in for a drink and left with the waitress, and that Richard Harris would sing "McArthur Park" after a few cocktails before the tune shot its way up to the top of the charts.

And then there is the legend of the astro-nut. The Chez Jay peanut was taken to the moon by astronaut Alan Shepard, who used to eat at the restaurant when he worked for a NASA facility nearby.

But perhaps the biggest attraction isn't the celebrities or the peanut (which is kept locked in a safe) but Jay himself - a swashbuckling, treasure-hunting, hot air balloonist and bit part actor who for forty years has run what a long-time patron once called "a factory of memories."