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Downtown Local: Serving Up a Potent Brew of Espresso and Motorcycles

Originally published in RoadRUNNER magazineHalfway between the Northern California coastal towns of Santa Cruz and Half Moon Bay, at the nexus of some of the best motorcycle  roads on the planet, lies the somnolent town of Pescadero. It just might be the coolest coastal burg that no one has heard of. So please, don’t go there. But if you must, by all means get some high-octane coffee at Downtown Local, which serves up a potent mix of vintage motorcycles, racing memorabilia, scratchy LPs, and, well, just about anything.

Inside, old gas tanks are stacked like cordwood on wooden shelving, including examples from Norton, Ducati, and Triumph. A rotation of vintage bikes makes its way through the store—everything from an MV Agusta to a Lambretta scooter. In the large bay window, a mannequin playing an accordion sits astride a 1935 Moto-Guzzi GTV, with its infamous, “bacon-slicer” external flywheel. I personally become almost weepy at the sight of the motorcycle I learned to ride on, the ’70 Yamaha HT-1, which occupies pride of place right next to the espresso machine. A large, wooden toolbox with “Cragar” stickers spills over with dog-eared “Cycle” magazines from the ‘60s and ‘70s. There’s a selection of moto-inspired clothing from Deus ex Machina.

If it’s moto-nostalgia you’re after, Downtown Local will make you weak in the knees. And, since everything is for sale, it might also weaken your bank account.

But Downtown Local is not just about motorcycles. Stacks of Beatles records lean hard on a large, but obviously used, Tonka Truck. A collection of antique fire hydrant nozzles sit in a wooden box, waiting for the next San Franciscan to festoon their pied-à-terre in impeccable country style. An aging, 25-cent mechanical marijuana dispenser continually collects coins from the hopeful, though no blunts ever emerge. (John collects about $15 every few months from the aging machine.) There’s a noticeable concentration of Snoopy lunchboxes and plush monkeys, which make about as much sense as anything. Which is to say, none at all.

In the back, a small cinema with nine plush, vintage seats accommodates filmgoers, and shows Moto GP racing to the faithful on race weekends. On the day I visited, a black-and-white Cary Grant movie was playing to the Stars Wars soundtrack. You probably have to be there to understand.

In fact, everything about Downtown Local makes perfect no-sense. And that’s exactly why it works so well, particularly in a world that ceased making sense long ago, anyway. We come here to be jolted (literally and figuratively) out of normal expectations.

California Dreamin’

When I ask owner John Betteo to identify a theme for Downtown Local, he looks puzzled. There isn’t one, other than the most logical theme of all: it’s stuff John likes.

Betteo’s background is perfectly suited, in an ironic way, to the eclectic surroundings of Downtown Local. He grew up in Fairhope, Alabama—about as far from California as you can get, geographically and culturally.

That’s also where he learned to love motorcycles. “In Fairhope, everyone had a dirt bike and rode them in the pecan orchards,” he says. “We built dirt tracks and jumps. My mother wouldn’t allow me to have a street bike, but she said, okay, if you want to get out in the mud and break your teeth, fine.”

After attending college at Auburn, he moved to California in the ‘80s, opened a restaurant, got married and had two kids, got divorced, and ended up living in San Francisco with girlfriend Nicole Sillapere, now his wife and co-owner of Downtown Local. Back then he lived across the street from “the best coffee in San Francisco,” Sightglass (the same brand served at Downtown Local). He also started fiddling with old bikes, particularly Moto-Guzzis.

“I just fell in love with Moto-Guzzi,” he says. “The Eldorado was always my favorite—it was in the ‘Dirty Harry’ movies, with the chrome tank and knee indents. I found one in boxes and restored it. I learned a lot.”

When his daughters graduated high school in 2012, he found himself thinking about the little town of Pescadero, just down the coast highway. “I’d talked about having a coffee and motorcycle repair shop, where I could restore one motorcycle at a time,” he says. “It was a dream.” Soon after, the dream became reality.

Not Your Average Burg

Relations with the residents of tiny Pescadero (population 640) didn’t come easily. Betteo did his penance—on a barstool. “I sat at Duarte’s bar [across the street from Downtown Local] for a year,” he says. “Everyone meets there at 4:30. I would sit several stools away. I finally inched over and became one of the crowd. That’s when I figured it was safe to open my store.”

Pescadero today is remarkably like the Pescadero of 1895. Call it governmental overreach if you must, but the tyrannical no-growthers have saved this town. You’d get a summons if your doghouse exceeded the designated footprint. Want the inverse? Just go over the hill, to Sunnyvale and Mountain View, in the Silicon Valley. There, you could grow pale and sickly spending days in the fluorescent lighting of every major box store in the world. And some of the old-timers would just as soon you did. “It’s great,” says Betteo. “Pescadero is like being back in Fairhope in ’72. I’m back to being a kid.”

Downtown Pescadero may date from the mid-1800s, but today it looks like it’s been overtaken by a mutant society of people on two wheels. Motorcyclists of every stripe thunder down main street. Sportbike riders search for their next dose of caffeine, to better prepare for the coming decreasing-radius corners and oblivious, texting motorists occupying the left-hand lane on Stage Road. Harley guys and girls prowl the main street, turning heads and shaking century-old windows before retreating to Duarte’s for nerve-deadening cocktails from an unjudgmental barkeep. Meanwhile, shaved-leg, slightly anemic bicyclists prowl the scant downtown in search of calories for the return trip to Woodside and Stanford University. Most traffic, of course, occurs on weekends, with a steady procession of hipsters and urban detritus trying to escape the confines of the bulging metropolis just over the hill.

But the chief attraction, at least for motorcyclists, has always been the proximity to some of the best and most sinewy roads on the San Francisco peninsula, including Stage, Gazos Creek, and Pescadero roads. Skyline Drive, of Alice’s Restaurant fame, is also just up the road. Ply all this delicious tarmac for a few hours, and by the time you arrive at Downtown Local, you’ll practically walk with a lean.

Desperately Seeking Strangeness

The problem with non-conformists, they say, is that they’re all alike. Could such a thing happen with Downtown Local? Could its very eclecticism become commonplace, as trendy stores highlighting “found objects” crop up throughout the Bay Area? Perhaps, but for Betteo, it doesn’t matter. And you get the feeling he might just evade that fate. He’s always reaching higher, and going one step weirder, than the next guy.

“And besides,” he says. “I’m always looking for more motorcycles.”

2 thoughts on “Downtown Local: Serving Up a Potent Brew of Espresso and Motorcycles

  1. Nicely done! I revisit this place yearly on a bicycle trip and love it. I lived in Monterey in the 70’s in my miss-spent youth riding CZs and then moved back east to get a life. There was a primo MX track near here back then, but these days I pedal around the hills instead. I walked into the coffee shop and was just blown away by the period vibe. Whether motorized or under pedal power the roads in the area keep bringing me back. Kudos to you for giving credit to this place and it’s people, and lets hope it remains the jewel it is for years to come!

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