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ARTICLE. From the Summer 2025 Half Moon Bay History Association’s “Coastside Chronicles” written by Joe Brennan. Donate or volunteer!
Reflections From a Kid Growing Up in Moss Beach
The restaurant overlooking Moss Beach’s tide pools has had four names: Frank’s Place, Vic Torres’, Galway Bay Inn, and The Distillery. Frank Torres built and operated the restaurant until he built his new restaurant on Highway One at the south end of Montara Beach…again with a million-dollar view. When Frank moved operations to Montara his brother Vic ran the original in Moss Beach. It was known for its Sunday music sessions with musicians, artists, and opera stars down from the city.
Distillery. Courtesy Joe Brennan
In my last year of high school, I needed cash to attend the Senior Ball, so I rattled up to the kitchen door of Vic Torres’ in my Model A pickup on the morning of January 1, 1964. Vic’s wife Pearl answered the door looking bedraggled, as I had interrupted her making coffee to recover from the previous night’s New Year’s Eve revelries. I asked If she had any work and she replied, “Good God yes, the place is a mess from last night and we have to open for lunch!” Hired on the spot as dishwasher and busboy, I went right to work.
I had heard that the building was haunted by a ghost, “the Blue Lady.” A week into my job, and after getting to know the other employees, I was requested to help downstairs in the storeroom opposite the restrooms.
The walls were lined with shelving holding canned goods and all manner of restaurant supplies. I was
directed to climb up the front of the shelves to a strange long box on the top shelf. They said I had to
climb up, open the box, and reach inside. This, it turns out, was a wicker coffin from the Philippines!
Despite feeling set up, I climbed up and reluctantly raised the lid to reach inside—at which point they
flipped the lights off and screamed! Startled, I jumped back and landed hard on the concrete floor bruising both my heel bones. I did not suspect it was the hazing or new employees… they sure got me!
The next year while attending College of San Mateo I had a weekend job with Citizens Utilities, the water
company for Moss Beach and Montara. We got a call saying that water was running out of the meter box in front of Vic Torres’ so I was sent to investigate.
The piping was leaking out of the meter, so we shut off the water and made a repair. Six or nine months later we received the same complaint and upon inspection found the same problem. We gave it some thought and realized that ground movement was pulling the pipes apart.
This time the Citizens Utilities manager Frank Dillon told me to get the hardware to install a rubber hose
connection and allow a complete loop to dissipate any stress. That was done, we didn’t get any more calls about that problem.
Across the parking lot from the restaurant was the beautiful old three-story wooden Marine View Hotel.
It was long out of business and a hermit had lived in the basement and acted as watchman. Later in its
decrepitude it had been condemned, and a local contractor got the job of dismantling it.
I was still working for the water department, which meant I had to join the Point Montara Volunteer Fire
Department because I knew the water system and could maximize the resource to any area needed. So,
one day I got a call to maximize water pressure and volume to the area of Vic Torres’ because the Marine
View Hotel was ablaze.
Half Moon Bay History Association
I was doing as trained when another call came in that the Catholic Church on Wienke Way in Moss Beach was also ablaze and the responding Half Moon Bay volunteer fire department would need all the water we could give them too!
It was a challenge, and the fires were fought valiantly but ended in the total loss of both structures in what was perhaps Moss Beach’s smokiest day.
3 Geotechnical Reports and 1 Lawsuit (and one story from 1965) Confirm the Consistency of Seal Cove’s Landslides Over 60 Years
1971 Geologic report of the Seal Cove-Moss Beach Area by F. Beach Leighton and Associates.
Lawsuit: 1975 Kopetzke v. County of San Mateo, Board. of Supervisors. “Since the exercise of police power was proper, it did not constitute a taking and no compensation is due. Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railway Co. v. Illinois, 200 U.S. 561, 26 S. Ct. 341, 50 L. Ed. 596 (1906). To the extent plaintiffs’ losses result from any inherent geologic defects in their properties, the ancient rule of caveat emptor must apply. And to the extent their losses result from the regulatory activities of the Board based on the geologic findings of the Leighton Report, they constitute the unequal burden which citizens are frequently called upon to bear in the interests of the general welfare. Hadacheck v. Sebastian, supra.“
See also William Cotton and Associates 1980 Geologic Analysis of the Seal Cove area commissioned by San Mateo County.
San Mateo County Planning and Building’s Seal Cove Critical Geotechnical Hazards Area webpage, including the Seal Cove 2025 Cotton and Shires Geologic Study.
Cotton and Shires Seal Cove Geotechnical Hazard Zones 12/2025
More on Montara Water and Sanitary District (MWSD) on Coastside Buzz
2026 MWSD Board of Directors
All Board members may be reached by sending an email to info@mwsd.net.
Author: mdrag
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