Fate took me to Boston this morning for business. I’m precisely 2,998 drive-miles away from the pinnacle of emotions rising today along Green Valley Road in El Dorado Hills, California. That’s where at lunch Friday, I said my goodbyes to friends, staff, and management at the Purple Place Bar and Grill, where I nurtured fifteen years of treasured relationships.

Tonight, Sunday, August 21, 2022, the neon signs will dim. The landmark Purple Place will close, and I will have missed the rising, day-long jubilee whose party laughter will have led to a sudden gloom: layoffs, empty glasses, and the diaspora of regular customers.

More than 2,500 customers signed a petition in an appeal to save the business — a fraction of the people who frequented and loved the Purp. They considered the purple-painted establishment their Third Place — the intersection between work and home, the watering hole that bound the motorcycle rider to the hedge-fund exec. The roadside stop connected the medical devices sales rep to the dirty gold-panner who still seeks his fortune in the American River. The Purple Place knotted relationships and fostered a better community.

Closing the business came down to the culmination of the building’s lease — a milestone that, in its pitiful wake, will have sucked into its blackhole the traditions, comforts, and bonds of a local tribe whose shibboleth was the hue between red and blue.

At the Purple Place, it did not matter if you were a blue voter or a red voter, old or young, male or female, rich or poor, fat or lean, a Pepsi drinker or a whiskey imbiber. The music played, and the conversations bantered freely from table to table and stool to stool about the affairs of daily life.

An old-timer popped in Friday. He started the conversation with stories about his former career with Gillette, the privilege of his company car, and the invention of the two-blade razor. But he was really there because he wanted one last visit at the Purp. “I first came here in 1975,” he said. “It was a biker bar back then.” Then he filled in details about the interior before the establishment made its turn-around. He described the pool table, a filthy wall-to-wall carpet, and condoms in the restrooms.

Since its founding in 1955, the Purple Place counted bikers — good people looking for refreshment — among its faithful customers, especially on weekends when sunny rides would take bikers east to west — Tahoe toward Sacramento or the reverse. So Solomonic advice for horsepower, helmets, or Harleys was in plentiful supply along the outdoor patio or around the bar.

Whether it was the rough and ready bikers or the run-down appearance of the Purple Place before 2006 — the watershed year when new owners took over — the business earned a stay-away reputation among local passersby. It was always a cliché urban legend — more or less true — that the business’s name came from its street-facing façade, colored with paint on surplus from the nearby, infamous Folsom Prison. Inside, a chandelier also featured purple lights. It hung directly over the bar, and today you’ll still see its hook in the ceiling.

One Sunday long ago, a preacher three miles down the road cited the brightly painted landmark as an icon for a place where you “should not be seen.” Because of that admonition, we, the rebellious, saw it as a temptation to take a peek.

I didn’t explore until later in 2007 when a young but experienced restaurateur and his wife signed a deal to take over the business and lay claim to its recognizable name and its trade fixtures. Mike and Denise Hountalas sunk their life savings into the Purple Place in November of 2006. They were on the verge of leasing another building in the Safeway shopping center at Francisco Drive and Green Valley, but Mike argued they could make a bigger impact with the recognizable roadhouse just a mile from their home. While they bought the business, they didn’t get ownership of the property. Still, they remodeled, upgraded, and gave the restaurant a welcoming vibe.

Before they took over, it was not necessarily a family friendly place, Denise recalled, echoing some recollections of old-timers who called it a “run-down pool hall.”

Denise immediately worked on making it a kid-friendly restaurant. One of her strategies was making it a destination site for a nearby flag football league. The restaurant would sponsor contests and give away packets of Wikki Stix, logoed water bottles, and seven-dollar gift cards.

The Hountalas couple had a young family. They worked the business together. Denise would shuttle her namesake vegetarian salad to the tables, and it was a good laugh for me one day to see one of their young sons learning to enter an order on the point-of-service console.

Denise came to her new role with a track record of building business. She was a major revenue producer at the renowned Cliff House of San Francisco where she ran catering and events. It also happened to be Mike’s parents’ business, where he grew up in the intense throes of a competitive industry.

When he came to his new ownership role in El Dorado Hills, Mike leveraged his previous experience in management with Paragary restaurants and a prestigious stint as director of restaurant operations with the Kimpton Group whose notable properties included the Pasadena Ritz Carlton and Harry Denton’s Starlight Room atop the Sir Francis Drake Hotel in San Francisco.

From a customer’s perspective, I saw Mike build the new Purple Place on a three-legged foundation: excellent food, reasonable prices, and a friendly, safe atmosphere. If he had to capsulize his philosophy in running restaurants, he said it would center on being authentic. That especially became apparent, he said, in his work with staff when it was becoming inevitable that the restaurant would have to close.

Mike hired well-trained chefs, not mere cooks. His staff sought local staples and the scratch ingredients to create signature menu dishes. I’ve tasted a string of their successes over the years, favorites like ribs, poké, potstickers, lettuce wraps, grilled prawns, Caesar salads, and a burger that could make Gordon Ramsay smile.

And when the doors close tonight, an on-tap beer will still be served for a reasonable $5.50, and a basic cocktail will cost partygoers $7.

Behind all this foundation for success is a current staff of more than 50 people. To me, their good nature and hospitality clear all the obstacles away for a pleasant Third Place conversation.

Among them is my friend Ann White, who greeted me at my first entrance for breakfast service and has devoted 29 years, not just to the business, but to the lives of her customers. Even her daughter joined the team, bringing her smile to the restaurant until she parlayed COVID closures into a path toward a nursing career.

Whether it was Gina, or Kim, or Sam, or Eric, or Lauren, or Bobby, or Shauna, or Clay, or Samantha, or Heather, or Hope, or Josie, or one of the other smiling faces — the staff always teamed up to splash their neon glow around the Purp. That’s why the restaurant could be a glowing gathering place for birthday parties, 19^th hole gatherings, baseball beer, book launches, first-day-of-school relief, baby showers, or graduations.

Even my extended family, on the patio of the Purp, celebrated my father-in-law’s life with pitchers of beer and stories. For years, I made a weekly Wednesday habit of setting up a portable office at table 103. I would face the door and survey the landscape before ordering a Tombstone or California sandwich. Sometimes ketchup would drip on my keyboard, but at that table I wrote more than 30 articles, edited more than ten books, designed as many covers, and enjoyed the environment — between bites of fruit — to write language for purchasing contracts.

One day from table 103, I inquired of the gentlemen from table 102, owners of a pest control company, “How do I get rid of my pesky squirrels?”

“Trap them,” they said. “But then you have two choices. Release them elsewhere on your own property. Whatever you do, don’t take them up the hill and release them.”

They paused.

“Or kill them. Do you have a pool?” they asked. I knew what they meant.

Such were the back-and-forth conversations that went on for 16 years at the well-regarded Purple Place, from breakfast openings to final nightcaps.

And if you sometimes listened at the bar, an arborist would be cutting a deal to trim oaks, a crane operator would be courting a cocktailer, and a biker in chaps would be inquiring of a man who did tax.

If you wanted a first-hand account of history — whether of El Dorado Hills, Vietnam, or motorcycle engines — The Purple Place was the fount of first-hand, nuanced knowledge.

For example, it was no secret that a Purple Place favorite — an El Dorado County native in her nineties — kept the musket of John Sutter above her mantle. She had stories.

Mac, a former CIA agent, held court at the corner of the bar. One early evening, I got close enough to beg him for a story of covert CIA operations in Vietnam. He chastised me with his buttoned lips. Such was the sacred honor toward his oath and also the honor of other veterans, patriots, and citizens of the Purple Tribe.

Oh, if the staff could tell their stories! They could spin tales of widows and soldiers, gun collectors and sheriff powers, broken relationships and new loves, births and birthdays, travels and dreams.

The gossip could also be good — hearsay in pursuit of confirmation, whether about a local crime, a forest fire, or even a  backstory about the governor who lives nearby.

But these peer-to-peer news cables will be no more. Staff are already in pursuit of new jobs. Some already left. And they are all taking their tell-tales with them. One of them will have the tell-tale privilege of locking the door tonight, if they can get the revelers to go home.

Mike says he’s trying to wind down the business with dignity. He doesn’t want bitterness or anger to spill out during today’s final bout of service (he already had to scrub off some graffiti on a wall). He wants everyone to get home safe, even if it means having to close a little early.

Whether at the Purple Place or other surrogate cafes nearby, our Third Place community has been trying to forge new Third Places where debates and conversations can convene after the Purple Place goes dark. No establishment has every element needed, we agree.

Interspersed in our conversations is the indomitable Purple Place lease negotiations.

No one in these conversations has begrudged the right of a landlord to seek a price and terms for her property. But likewise, everyone has given up to the fact that a business owner must make wise financial decisions to keep a business viable. Ergo, it’s a stalemate that makes losers of us all.

“We really thought we were going to be able to work things out,” Denise said.

From their perspective, they were offering as much as two- and one-half times the current lease payment. They also offered to buy the center property for cash. In the end, they could not overcome other conditions.

So, when customers realized that the day of doom was near, the conversations usually drifted into forecasts for the property at 363 Green Valley Road.

The predictions are that dandelions will caulk the parking lot’s cracks within six months. If there is a new proprietor, they won’t be offering a beer for $5.50.

Suppose by some miracle of capital, a corporation risks a renovation of the site. In that case, it may attract a strange new breed of customers: unsuspecting drivers captivated by a shiny new object, new arrivals fleeing San Francisco, or maybe some hurt and damaged souls of the Purple Tribe trying to recapture some magic over a burial ground of memories.

They can’t take the Purple memories from us. We’ll fondly recall the words of old friends, the faint music of a jukebox playing in synch. But our nostalgia will purse a crooked smile upon our lips because something still will not be quite right.

Good night, Purple Place. Goodnight, friends. Goodnight, our treasured Third Place.