We were coming home late at night from a friend's house and my brother and I were asleep in the back of the old Borgward. Dad drove down Rodeo Ave, back when it was a gravel road, and stopped on the wide part of the bend overlooking the distillery to the north. We watched as huge flames consumed the building and multiple explosions from barrels of whisky rocked us up on the hill. To this day it is the largest fire I have ever seen. Later when the buildings were being demolished to make way for Whisky Springs, we used to cut school from the old Martin Luther King School across the street and go and smash windows with rocks and look for cool junk.
Sorry to go off topic but besides Caruso' how about The Record Plant where just about every smash hit of the 70's was recorded, Arques shipyard with it's own stories (someone claims there is tunnels under it) and of course The Gates. I also remember kids going to Richardson Bay School (MLK) from MV swapping with/so black kids from Marin City could go to Edna Maguire when they were both Jr. HSs.
Anybody else remember American Distillers ? It occupied the land where Whiskey Springs housing development now sits, kinda across Bridgeway from Mollie Stones, I remember a big green building that said American Distillers on it. One day it burned down, quite a fire !, my dad said barrels of spirits were flying into the sky & exploding, I was quite young at the itme & don't have much memory of the fire, although he told me we stopped the car on Waldo Grade to watch it. From what I've heard American made some cheap booze down there, not the best quality, but cheap.A few years ago when John Wheeler had his going out of business sale to close Caruso's Sport Fishing & Fish Market down I noticed a very old bottle in one of the display cases, it was a gin bottle with a label that showed a salmon on it and it said something like 'Silver King Gin' on it, it looked to be from the 1930's, a closer look revealed that it was from American Distillery in Sausalito, "how much for the old bottle, John?" I asked, "I can't sell that" he answered, so I suppose he still has it. Caruso's could be a whole new thread, maybe later.
