Larry Blake's closes, famed Cal hangout BERKELEY

Blakes is a 71 year old bar in Berkeley, Calif., which closed it's doors last Friday, and is seen boarded up today on Monday, February 7, 2011. Blakes is a 71 year old bar in Berkeley, Calif., which closed it's doors last Friday, and is seen boarded up today on Monday, February 7, 2011. Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 5 Caption Close Larry Blake's closes, famed Cal hangout 1 / 5 Back to Gallery

Larry Blake's, the funky Telegraph Avenue watering hole beloved for its beer, salad dressing and sawdust-covered basement, closed for good last week after a long financial illness. It was 71.

"Larry Blake's was an icon. We're all sad," said Bonnie Hazarabedian, a teacher in Moraga who attended UC Berkeley in the 1980s and was a regular at the nightspot. "I killed a lot of brain cells in the rathskeller."

The "rathskeller" was Larry Blake's trademark, a subterranean beer hall where some of the Bay Area's best blues, jazz and R&B bands performed over the decades. The whole Berkeley clan gathered there, from Abbie Hoffman to Joe Kapp, from graduate students to campus janitors.

"You could always get a feeling of what Berkeley was like," said Max Cady, nephew of founder Larry Blake, in a 1992 obituary for the restaurateur. "It was liberal and it was conservative. It was political. It was sports-oriented. It was the city. It was the campus. Larry Blake found Berkeley and Berkeley found Larry Blake. How can you say it better than that?"

Blake opened the restaurant in 1940 with a $700 investment. The restaurant's initial selling point was that it was the first establishment within a mile of campus to gain an alcohol license. Before this breakthrough, thirsty Cal students had to travel to Oakland, Albany or San Pablo Avenue to imbibe.

Larry Blake's second claim to fame was the salad dressing, a closely guarded recipe Blake reportedly devised while working as a cook in the military during World War II.

But mostly, Larry Blake's was prized as a comfortable place to share a beer with friends, listen to music and enjoy a Blake's Burger.

"Larry Blake's was a trusted Berkeley legacy," said Nancy Blattel, membership director at the California Alumni Association who came to Berkeley in 1973. "You could hang out with friends, but you could also take your parents there for lunch."

Throughout the 1960s and '70s, Larry Blake's was a favorite spot for blues musicians. Robert Cray, Tracy Nelson and Charlie Musselwhite were among the regulars.

"The sound just enveloped you," said John McCord, manager of Down Home Records in El Cerrito. "It was the one place right near campus where you could see this great music. It had all the energy of youth."

After Blake died in 1992, the restaurant changed hands but mostly stayed the same. In recent years, the rathskeller hosted fewer live bands and more DJ and hip-hop music, attracting a new crowd.

The building owner, John Lineweaver of Diablo Holdings in Alamo, said the restaurant's change in focus - from "loyal, Cal-centric customers" to a younger clientele - was not successful.

Lineweaver slashed the restaurant's rent 30 percent and invested $350,000 in building improvements, but the business still faltered, he said.

"Blake's ownership focused on loud, live music and the youth-oriented night scene," Lineweaver said in a prepared statement. "As a result, the traditional customers ... stayed away in droves."

Larry Blake's owners could not be reached for comment.

Lineweaver hopes to fill the vacancy with another restaurant.