Open at 6 a.m.

Cheers:

It’s 7 a.m. at the Zebra Club as (from left to right) Angel Five-Bulls, Kerry Johnson and Joe Sancho Jauragui start their day. For the vast majority of us, 6 a.m. is dead time, that last hour or so before our alarm clocks announce the start of another day. Yet for many people, there is life before dawn, and that life begins not with a trip to the shower, but with a trek to their local bar.The reasons for being at a watering hole that early in the day are as varied as the people who go there. There are shift workers celebrating the end of the work day, local early-risers coming in for camaraderie, partiers still rolling from the previous night and good, old-fashioned alcoholics who need a drink to still their shaking hands.

“Some folks do just come in to have coffee,” says Darrell Crawford, who tends bar and cooks breakfast on the early shift at the Zebra Club, one of several clubs in the downtown Sacramento area that open at 6 a.m., as early as the law allows. “Some others come in to have a few drinks. A lot of them have been out all night drinking and want to find someplace to keep that up. Sometimes, on a weekend morning, I’ll even have people waiting at the door when I get here.”

Small and dark, the Zebra Club is in many ways the quintessential neighborhood bar. Budweiser signs of every imaginable design and style cover the walls, along with a seemingly endless number of bras donated by the bar’s female clientele over the years.

The frenzied atmosphere of the previous night is only a distant memory come morning. A friendly man with an easy demeanor, Crawford’s pace is leisurely as he goes about his business. The place is empty save for the two older men bellied up to the bar, quietly sipping coffee and reading the newspaper.

A small white dog meanders about, sniffing at some odd smell or another and sending a bark or two at anyone who walks through the door. Crawford makes small talk with the men as he works. They’re regulars, these two, and they move about with the ease of someone who owns the place.

Fedia Smith is the more amiable of the pair. He smiles wide as he talks, open to some casual conversation. He says the dog is named Mike. Like many of the regulars, he lives a short, familiar walk away.

“I been coming here for 40 years,” he says. “This is like a home to me. … I come here, have some coffee, just shoot the breeze. I’m 76 years old, I have to have someplace to go.”

That sense of belonging has always brought folks into bars. A friendly smile, or maybe just the familiarity of faces, has inspired lonely souls to stop at the tavern since there have been taverns to stop at.

“We get all kinds of folks in here in the morning,” Crawford notes. “A lot of people just getting off the night shift. Sometimes we even get people on their way to work that just want to have a few drinks beforehand. Doctors, lawyers, all kinds of people.”

Although the camaraderie is there for the folks who see each other on a steady basis, there is no denying the reason why most folks come to a place like the Zebra at six in the morning. After all, coffee is served everywhere.

“Most of the people who come in here in the morning are looking for an eye-opener,” Smith says. “They’ve been out on a bender that night, so they have to have an eye-opener the next morning.”

Smith himself doesn’t look to have been on a bender the previous night, but he is getting close to having his first beer of the day.

“I’m drinking coffee right now, but I’ll get a beer about 9,” he notes before heading outside to have a smoke. Another man walks in as Smith heads out. This man, much younger than Smith, orders a shot of vodka before disappearing to the far end of the bar. He isn’t a regular, and after getting his drink, he stays mostly to himself.

Being part of the crowd isn’t a requirement, but it helps. Many of the folks who frequent the Zebra will also make their way to the Old Tavern, or maybe to the Press Club on the weekend. Saturday and Sunday is when it gets the busiest. A trip around the circuit on a weekend morning reveals many of the same faces appearing and reappearing at every stop.

Among the most regular of regulars is Shortie. True to his nickname, he is a slight man, clad in jeans and a leather jacket, his reddish beard tinted with some gray. Sitting on a stool at the Zebra one chilly Sunday morning, he talks about maybe hopping a train back to New Jersey. His face is weathered and drawn, but his voice is alive and strong.

“December, maybe January, and then, swoosh, I’m outta here,” he says, punctuating his words with a swipe of his hand. He’s sipping a cold Pabst Blue Ribbon, feeling loose.

Shortie says he first came to Sacramento in 1973, literally falling off of a freight train. He ended up then at the Old Tavern, getting a beer to nurse the scrapes he picked up in the fall. A job sweeping the floors soon followed, and he has been coming in and out of the place ever since.

“I come back and work there every year,” he says between sips of his beer. He’s proud of the fact that he works for his drinks and quick to point out he isn’t a bum.

“There are three kinds of homeless guys,” he explains with pride. “There’s the hobo, who just stays in his camp and doesn’t come out too much. Then there’s the bum, who hangs around and begs people for money. Me, I’m a tramp. Tramps work for what we get, and we don’t ask nobody for nothing. I don’t get SSI, welfare, not a damned thing from the government. I don’t want anything from the government.”

Shortie speaks openly about his life, wavering only as he mentions the death of his first wife. Talk of his family reveals that he has kids he has not seen in years, and grandchildren he hasn’t seen at all. This subject seems to take away some of his interest in talking.

He downs the last of his brew and announces he is heading back to The Old Tavern. It is not quite 8 a.m. and things are picking up at the Zebra as people begin to filter in for the breakfast Crawford is cooking in the kitchen. Shortie disappears with a loud laugh.

Over at the Press Club, things are not nearly as lively. Several of the faces bellied up to the bar now look familiar. Even Mike the dog is here, woofing at new arrivals.

“We only open early on the weekend,” says Larry Blankinship, the bartender. “We only get the regulars. The only exception to that is if one of the band members from the night before comes in.”

One of those regulars, Bobby, is delivering his meandering dissertation on life. His small audience listens politely, offering a smile and a laugh when appropriate, before seizing a break in the already-slurred monologue to say goodbye.

The Old Tavern is bright and well lighted, a pleasant diversion from the dark and heavy atmosphere of the other early-morning haunts. Shortie is already there, actively caught up in a conversation with a woman friend who is playing a video card game at a machine on the counter.

Several other folks mill about, playing pool or just clustering about to talk about The X-Files and have a drink or two. Gilbert chats happily, sipping at a cup of coffee. Yet when someone notes his low-octane choice of beverage, Gilbert holds up his empty shot glass of brandy and smiles.

Gilbert talks about his mother, his career aspirations and his plans for Thanksgiving. Along the way, he orders a screwdriver—ostensibly to mask the smell of liquor on his breath when he later goes to visit mom.

“Make it a good one please,” he asks as the bartender measures out the vodka.

Glenda, the bartender assigned to the job, dutifully follows orders and fills the tall glass three-quarters of the way to the top.

The action ebbs and flows quite a bit over the next half hour. Shortie had said that people come and go frequently here, much more than any of the other spots, and he is right. Only the stalwarts at the bar—Gilbert, and a few others—seem to linger. Slowly each of their stories comes out, each one a measure of sadness tinged with faint optimism.

The drinks have been flowing for a couple of hours now, and it’s beginning to show. Voices get louder and less clear, the stories get alternately funnier and sadder and the departing patrons seem a little less steady on their feet as they step out into the cool, crisp morning air.