Former employees, band members, business associates, local boozers, and former lovers
gather in front of Winston's after the funeral

Eulogy for a Party
(Originally published in the San Diego Reader June 7, 2001)

"He turned a little rat hole into one of the most popular clubs in San Diego," says sound engineer Brad Engstrom about Bill Winston, his former boss. Winston is the notorious entrepreneur who conceived, owned, and operated Winston’s Beach Club in Ocean Beach. His other notable achievements include: Winston’s East (a now defunct club in Santee), Rumors (a coffee house/music venue on the corner of Newport Ave. and Bacon Street, The Sunset Cliffs Wellness Center , and furnished a respectable underdog candidacy for Congress in 1992.

In the early hours of April 4 -- just after Winston was released from a two-week stint in jail -- he headed directly to the nearest fix he could find. Despite all his hard work and good fortune, Bill Winston died of a heroin overdose at the age of 45.

* * * *

Winston’s is a live music club located on the corner of Newport Avenue and Bacon Street. It is the eye of the San Diego arts and entertainment community. Bill Winston opened it in the early 1980s, and operated it for over a decade. Then he sold his club in 1992 to the owners of Blind Melons. Winston’s remains a popular attraction.

"We used to have Reggae cover bands six nights a week, and Blues on Sunday," reminisced Engstrom, who worked at Winston’s as a sound engineer for all but nine months of its existence. "When Reggae died, he concentrated on original bands. Bill never wanted Winston’s to be a top-40 club."

Winston embraced Southern California reggae long before Southern California did. He gambled on an unproven style of music and nurtured dozens of then unknown names -- like Common Sense, The Cardiff Reefers, The Gnarly Braus, and Quino (Big Mountain) -- into popular, lucrative and (in some cases) nationally recognizable bands.

I worked at Winston’s for five years. It was a top shelf bartending gig. We made a ton of money, saw an incredible influx of talent, and enjoyed bountiful perks. Then it all fell apart.

More on that later.

Jimmy Lewis (Superunloader) graces the Winston's stage: Halloween, Circa 1996

"There is a lot of arguing around the community about whether Bill was a good guy or a bad guy," said Eddie Elias, a former employee and close friend to Bill. "There is so much good and bad about him, just like every other guy I know. Bottom line: Bill was a legend.

"He worked for five years in Saudi Arabia as a buyer for Hughes Aircraft Company. It was there that he saved the money to buy his club. Every six months, he would take four weeks off from work and visit Thailand. He loved Thailand. . . . If you want to see ancient art, it’s there. If you want to party in a bordello all night, Thailand’s got that too. It speaks volumes about how he lived and died."

In Thailand Bill fell in love with a woman named Ranu. According to Bill, Ranu was a Thai escort. Escorts are young woman for hire who will act as your travel guide and your paramour. Ranu toured him through Thailand for a month until he had to go back to work in Saudi Arabia. When he returned to Thailand six months later, Bill discovered that Ranu was pregnant. He married her and brought their son, DJ, to America.

They had two more children, Sulee and Crystal, and when Bill and Ranu divorced, he was granted custody of all three children.

"He had to pay Ranu a quarter of a million dollars in alimony," Winston told Elias. "After the divorce was final, Bill said, ‘Well she got the money, but I got the wealth.’ You should have seen that house. It was a palace for the kids. There were toys and games everywhere. He had dogs running all over the place too. . . ."

If his home was a palace to his children, Winston’s Beach Club was a palace for the child in him. Bill was a partier. Most of his employees were partiers too. We were a crew of functioning alcoholics striving toward a common goal: to blur the line between business and pleasure. We cherished the trying. But it wasn’t always that way. Winston’s had tenuous beginnings.

"The bar used to be called McDic’s," Elias recalled. "It was a biker’s dive in OB -- the last white ghetto of San Diego. The bikers hated Bill because he was changing McDic’s into a reggae club and they were like, ‘How could you bring those people into our neighborhood?’"

The Bikers responded in typical biker fashion and Bill literally had to fight for his club. It was a real turf war, to which Bill won the spoils.

"Ocean Beach was hard core," continues Elias. "It wasn’t until Winston’s brought in this whole new crowd, that people realized how beautiful Ocean Beach really was. And everybody that came through that club -- all those bands, every customer, all his employees -- were a part of that change."

Employees and friends remember Bill Winston:

Ted Wigler (Bartender): "Sometimes Bill would pay the band a percentage of the bar sales. If a band was getting paid a percentage of the bar, he would come in and drink. He’d order shots for himself, his friends, and sometimes strangers and pay full price with cash from his pocket. He did this so the bands would make more money on the ring. "

Jolene Andersen (girlfriend, waitress, booking agent, and nanny): "I filled an application and he called that day from his car and said he needed somebody to work that night. I didn’t have a car, so he took a detour to downtown and picked me up. According to Bill, the moment he saw me walk down the sidewalk, it was love at first sight. Then he dropped me off at the bar. From that moment, I knew that this was the best boss I was ever going to work for. It was all love love peace. . . . .

Bill and Jolene enjoy a moment at Bill's backyard birthday party circa 1996

"When I told Bill I was going to have to find another full time job he said, ‘Well, I’m hiring a nanny.’

"And I said, ‘Well, I hate kids.’

"And he said, ‘Wait till you meet my kids.’"

Bill took Jolene to his million dollar home to meet his children.

"‘This guy is fantastic’" Jolene thought. "I could live in this beautiful house overlooking Sunset Cliffs with these beautiful kids. . . . What a great way to live life for a while. . . . In two weeks, we were in love and nothing else mattered to us."

Ted Wigler, Ed Decker, Sandy Fimbres:
Three friends who would not have been friends
were it not for Bill Winston

Sandy Fimbres (Bartender) : "Bill would have traded out liquor for anything. . . . [Once] Winston’s had a small sewer rat infestation. Bill had the bright idea to enlist a local boozer [named Mike] to sit in the bar after-hours with a pellet rifle and shoot the rats. His payment, instead of money, would be an open bar all night."

While two hundred drunken customers were spilling out into the street at the end of a busy Saturday night, Boozer Mike comes strolling in with his orange hunting cap, checkered hunting jacket, a rifle, and an Igloo cooler. I didn’t know what to think. The doormen didn’t know what to think. Bill never warned us.

Mike explained that Bill asked him to shoot the rats, and -- knowing what we know about Bill’s eccentricities -- we figured Mike was telling the truth. So we locked up and went home, leaving Mike sitting at the bar with a whiskey and seven on his right, the Igloo on his left, and the rifle in his lap.

Edwin Decker (Bartender, General Manager): I always liked the story of when Bill was arrested for the heinous crime of dancing: Bill always fought diligently for his right to party. One time he was dancing to a band at Rumors. However, since we live in a place where you need a license to dance, and Bill couldn’t get that license for Rumors, the cops raided and ordered everyone to stop dancing. Everyone stopped but Bill.

He had a very silly dance move too. It was part: Deadhead-elbow-swirl, part Chicken-head-bob, part Testosterone-strut. The police threatened to shut him down -- he kept dancing. They threatened to arrest him -- he kept dancing. He danced until they handcuffed him to a bike rack in front of Rumors; left him shackled in front of all his customers until the officers felt he had been sufficiently humiliated, then was whisked away to jail.

* * * *

Arguably, the downfall of Bill Winston began when he fired his GM (General Manager) under questionable pretenses. She returned volley by suing him for several causes of action: Breach of Contract, Violation of the Fair Employment Act, Hostile Work Environment, Wrongful Demotion, Wrongful Termination. and Sexual Harassment.

"I could see that his alcoholism was destroying his rational decision making," wrote S. (The GM) in her email to me yesterday. "He began to abuse me and other employees at a new level. He fired people to make job opportunities for girls he wanted to date. . . . He demoted me and refused to give a reason. He was getting out of control. . . ."

"But did he sexually harass you?" I wrote back. "If so, when and how?"

"You, like everyone else, seem to zero in on the words, ‘Sexual harassment,’ when it involved so much more. Note: I did not run to an attorney and say, ‘This man is sexually harassing me’ . . . Only [After] speaking with an attorney and discussing . . . . the many questionable business practices that Bill was fond of, I was informed that, legally speaking, Bill had been sexually harassing many of his female employees . . . . You ask me when and how Bill sexually harassed me and to that I say, ‘Bill is dead, he’s no longer here to defend himself.’"

If working at Winston’s was like being a member of a large, rambunctious family, then the family was shattered when mommy and daddy divorced. Their respective lawyers scrambled to have us spill dirt about their opposition. I remember the day Bill took me to meet with his attorneys. They brought me into a conference room and asked all the questions they believed S’s lawyer would ask:

"Did you ever see Bill sexually harass S?"

"No."

"Do you think Bill sexually harassed S.? "

"No."

"Has Bill sexually harassed any other employees?"

"Well, yeah," I replied, and told them about dozens of raunchy, predatory incidents that I had either seen or heard about.

"Bill was an insatiable lecher," said bartender Sandy Fimbres. "On my first week behind the bar, I was standing up on the sink changing the radio station, and he walked up behind me and goosed me. . . . I saw him grab another bartender’s breasts too. Alcohol was always involved."

After our meeting with his lawyers Bill and I had the terrible row that ended our friendship. Bill asked why I said all those incriminating things to his lawyer. I said, ‘Because it is the truth.’ Bill argued that friendship was more important than truth. I argued, truth is where friendship begins.

He fired me shortly after.

S., Sandy, Ed, Bill -- Halloween at Winston's, 1996

Eventually, the litigants settled out of court. Bill agreed to pay an undisclosed monthly stipend. But he wouldn't, or couldn't, make payments on time. One day the marshals barged in during business hours and took what was owed. It was an embarrassment for Bill and the club.

"It was a very exciting time for me," wrote S. "Finally I got to publicly say, ‘Fuck you Bill.’"

It was a terrible time for Bill Winston though. He was going round and round on the judicial ferris wheel. He was on his third DUI and still drinking heavily. And S’s lawsuit was only the beginning of a string of legal actions; including when Bartender Donna Buckholtz -- also a close friend to Bill -- sued after she twisted her knee on the job. The reason? She couldn’t collect Workman’s Comp Insurance. Bill had neglected to pay it for over a year.

"I didn’t even want to get a lawyer," said Donna. "But when Bill learned I was seriously injured, he tried to get me to fake the injury after he reinstated the insurance. My doctor said, ‘Do not commit insurance fraud! Get yourself a lawyer, now.’"

Bill and Donna enjoy a limousine moment on Decker's birthday --
they were friends once too

Disgusted, broken, and racking up lawsuits and DUIs like empty cans of cheap beer, Winston vowed to abandon the bar business that he claimed was ruining his life. He sold Winston’s Beach Club in September of 1998 to the proprietors of Blind Melon’s, who own it still.

* * * *

Within a year of selling Winston’s, Bill opened an alphabiotics joint called the Sunset Cliff’s Wellness Center. The Skeptic’s Dictionary (skepdic.com) defines alphabiotics as such: "An alternative medical practice based on the notion that, ‘All disease is the result of an imbalance and lack of life energy’ . . . Since this energy is outside the bounds of scientific control or study, only spiritual healers can unblock . . . . this energy."

I was not in the least bit surprised to learn that Bill started experimenting with opium and heroin while he operated the Wellness Center. Consider Bill’s life’s choices: he wanted family life, yet he married a prostitute. He was a romantic, yet a sexual predator. He was a great, fun-loving boss, yet he manufactured reasons to fire you. He operated a wellness center, yet he was on drugs. This dichotomy is exactly why there is, as Eddie Elias said earlier, "A lot of arguing around the community about whether Bill Winston was a good guy or a bad guy."

About this time last year he opened The Vortex (formerly called Patches). Bill tried in vain to repeat the old Winston’s magic. Perhaps it is no coincidence, that -- around the same time he operated The Vortex -- his mind and body were reeling from a vortex of their own.

"I could tell Bill was becoming hooked," said Jolene. I could see it in his eyes. They would just glaze over from time to time. He was hiding it from me too. He was going down a bad road. . . ."

Shortly after opening The Vortex, Jolene moved to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career. When Bill’s drug problem worsened, Jolene dropped her life in Los Angeles and returned for the summer to care for her- ex-boyfriend."

"When summer ended and I needed to go back to L.A. . . ." Jolene sadly remembered. "I still talked to him a couple of times a week to make sure he was ok. . . . Then, a little before the holidays, he called again and said. . . . ‘I really need to talk to you, it’s really huge. So I immediately dropped the phone and drove to San Diego . . . . When I got down there he said, ‘Can you handle this?’ and I said, ‘Handle what? You’re scaring me.’

"So we went into his bedroom. He had the crack pipe and the whole fucking rig in there. Then he admitted he got another DUI and was going to be under house arrest."He said, ‘When I get high everything feels so blissful’ and I said, ‘Duh -- How old are you? Of course it feels that way!’

He said, ‘You gotta help me get off this stuff. I can’t do it alone.’

I told him I’d quit my job, miss classes, and come live with him for two weeks. But that he had to fucking promise that he would get his life together after this.’"

For two weeks, Jolene fed, bathed, massaged, and held him. She cleaned his sweat, cared for the kids, and cared for business until he was clean again. In the interim he was fitted with an ankle monitor as a condition of his house arrest. Thinking that he was going to be fine and that house arrest would do him good, she went back home for the holidays..

"A week later. . . ." continues Jolene, "he was right back on the drugs again. . . . He just couldn’t handle it when we were apart. I’m not sure when he started using needles, but he tested dirty when he was on house arrest."

As a result of a positive drug test, Bill was incarcerated for two weeks.

"People always talk about how you can’t mix in jail," said Jolene. "Whites can’t talk to Mexicans or the blacks. . . . But he just waltzed right in and sat with the gang bangers. Bill was like that, he had no fear. He was a peace loving hippy that got along with everybody."

Bill was probably sober for the two weeks he was in prison. He told his sister that he was sorry for not being a better brother. He apologized to his mother for not being a better son, and promised that he was going to be a better father to his kids.

But when Donna, the most recent nanny, picked him up from prison around 2 a.m. on Wednesday, Bill asked her to pull over to a convenience store so he could use a pay phone. Then he had her stop at an ATM. When they got home he drank a couple of beers, ate a couple of pills, and, around 4 a.m., told Donna he was going outside for some air. She saw a white truck pull up, interact with Bill, and then drive away.

A neighbor, out for a morning walk, found him in the alley around 6 a.m.

The coroner’s office reported that he died of accidental heroin overdose. "I can’t tell you how many guys get out of prison and are dead that weekend," the toxicologist told me over the phone. "When they’re in jail their tolerance drops. When they get released, they can’t handle the same doses."

* * * *

The stereo whispers a Neil Young tune inside the Point Loma Methodist Church while we wait for the memorial service to begin. Bill was a Neil Young fan. I wonder how many times he must have listened to The Needle and the Damage Done and how he could have missed the song’s somber warning.

Like Bill’s night club, the church is standing room only -- packed full of band members, family members, business associates, local boozers, former employees, and former lovers. Afterward the crowd split: family and friends convened to his house to have a reception proper; while the rest of us converged upon Winston's bar to say goodbye -- in our own way-- to the ornery, loveable, disturbed, horny, brilliant, dark, fun-loving, alcoholic prick that brought us all together.

"I danced myself out of the womb
is it strange to dance so soon?
I danced myself into the tomb
Is it strange to dance so soon?
Is it wrong to understand
the fear that dwells inside a man?"

T-Rex -- "Cosmic Dancer"

Circa 1999. Band members, promoters, employees, and boozers hang out at Winston's
notorious "horeshoe." The horeshoe is where the gang hangs out.
It has shed it's share of blood, vomit, sweat, grins, tears and odors.

Reed Stewart, Dave Carano, and Field Marshal Scott drink
tequila shots at the horeshoe inside Winston's after the funeral