Fishermen's Casino - Balboa, CA - Ghost Signs on Waymarking.com

The words 'FISHERMEN'S CASINO' are barely legible in the side of this brick building, home to a local beachware shop. Upon doing some research online I discovered a local website that posts historic stories (and tales) of events and happenings of Balboa over the years. A local resident had this to say regarding the history of this ghost sign and the building it resides on and he writes:

The Casino was never actually a casino. It was just a bar. Originally the name was Workman's Casino and was owned by Dad Workman. The name was a carryover from a gambling joint he operated on the other side of Main St. (in the 100 block) in the 1920s. During Prohibition, his was one of the many places in town you could buy alcohol. You would ask for a carton of cigarettes, wink, and he would put a bottle in the box. By the time he moved into the Storey Building, Prohibition had been repealed and gambling had been clamped down on, so he went legitimate. He sold the bar to two guys whose names I can't remember. They may have been brothers. They never cared much for Mr. Workman (few people in town did) and promptly changed the name to Fisherman's Casino, as the sign still reads. The bar days are marked in old pictures by blacked out windows and stainless steel doors in what are now the open arches on the corner, as they were originally. The interior was highlighted by a semicircular bar against the back wall, which was a partition, marked now by a post in the middle of the Mithrush store. At one point they knocked two openings through the partition on either side of the bar and had a dining room in what would, years later, become Hidi's Cafe. When we did the seismic retrofit we pulled up layers of flooring and found the scars where the semicircular bar had been.

The building was built by Fred Storey in 1930. Balboa Marine Hardware was where the kite store is now. Soto Nishikawa had Soto's Curio Shop on the corner across Main from where the post office is now. He was the first tenant in the space that would later be Hidi's, operating two businesses across from each other. He was very successful until WWII, when he was sent to an internment camp in the Arizona desert. He lost everything and died without a penny to his name after the war. The first tenant in the corner was the Balboa Sport Shop which sold bathing suits and sportswear. Upstairs in the middle unit was the town dentist, Harold Stahler. Above Soto's was the Raymond Beauty Shop. Also upstairs, over the corner, Roland Thompson (the City Attorney for Newport Beach) had his private practice office. In 1936 Judge Robert Gardner spent his first year as an attorney up there. He told me he only made ten dollars the whole year. At the far end of the upstairs, Fred Storey had his office. It doubled as a summer apartment for Rowland Hodgkinson (Hodge) who was the Police Chief. He stayed there when he rented his home out to make extra money.

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