Good Times on the Baja Coast

It’s Friday afternoon and Orest Dmytriw is balancing on a chair, trying to plaster the ceiling of the crowded bar at his unique Baja roadhouse, La Fonda.

Suddenly, a chef emerges from the kitchen and announces in breathless tones that a fisherman has arrived with a fresh 30-pound halibut for sale.

Clambering down and dusting off his hands, he tells his longtime chef: “Buy it, filet it.”

Next, he pivots to face a just-arrived California couple, and with a grand wave of his plaster covered hands, declares: “Welcome to paradise, my friends.”

Those who know him regard the iconoclastic Ukrainian-Canadian-American-Mexican and his inn as Baja classics; an expatriate businessman of devilish wit who turned a jumble of cliff-top rooms a few hours drive south of Los Angeles into a hideaway where young and old come to get lost.

So it shocked La Fonda’s faithful clientele to learn that the old hotel, whose 26 rooms are known by their whimsical features--the Conversation Pit, the Killer Shower, the Lava Heart Over the Bed--is on the market. For $3.9 million.

After 27 years of catering to surfers, adventurers, Mexican officials--and sharing moonshine tequila with the likes of U.S. Sens. Ted Kennedy and Alan Simpson--the man some liken to Humphrey Bogart’s Rick in the film “Casablanca” has declared: “Llego el momento”--It’s time to move on.

“You don’t see too many 70-year-olds running Baja beer joints,” said Dmytriw (pronounced duh-MEE-tree). “Now, I want to do some things I haven’t had time for: Go to a baseball game and eat a hot dog. Take my wife out dancing.”

Between margaritas at a table overlooking the sea 50 feet below, retired San Diego lifeguard B. Christmas Brewster, 46, said the place won’t be the same without the hotelier with the booming, hard-to-place accent, who greets guests each evening in a jaunty navy blazer, white slacks and Topsiders, sans socks.

“This is it: the tavern in the dark of your imagination,” Brewster said. “The odd little roadside joint where crowds of strangers welcome you as family. Only it’s a family that doesn’t tell tales.”

“The paintings in the bedraggled rooms are eccentric, some windows don’t close, and the warped mirrors don’t reflect who you really are. But there’s a spirit here--Dmytriw’s. It would be a tragedy if he sold the place.”

Los Angeles musician Tracie Jackson, 38, who has been a frequent patron for two decades, agreed.

“When I first started coming here with my friends, we’d spend hours inventing stories about who Dmytriw might really be. International spy? Mafioso?” Jackson said.

“He’s as mysterious and wonderful as his hotel. It’d be great if it takes a hundred years to sell it.”

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Bought Hotel in 1975

Dmytriw was a North Hollywood building contractor when he bought La Fonda in 1975 after a 30-minute tour of the place, which sits so close to the city limits of Rosarito Beach on the north and Ensenada on the south that he pays taxes in both cities.

“The previous owner wanted cash for the joint, so I went back to the United States and sold everything I had,” he recalled. “Years later, she wrote me a letter that said, ‘I’m so glad it’s you. You’re a perfect fit.’ ”

Orest and Sara Dmytriw conjured La Fonda’s peculiar charm with rooms of makeshift materials, bunched around steep, narrow stairways.

The original rooms were built hacienda-style, but the rest came in stages that could have been dreamed up by a Cubist painter--drinking absinthe.

The windowed shower stalls in rooms 18 and 19 offer a panoramic view of the beach and an eyeful to strollers on the strand below.

In one room, an arrow drawn in pencil on the wall used to point toward a light switch hidden by a mirror frame.

Guests unload cars in a cramped cobblestone parking area, then trundle to their rooms with five-gallon containers of purified water, ice chests, coffee makers and boomboxes.

“If these walls could talk!” Dmytriw’s wife said.

The restaurant sits atop the bluff--covered by thick banks of bougainvillea and bamboo--overlooking the wide, rolling sea. There, patrons sample banana pancakes topped with coconut syrup and margaritas of alarming strength.

Staffers still talk about the tipsy patron who fell off the restaurant balcony and rolled down the hill to the water’s edge, laughing all the way.

Until recently, La Fonda had no telephones, not even in its office.

Fireworks were banned only a year ago, after a bottle rocket looped backward and landed in the hotel’s unclipped shrubbery, igniting a fire that was put out by staffers and guests.

Years of complaints forced Sara Dmytriw to relocate her menagerie of domestic animals that honked, oinked and chirped at all hours of the day.

In 1979, a flood washed out the bridges on the road leading in and out of the place, leaving dozens of patrons stranded for several days. Among them, the story goes, was a four-star U.S. Army general. His deliverance came in the form of a helicopter, which the general waved in with a red tablecloth.

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Ted Kennedy a Guest

Later, “after his divorce, Sen. Ted Kennedy used to come here all the time,” Dmytriw said. “A wonderful man.”

It was Kennedy, Dmytriw said, who urged Republican Sen. Alan Simpson of Wyoming to visit La Fonda during the Republican National Convention in San Diego in 1996.

In a now laminated letter dated Sept. 5, 1996, Kennedy thanked the Dmytriws for showing his friend a good time.

“I’m so glad Senator and Mrs. Simpson had the chance to enjoy a fantastic dinner at your wonderful restaurant,” Kennedy wrote. “According to the Simpsons, it’s everything I remember it to be.

“Although the Simpsons are Republicans, we both agree that La Fonda is a thumbs up dining experience!”

The Dmytriws, who live in a spacious home attached to the hotel complex, were less enthused about discussing their recent problems with members of a hotel workers union, which went on strike late last year over a wage dispute.

“Jimmy Hoffa would have been proud to have unions as strong as the ones around here,” Dmytriw said.

Under Mexican law, the hotel was unable to replace the 92 workers as long as its original kitchen and restaurant remained open for business.

Other resort owners watched in amazement earlier this year at Dmytriw’s slight of hand in resolving the stalemate: He bought out the disgruntled workers, boarded up the old workplace, and transformed the kitchen and living room in his own home into a new bar and dining area, run by nonunion staffers.

On a recent weekday, the new kitchen was being expanded by work crews who were jostling for elbow room with cooks flipping lobsters and sea bass for dinner guests.

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Loyal Patrons

Such quirky rhythms have made loyal patrons of people such as retired Costa Mesa real estate agent Terry McCardle, 62, and his wife, Suzanne, 49.

“We love it here. It’s funky. Rundown. Dilapidated. Fun,” McCardle said. “Where else can you have chickens pecking at your toes while you’re eating dinner?”

In the bar, under a ceiling glistening with wet plaster, conversation is difficult because of the noise. Mariachis are competing with the sounds of pounding surf and boisterous patrons, dozens of whom are crowded around televisions tuned to a Lakers game.

Dmytriw is nursing a whiskey and cola. Dressed casually in shorts, untucked blue cotton shirt and loafers, he is looking out over the sea and reflecting on changing times.

“I’ve done what I wanted with this joint, which was to have a good time and keep people happy and well-fed,” he said. “Now, I just want to spend some time being an old man. But I’m in no hurry to sell. I love making people feel good.”

He turns to greet a group of new arrivals who are waiting to shake his hand. “Hello there. I love you all,” he said. “Seat your beautiful selves down.”