WORKING -- John Garbella

-- Story by Young Chang, photo by

HE IS

Behind the bar

THE LAST STOP

It’s dark and damp inside the Stag Bar in Newport Beach. Not nearly as

wet as it is outside, but wet enough for John Garbella to emerge through

the back door in rain boots and a slicker.He was just about to go home --

on a black Harley motor scooter that the 64-year-old keeps parked in the

back alley -- because it’s noon and that’s when his morning bartending

shift ends.

Garbella is a morning person -- the last stop for the worker just

finishing a graveyard shift, the first for members of a 9-to-5 world.

GOOD COMPANY, GOOD DRINKS

You’ve got to have good tomato juice to make a good Bloody Mary,

Garbella said. His version calls for lime juice, salt for the rim, a dash

of sweet and sour, celery salt, black pepper, Tabasco sauce, Lea &

Perrin’s Worcester sauce, vodka and tomato juice.

Bartending comes easy to him. Roofing, carpentry -- Garbella’s done it

all. But he’s tended bars the longest -- about 30 years now -- and the

experience has raked in stories and friends.

“I’ve watched people grow up,” said Garbella, a.k.a. Papa John.

“Bartenders talk and listen -- about everything in the world. And it

don’t take too long to know everybody or for everybody to know you.”

His patrons and friends know him as Papa John because he used to run

the Beach Ball, a bar on the oceanfront, with his four sons.

THE EARLY BIRD

One of his sons used to clean bars with Garbella in the early morning

hours. That was how the Costa Mesa resident got to thinking, “might as

well tend the bar for a few hours too.”

When he leaves for work at 4:30 a.m., it’s usually pretty chilly.

He’ll throw on his leather jacket, hop on his bike and motor over to the

bar because he cares about tending to his odd-hour customers.

“At 6 in the morning, it’s a place for people to come and go,” he

said.