'Spartacus' issues a verdict on new Padre
| Saturday, Jan 30 2010 04:28 PM
Last Updated Saturday, Jan 30 2010 04:28 PM
The reviews are trickling in from folks who've toured the long-shuttered Padre Hotel, and almost without exception they glow like the restored vintage neon on the roof of the renovated Bakersfield landmark.
Gorgeous. Stunning. First class. About time.
Not every relevant player in the long, confounding and occasionally amusing history of the brooding beige-gray edifice has weighed in, however. Until now. Milton "Spartacus" Miller, who ran the eight-story, gargoyle-appointed hotel for almost half a century, has yet to offer an opinion.
So, in honor of the hotel's imminent grand reopening, I asked for his 4 cents. (The old iconoclast could never stop at 2.) A challenge for me, to be sure, given the fact that Spartacus died in 1999.
I started by striking a meditative pose at the corner of 18th and H streets and attempting to channel the lovably irascible old coot. No good -- too many construction workers trying to get around me with large, heavy objects. So I popped in at the Silver Fox, about 10 blocks east, where another irascible old coot, former Padre bartender Terry Moore, held court.
"He'd be impressed with the new Padre and he'd say so," Moore said. "He had that place 40 years and never changed anything, but it's not because he wouldn't have liked to. He just had other priorities. And I don't think he had the wherewithal or the ambition to do it himself."
No, the Padre under "Spartacus" Miller wasn't so much a hotel as it was a community center-neighborhood dive-protest symbol. Spartacus, who took over the near-indestructible, 1928-vintage hotel in 1954, sometimes allowed down-and-out folks to sleep in the lobby, or take home never-worn hand-me-downs. The Towne Casino lounge -- no one ever called it that -- was a sight to behold, with its red velvet walls, lively piano bar, unusual patrons (none more unusual than the hormonally enhanced Big City Richard), and the spangled mannequin perennially soaring over the dance floor on a trapeze. "Nineteen-forties gauche," Moore called it.
Spartacus, a former county supervisor, frequently (and theatrically) accused city officials of corruption -- and in more than one instance was correct about it. He famously refused the city's demands that he install fire sprinklers throughout the once-opulent hotel, even if it meant the building would remain vacant from the third floor up, and even if it meant he would be locked up -- which he eventually was. He surrendered to jailers in 1985, clothed in an old-fashioned, striped prison outfit.
By that time he had already thumbed his nose at City Hall by erecting a rooftop sign, "Alamo Tombstone," an allusion to Texans' suicidal defense of the famed San Antonio mission. He also erected a mock "U.S. Army" missile on the roof, and (according to the apocryphal story, which he thoroughly enjoyed hearing but privately denied) pointed it at City Hall, some 300 yards away. He also hung vertical protest signs from the building's exterior windows and fire-escape landings. ("Freedom of Speech? O Yeah -- Reprisals!")
The new marble-and-maple Padre is about as far from the old as can be, although a few touches remain -- samples here and there of the octagonal-mesh tile flooring and ornate plaster column moldings. But even with all the changes, the old charm comes through.
"Milt would've been elated," said Paula Bartlett, whose sister, Lora Gordon Miller, Spartacus' 15-year companion, married him in 1999, a few weeks before he died and eight years before she died herself. "He would be full of joy. It's everything he would have wanted to see in the hotel himself."
"He would be proud," agreed Lora's nephew Troy Mayes, who cleaned the Padre's floors nightly.
Co-owner Brett Miller (no relation) says he may have a surprise or two in store for fans of the old Padre, including a tribute to the ornery renegade who haunted its halls for 45 years.
The hotel re-opens Monday night. Look for the rumpled, baldish figure lurking in the shadow. That will be a smile on his lips.
rprice@bakersfield.com.
