Stephen Saks Photography/Alamy Stock Photo
It is not the celebrity ghost that brings us up to the Moss Beach Distillery near Half Moon Bay. The cliffside view alone is worth the 50-mile drive from Santa Cruz, a seaside city not lacking in inspiring vistas. The kitchen offers a well-executed northern California surf ’n’ turf of fried artichokes, fish tacos, seafood sliders, pastas and more that put other local eateries to shame. Then there’s the intimate art deco bar and its tuck ’n’ roll swivel stools occupied by chatty locals in flannel shirts and hoodies, and the curious ceiling fresco of a matador spiking a bull. The place is laid-back panache, a legendary northern California bar and grill that doesn’t need a ghost to put it on the map, but has one all the same.
The Blue Lady is a local personality featured in stacks of newsprint and television, most notably a 1992 Unsolved Mysteries episode hosted by Robert Stack, renowned for his portrayal of Elliot Ness, Chicago’s “untouchable” whiskey barrel-smashing G-man. There are several versions of her story, all of which take place during Prohibition and involve a love triangle between her, a piano player, and her husband, and ends in the flapper’s violent death.
Crimes of passion make for good tales, although there is no historical record of such a murder at Moss Beach. There were, however, many other crimes committed in the area during the roaring ’20s, when small-time racketeers became criminal syndicates and the Moss Beach Distillery was the cat’s pajamas of local roadhouses known then as Frank’s Place.