Oakland dive bar immortalized by Green Day is closing after 24 years

It’s the end of an era: Iconic Oakland dive bar Ruby Room is closing at the end of the year after 24 years of cheap drinks, moody red lighting and cigarette smoke, as first reported by Oaklandside.

The decision to close was “a bit of a perfect storm in terms of where the three owners are,” Alfredo Botello, who co-owns the bar with Tim Tolle and Trevor Latham, told SFGATE. He lives locally, but Tolle and Latham both live out of state. 

“We are all kind of moving on a bit from bar life, you know, we’re getting a bit older,” Botello said. “As for myself, I find that I used to be there until close and now I can barely keep my eyes open after 9 or 10 these days.”

While the bar has certainly felt the aftereffects of the pandemic with waning Oakland nightlife, he said, closing was more of a personal decision. Botello, for one, is a screenwriter who is about to release his debut novel. 

Botello first opened Ruby Room in 1999 on a quiet block by Lake Merritt with his friend Iiad Mamikunian. The space had been a bar since the ’40s or ’50s, he estimated, and was most recently a bar called the Court Lounge (named for its proximity to the Alameda County Superior Courthouse). Over the years, he made it his mission to preserve the bar’s original character, which he said has been described as everything from “Flintstones on a sexcapade” to “Oakland’s living room.”

“We always felt that the place was like a ’60s rumpus room, kind of like the Brady Bunch den with the wood paneling, the rock walls, the glitter black ceiling and the red vinyl booths,” Botello said. “We loved that kind of mid-century vibe and wanted to only enhance and preserve it, so, very much by choice, we only ever rehabbed, we didn’t try to remodel.”

From its inception, the Ruby Room’s unique character drew a crowd of artsy 21- to 40-year-olds, many in bands or other artistic pursuits. It also used to be a popular hangout for the East Bay Rats, the Oakland motorcycle club known for their infamous fight parties. Green Day’s garage rock side project Foxboro Hot Tubs even once wrote a song about the bar.

Ruby Room was (and still is) a dive where you could smoke indoors, with quirky themed parties ranging from a pirates vs. cowboys night to a Bowie vs. Elvis one, where Botello said he exclusively played the two artists for four hours straight and “made everyone crazy.” Ruby Room also used to host country nights on Mondays, and whenever a Johnny Cash song played, whiskey shots were $1 for the duration of the song (“You can imagine the s—tshow that ensued,” Botello said).

Following the announcement that Ruby Room is closing, Botello said he’s been overwhelmed by the outpouring of love and support. Old patrons and staff came out of the woodwork to tell him how much the bar meant to them.

“They had met their partners there, they had cried over a breakup there, they went there when they celebrated a promotion or when they needed to cry after being fired, or just when they were bored and wanted to stop in or get away from the family on Thanksgiving, you name it,” Botello said. “… I was really moved.” 

Ruby Room’s final night is scheduled for New Year’s Eve, which they plan to celebrate with a blowout party. The three co-owners’ other Oakland bar, Radio Bar, has no plans to close. 

Leading up to the closure, Botello said he hopes everyone who has ever loved Ruby Room will come by for a shot and a beer to bid it farewell. 

“That place is just a box that sells booze if you don’t have people in it, and it’s the people … that place is a place of connection,” he said. “I just want everyone who has ever been there to know how much I appreciate them.”