Hotel California
http://canada.com/calgary/calgaryherald/story.asp?id=%7B2F33...
by Claudia Capos
Saturday, January 11, 2003
Countless rock 'n' roll aficionados have travelled the "dark, desert highway" from the tourist haven of Cabo San Lucas to tranquil Todos Santos, a
rural Mexican town 100 kilometres north, just to see the fabled Hotel California and take a few snapshots.
This may or may not be the wayfarer's hostelry popularized in the No. 1 hit album and song, Hotel California, released by the Eagles in 1976 -- but
thousands of travellers believe it is. It has become a musical landmark -- right up there with Strawberry Field, Penny Lane and Alice's Restaurant.
Never mind the 80-year-old grande dame on Avenida Juarez was shuttered for many moons, with peeling stucco and cracked windows. Baby boomers still
came in droves to pay homage to "such a lovely place," and revel in bygone times.
Through a strange twist of fate, the Hotel California has been spared the wrecking ball, and visitors will soon "dance in the courtyard" once more.
Last March, B.C. entrepreneur John Stewart and his partner, Witold Twardowski of Calgary, purchased the property for nearly $1 million and began
restoring it. The Hotel California Bar, La Coronela restaurant, a gift shop, healing herbal temazcal (Mayan sweat lodge) and tequila cantina are parts
of the new package.
"The Hotel California was vacant for a long time, but . . . had a lot of potential," Stewart says. "The first time I saw it, I said, 'Someone has to
do it.' "
Stewart, 52, is an interior and landscape designer and co-founder of the Gulf Islands Film and Television school. He moved to Mexico from Galiano
Island four years ago with his wife and daughter. The Stewarts became interested in the hotel during a historic home tour in February, 2001, and
11-year-old Zoe told her father, "It's a cool hotel, let's buy it."
Twardowski is a Calgary designer and restaurant owner. His restaurant, Mescaleros, and his bar, Crazy Horse, have been Calgary fixtures for many
years. He also built, developed and later sold many Calgary restaurants, including The Ranch, Divinos and Cilantro's. Together the two "old hippies"
have created what they describe as an artistic and eclectic environment at the hotel.
Increasing numbers of vacationers and retirees, mostly Americans and Canadians, have discovered sleepy Todos Santos as Cabo San Lucas has grown more
congested, expensive and gringo-fied. "This is an artistic alternative," Stewart explains. "People come up here looking for the real Mexico."
Jesuits founded Todos Santos as a farming settlement and chapel in 1724 to supply the mission community in La Paz with fruits, vegetables, wine and
sugarcane. The sugar business brought prosperity until the industry folded after the Second World War and the town slipped into obscurity.
In 1984, noted Taos, N.M., artist Charles C. Stewart (no relation) and his wife, Mary Lou, became the first well-known artists to settle permanently
in Todos Santos. Since then, the backwater town with its cool fan palms and dirt side streets has attracted a small coterie of accomplished painters,
sculptors and artisans, who have succumbed to the enchantment of the dazzling blue Pacific waters, fiery opal sunsets and craggy peaks of far-off
Sierra de la Laguna.
Nowadays, Todos Santos enjoys widespread acclaim as a well-established art colony with more than a dozen galleries and a major art festival in
February.
Stewart, a painter and sculptor, is opening a show of his works at the Hotel California in January. The town is also home to the world-renowned
Mediterranean seafood restaurant, Cafe Santa Fe, on Calle Centenario.
Highbrow artistry, haute cuisine and stunning landscapes aside, it is still the Hotel California that consistently draws the standing-room-only
crowds.
According to local lore, the hotel was built and named the Hotel California by Antonio W. Tobasco in 1921. Tobasco ran a large grocery store next door
and the town's first gas station was close by. With the demise of the sugar-cane industry, business declined and the hotel, grocery store and gas
station all closed. The hotel was bought and sold several times, reopening in the 1980s as the Hotel Mission, later changed to the Hotel California.
Four years ago, it was shuttered again.
Initially, Stewart and Twardowski envisioned a total facelift for the hotel. "But as we came to know the town and the building, we decided that was
not appropriate," he says. "We decided to
. . . create the style we want through paint and furnishings." The rooms are set to open at the end of this month.
Whether the Eagles ever came to Todos Santos or whether drummer Don Henley wrote the song while the group was ensconced in the Hotel California's
penthouse, as local residents claim, is still a hotly debated subject. Stewart says it really doesn't matter, because Eagles fans will still come to
see the fabled hotel, one way or the other. "It's like telling people there is no Santa Claus," he says. "Everybody wants to believe it, so who are we
to say they are wrong?"
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