Monterey’s Legendary “Queen of Cannery Row”
A celebration of life!
Remembrances of Kalisa Moore
(January 31st 1926 – October 14th 2009)
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Welcome!
This is a place for all of us to share our stories and experiences with Kalisa.
Add your entries in the new comment field below; let us know who you are and when your recollections took place. Be sure to “click” on the “submit comment” button when you are finished.
An icon of Cannery Row has graduated but the memories of her life and spirit live on in our hearts.
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October 28, 2011 at 12:36 pm
Peter L. Steiner
I was so sad to hear of Kalisa’s passing. I had last seen her in 1999, bringing my young daughters and my wife to meet the legend. She said she was trying to collect letters and reminiscences for a possible book. On a wintry Minnesota day several years later, I composed a letter, but alas, I never sent it. RIP, Kalisa, laugh with God. Here are excerpts from the unsent letter…
During this 100th year after Steinbeck’s death, I am finally getting around to writing the letter I’d promised to send. I was one of the thousands who went through the Army Language School at the Presidio, and one of the many who occasionally sought refuge behind the pale gold walls of your restaurant. With the Vietnam War still raging, and our individual fates uncertain, Kalisa’s was a sheltering bohemian cocoon in the madness of those times.
When I returned to California in the summer of ’99 with my family to revisit old haunts, Monterey had changed so dramatically over three decades, and Cannery Row was now filled with condos and trinket shops, even a Steinbeck Plaza that I suspect he would have sneered at. The old funkiness, the palpable sense of history was mostly gone, having succumbed to the American propensity to convert every historical site into a theme park with no real connection to its roots.
I didn’t know what to expect as we meandered farther down toward the end of Cannery Row, where in my mind, that magical place called Kalisa’s still existed. Would it be a McDonald’s now? An Olive Garden?
But no, I was ecstatic to find it, just as I remembered it, the Spanish-style structure washed by the midmorning sun. As we ventured inside, it was a bit more ramshackle, not organized like the restaurant where Henry Miller or Clint Eastwood would hang out. There were still photographs of the famous hanging on the walls, but tables and chairs were arranged in somewhat random fashion, and the bar was gone. The windows had advertised the place as an ice cream parlour, and when I looked in the back, there you were, on the phone, still so very recognizable, as if you’d just stepped out of the pages of a novel. You served us ice cream, we all sat down and talked.
You were okay with all the development, you were in fact President of the Cannery Row Development Association. You said it had been a struggle to keep the restaurant going while you were caring for a son who eventually died of AIDS. You said you were hoping to gather letters from all the people who had loved you and your restaurant since you first arrived in 1957 at the age of 29.
I was first brought to Kalisa’s in 1970 by Rich — I don’t even remember his last name now. So often you simply lose track of people who temporarily light up your existence in the transient life of the military. But Rich, handsome and in love with poetry, moonlighted as one of your waiters. He told us about the famous ones you’d sometimes see there. And sure enough, one afternoon, when the restaurant was quite empty, alone in the front corner by the window, in an elegant black dress and wide-brimmed hat that covered most of her face in shadow, sat a mysterious but obviously beautiful woman. It was Kim Novak.
Of course, none of us had the cojones to approach the goddess. And then she was gone, and we would never again have the chance to encounter her. Other recollections are refracted in time, but I remember how we limited-budget servicemen loved the soup. There was the rumour, perhaps told to me by Rich, that once you got behind the curtain that separated the dining room from the kitchen, you would scrape the leftovers from all the plates into a great kettle of soup to simmer, and that’s why it was so good. I may or may not have doubted the story at the time, but I supposed you had learned frugality growing up impoverished in Russia, and why throw good food away?
You said Henry Miller considered you one of his favorite people, and why not? You always seemed to have stepped right out of the pages of someone’s novel! Thanks so much for offering us Kalisa’s, the place where a sheltered boy from the Midwest began to appreciate the charms of a bohemian life.
July 10, 2011 at 7:30 am
N. Wolansky
I worked at Kalisa’s restaurant in the 70′s, while attending the Monterey Institutue. What a great lady she was! We shared lots of laughs, and our hatred of Russians, as Kalisa was Latvian and I’m Ukrainian! She has had such a fantastic life living in Monterey all those years! The stories I heard!
June 11, 2011 at 8:22 am
Christina Ivazes
Wow! As I research my own family history, I decided to look up Kalisa and have become entranced by her story. My own mother Roanne Lindquist was one of the “down of their luck” people that Kalisa helped way back in 1958 when she was pregnant with me. When I found this out, I visited Kalisa in Monterey and didn’t think I would find her, but did to my surprise, behind an ice cream counter at the original Kalisa’s location. She was gracious and shared a few things with me about that era. Evidently, my mother was back East at the time and pregnant. She probably wanted to return to California where her family was from but did not want to remove herself from the jazz scene she had become so enamored with. She talked a piano player into driving West to California to this place called Kalisa’s in Monterey. My mother hitched a ride, Kalisa let her live in the basement and Kalisa told me she (Kalisa) fell in love with the piano player. She said he ended up a heroin addict that moved up North (can’t remember if it was to Oregon or Washington). She said she had 5 children. I thought at the time that she had 5 children by the piano player, but obviously not by what I have read online this past day.
SO, the mystery of my own life that connects to Kalisa is that my mother died when she was 35 and I never found out who my real father is. I am tracing backwards and really want to find out the name of that piano player so I can find out who the musicians were back East in New York that he may have played with. I know my mother was hanging out in upstate New York around Stan Getz at the time as well, but I need some other names. I have a name of James Jordan (can’t be black because I am as white as they come along with my kids and grandkids). If anyone knows anything, please contact me at grannypants.wordpress.com and comment on a post.
It truly is amazing how far reaching Kalisa has been to so many. How ironic she helped to maintain Steinbeck’s legacy when her own seems to be even richer.
Thank you for the opportunity on this blog to honor Kalisa Moore!
Christina Ivazes
May 5, 2011 at 3:35 pm
R. Bailey
The Old Row is gone..But the memories will live forever.
Kalisa’s was a place of mystery and intrepid, exotic nostalgia. Growing up on the Monterey Peninsula as a young boy and being fascinated with the ‘lore’ on Cannery Row Kalisa’s added another dimension of intrigue, excitement and yearning. Cannery Rows was a hang out for all sorts and ages, at all times in its esoteric forever living history. It denied no one. It had something for everyone. It gave and it took at will. Never to be broken or destroyed, no matter what the new ages of entrepreneurial greed and hustle besieged it with. For the spirits of ‘The Row’ live through the spirits of long ago dead and the people of today who protect it and keep it dear in their hearts….
The smell of candy corn from the Carousel Edgewater Packing Co. to the (long gone) Kung Pow Prawns from Willie Lums China Row, to the beautiful reek of booze spilling out of Sly McFlys. The salty mist of thesea and the scent of decaying seaweed, to the faint bellows of the fog horn at Point Pinos Light House. ‘The Row’ was and is alive. Breathing the spirit that lives within us all.
I met Kalisa when I believe I was 12 years old in the early 80′s. My parents and my good friends parents (owner of the History Company, M. K. Hemp) used go and watch the Dancing Show while me and (D. Hemp) skate boarded around ‘The Row’ doing things most young kids of the day did. The door man at Kalisa’s would let us in the last half hour of the show to find our parents upstairs and have a soda. This was where I witnessed the exotic ladies of the dance and met Kalisa where she looked into my eyes with a gaze of a seer and told me I would go wonderful places and do good things for the world. It was a truly inspiring moment in my life for the memories still live with me to this very day.
There is a magic, and that magic was created by Kalisa. Who gave to ‘The Row’ her energy, art, inspiration, divinity and unconditional love……..
I am sorry to hear of her passing. But Heaven regained one of their Angels that they had let the earth experience even for a brief time…….
R. Bailey
April 28, 2011 at 10:02 am
Ann Smeal
I am very saddened to hear of Kalisa’s passing. My daughter Hannah is her granddaughter, I guess no one knew to inform us.
March 25, 2011 at 10:09 pm
Anonymous
The related videos of La Ida Cafe, Christmas with Kalisa and Kalisa’s Cabaret were video taped by Maya Mattar (amayavideoproduction@gmail.com)
March 25, 2011 at 9:50 pm
Anonymous
I remember kalisa was promised a plaque on the side of la Idas, where she spent fifty years of her life, at the time when her restaurant was sold. I watched that old lady, many times, hobble with her walker to see if had been put up yet. I watched her heart sink when the plaque that got put up there was about la Ida and not the plaque promised to her, but with her so famous optimism she said,”Well at least la Ida is on it.” The friends of Kalisa Committee and I would like to know what happened and when the promos will be kept? Thank you Michael for seeing this though, Kalisa’s friend, Maya
January 7, 2011 at 2:19 pm
Harriet Bird Berman
I found Kalisa’s at a time of crisis in my life. I needed a safe place to find out what my future might look like. At the age of 44, for the first time in my life, I was on my own. I had taken possession of my “self”, and I just wanted to sing my songs. I don’t remember the order of things. I just remember that Kalisa took me under her wing. When my singing partner, Ed Soren, and I came to her ready to perform, she encouraged us and gave us Tuesday evenings to entertain. We played our guitars and sang all the wonderful music of the 60′s. We drew a following. Our pay was food, drinks and tips. It was a magical time for me, and I remain deeply grateful for the care and protection offered to me by this gruff, eccentric woman with a heart of gold. Kalisa was, indeed the Queen… one of a kind… a treasure that will be missed by all who knew her.
August 22, 2010 at 2:17 pm
Leilani Jones
There was a boats work off of the water called Monterey Boat Works. I was also fortunate enough to be given a lot of the old, hand made tools that went into making a Monterey hull fishing boat. One of the boat makers also had a ton of stuff from Rickets lab and I ended up with all of that. I consider the old Cannery Row one of the best memories of my life. I am now writing another novel about a mystery located there.
August 22, 2010 at 2:09 pm
Leilani Jones
I met the queen when I was about 16 yrs. old. I had been kicked out of home and got a job packing squid at Hovden’s cannery. One of the old women there had been a young lady of the night and a good friend of Steinbecks. kalisa would let me eat free when I needed to and later on when I became a singer at Capone’s Warehouse owned by Dick O’Kane, I would go to her place and now pay to eat. She had the bed in the dining room at the time and one night I did my first acid trip and she had to put me on the bed until I came down a bit.
Got lucky and was given all these amazing letters to my squid packing friend from Steinbeck and Doc Ricketts. Pretty amazing letters and I think folks would be surprised to see how many ladies of Steinbecks time were working packing squid on the row in the sixties.
August 12, 2010 at 11:59 am
Lady Hull
Kalisa ia all around me every day in my studio…bits of ” this and that “…The wreath from our dancer’s memorial @ Paper Wing Theatre…Costume pieces she wore for events…Photos and fliers tacked up here and there…She is still an active part of Cannery Row life every day, if you knew her…you cannot pass the old white gates at the back of the ‘cafe’ on the bike path without a tug at the heart and a whispered “Thank you, Kalisa “!!! You gave us a time and a place to be the bohemians of Cannery Row…that we miss the most of all ! XOXOX Lady Hull
December 2, 2009 at 10:21 am
Rob Morgan
I am so sorry to learn of Kalisa’s passing.
We visited Kalisa’s in 2005 when we were touring California and Arizona and while in Cannery Row we visited.
I am a long-time admirer of John Steinbeck and his writing and while it was great to see Cannery Row much had obviously changed since Steinbeck’s days – the one thing that really kept him alive to some extent was Kalisa and talking to her about him and of the occasion she had met him.
A wonderful woman with a nice line in amiable eccentricity, she really was one of the highlights of our trip.
Rob – Cockenzie, Scotland
November 26, 2009 at 10:29 am
Jean Stallings
For a while Kalisa didn’t have a car, so she invited me to drive her to some events. I met many exciting people through Kalisa. She joined Spirit of Speech, International Training in Communication, and always was a high bidder for many of the auction items at our annual holiday party. Several of us celebrated birthday parties upstairs at Kalisa’s. The entire Monterey area will certainly miss this marvelous legend!
November 16, 2009 at 2:23 pm
William ("Bill") Minor
Remembrances of Kalisa Moore
My name is Bill Minor. I became an habitué at Kalisa’s from the time I arrived to teach at MPC in 1971 on. I shared piano chores with other fine practitioners (Alan Berman among them), and even accompanied Michael Parks (of “Then Came Bronson” fame) one night when he dropped in and sang. I published a short story called “The Duke and the Dauphin” in the Kansas Quarterly in 1987—a story about two con artist musicians who showed up to play, pretending to be Harry James and Charlie Spivak. I wasn’t sure what Kalisa would think of the piece, so I changed the name of her place to “Boryana’s Café.” She loved the story, and portions of it were included in a very fine article that Steve Turner wrote about Kalisa, called “The Last Character on Cannery Row,” published in West magazine in 1989.
Richard Mayer, who played flute at Kalisa’s in the 60s (while studying Russian at DLI) and I were privileged—honored—to be a part of the Wave Street Studios/Livenetworks.tv “Memories of Cannery Row with Kalsa Moore” series, sharing reminiscence with her on the February 19th, 2009 program. I would like now, by way of written homage, to post the first two pages of “The Duke and the Dauphin,” for I think (I hope!) they catch the flavor of what it was like to enter the magic “space” of Kalisa’s in those days, or what I described as parting “the glass beads that admit one to this Casablanca close-to-home,” never knowing quite what to expect or what you might find on any given night.
The color of Boryana’s Cafe in Cannery Row is outrageous, like the place itself. It’s canary on a bender, mustard gone riotous, ocher seeking revenge. It’s the moldy pewter yolk of a very old egg. And that’s just the outside.
The inside is catalyst for a Victorian wet dream.
The walls are stained mauve bed sheets. Dripped glass chandeliers, over-sized mirrors, bulbous rosewood framing assault one everywhere. The ceiling–a collage of gold leaf, filigree cherubs and old newspapers–is about to collapse, and the clientele–carnival primped or tourist posh–sometimes (mostly about three in the morning) look that way too. The owner?
She’s an institution, larger than the place itself, commanding. sometimes even accommodating. If she likes you you’re treated like a long-lost son or lover. If she doesn’t, the reception is as dour as dour can be. I have been received both ways, and on the same evening.
Boryana has, or had, an open piano. She attracts some fine practitioners, and some not so fine. I may fall into that last category but, after several years of deserved silence (I used to play professionally) and much discontent with my current job (I won’t go into that but, believe me, it’s discontent), I found myself nibbling away at her ivories one night, to the applause of some Japanese tourists whose delight either spoke of their state of intoxication or their lack of familiarity with jazz–America’s one art. But I was having fun, and fun is mostly what people have at Boryana’s, an institution run on principles as close to anarchy as any paying operation can be.
I played a couple more times after that night. I used up what songs I could remember from dance band days–”These Foolish Things,” “You Are Too Beautiful,” “I Can’t Get Started”–but the attempts must not have displeased the Cafe’s matron. She kept inviting me back and even once (while arguing with a dishwasher who claimed he hadn’t been paid in three months) gave me a free fish salad. It was an elaborate thing in which, among the green stuff, selected herbs and delicious dressing, secret pieces of ling cod and squid were lodged. I closed the place up with a friend that night. Plus a fresh aggregate of Japanese tourists, a guitar player named Sam (who did all the old Cisco Houston, Woody Guthrie stuff I love) and Boryana’s daughter, an unsmiling but stately female apparition.
Stumbling out into the California Pacific dawn, across the street from the sullen wood lab where Doc once wooed Suzy in Steinbeck’s Sweet Thursday–and resisting the urge to pee beside the parked orange hearse that Boryana drives to garage sales–I felt I’d just found a welcome home away from home. I looked forward to returning, and the opportunity came sooner than expected. Two days later I received an urgent phone call. It was Boryana.
“Harry James and Charlie Spivak are living in Sand City,” she said. “Right behind K-Mart.”
“You’re kidding,” I said. “The Harry James? The Charlie Spivak?”
“Nobody else but,” she said. “And they’re coming to my place Saturday night, to play.”
“I’ll be there,” I said.
“You better be,” she said. “Or you’ll miss it.”
I’d come to expect such tough logic from the matriarch so, when she hung up, I scrawled the date down on my calendar. Harry James? Charlie Spivak? They were two of my favorite big band greats. But what the hell were they doing in Monterey? And behind K-Mart no less! However, Boryana’s not the sort of person you doubt for a second. She’s an odd magic sort who runs an odd magic sort of place that makes you want to believe, again, in just about anything. People came to Boryana’s for some of the same reasons that others go to church: to credit what you would not credit elsewhere–such as the appearance of two legendary musicians. The cafe itself, its wild decor, made this possible, but so did the proprietor. She was a substantial gypsy with the glint of many night fires in her eyes–eyes that, when they fixed you, as they often did, commanded allegiance. They suggested that she’d seen her share of magic and that, if you hung around long enough, you would too. Maybe it’s the thick Bulgarian accent, maybe it’s just her size, but when she told me that James and Spivak were living behind K-Mart, I accepted it. Besides, I’d known too many up-and-down, here-today-and-gone-tomorrow, on-the-skids and quick-to-recover musicians. It came with the territory. It was part of the trade–a trade in which, whatever the catalyst (booze or drugs or the wrong kind of mate), nothing was less surprising than the sudden fall.
I’d also been raised, as a kid, on a steady diet of “downfall” classics–films such as Words and Music and Young Man with a Horn. In short, I am a sucker for self-destruction. I knew the price a fine musician could pay for providing others with incessant pleasure, not because I was a fine musician myself but because I had frequently been so provided. I knew those rare notes never came easy–that they were too often accompanied by self-neglect or even self-abuse. After all, I’d seen Kirk Douglas hit the skids as the young Bix Beiderbecke. I’d seen Mickey Rooney, portraying Larry Hart, go stumbling about in the rain. In such a world, little could make more sense than the swan song. the daily demise, of two more jazz greats. I decided to be on hand at Boryana’s to see it …
[And I did--and much more over the years! Thanks, again and again, Kalisa!]
November 15, 2009 at 8:49 pm
Michael Hemp
She was one of a kind and those of us lucky enough to have her in our lives will never forget the “Queen of Cannery Row”—and how much more than even that she really was. The Old Row is now officially over.
I look forward so seeing all of you, her friends, Wednesday night at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. For more info go to: http://www.CanneryRow.org