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The Pool Hall and the Blue Bird Cafe, 646 Valley Ave.

In 1934 Guillermo Rincon bought this property and built an adobe building. He started his own cantina which had a pool room, a small kitchen and a pass out window. They specialized in hamburgers and fries, not Mexican food. In 1947 the Rincons added a dining room but the place still did not have a name. One day an artist was having lunch and the door was open and a blue bird sat in the tree outside. She suggested to Guillermo that he name the restaurant the Blue Bird. When he did, she painted a bluebird into a mural on the dining room wall. The Blue Bird closed in 2000.

Bluebird

A 1995 photo of the Blue Bird Café.  (Photo from the Ethnology Project, Eden Gardens by Draguicevich, Dudash, Ngo and Stamatelaky in the Solana Beach Heritage Museum Collection)

[sources:  Early Solana Beach, Recollections by George C. Wilkens & Robert “Chuckles” Hernandez as told to Jim Nelson, 2002 and Solana Beach, Forty Years of Progress, 1922-1962, April, 1962.]