Imagine a brewery here. Part 2: West Oakland

Part 1: East Oakland

West Oakland is a charged topic right now, and this is not the place for debating it. I simply don’t know enough to have an opinion worth hearing. It’s complicated, and all I know for sure about West Oakland really is I have friends who’ve lived there for years who throw great parties, I’ve had some beery good times at Linden Street Brewing, and I’d love to get in a time machine and see a blues show on 7th.

And it’s a shame there is no longer a brewery right the hell across the street from what is now West Oakland BART.

Washington Brewery/Golden West/Goebel/Pacific/Maier: northwest corner of 5th and Kirkham

Washington Brewery had a ton of different owners and it also got around. According to Oakland: The Story of a City by Beth Bagwell, Washington Brewery was at 2nd and Harrison, then moved to 6th and Broadway, then 5th and Kirkham, where it appears to have spent the most time. Someone-or-another had been brewing at that intersection (the westernmost one on the map below) since 1856.

Talk about a gypsy brewery…

In 1910 it became Golden West Brewery and it stayed that way for decades. 1943 records give its address as 537 Kirkham. It’s one of the few breweries that survived Prohibition. Back to our new BFF Beth Bagwell:

“Accounts differ about what happened during Prohibition. One story says the company restricted its output to ‘near beer,’ watery stuff that would have made the old German brewers weep. But when repeal was announced, somehow there was beer. Trucks lined up at the side of the building, as every restaurant and hotel laid in a supply for the parched public. Within forty-eight hours of repeal, the brewery at Fifth and Kirkham was back in business.”

“Accounts differ,” but as you probably know it takes more than 48 hours to make beer. Three cheers for getting away with it, boys.

Later Golden West became known as Goebel Brewing, and in 1955, Pacific Brewing Company (no relation to the brewpub Pacific Coast in Old Oakland). In its final ownership change it was sold to the Maier Brewing Company of Los Angeles, spent its last few years idle, and was demolished in 1964. [insert your own smartass comment about LA]

Here’s what we found when we went there…