Saving Ocean View’s last big dive: Norfolk antiques dealer, Hershee Bar co-founder revive Cap’n Ron’s

NORFOLK — Ocean View, 1995.

Journey’s “Separate Ways” blasted from the jukebox as cigarette smoke danced above dim pool table lamps. Cheap drinks sloshed across scuffed-up bartops. Servers plunked juicy burgers and heaping plates of seafood in front of guests. Sailors, nurses and watermen mingled with office workers, engineers and entrepreneurs.

Outside, go-go bars beckoned. Cheap hotels and boarding houses welcomed the weary. Sometimes a fight broke out. Or gunfire.

But the city was in the midst of a massive cleanup and redevelopment effort, eyeing high-end real estate and more parks — at the expense of some of Ocean View’s most iconic watering holes.

Twenty years later, only a handful of those booze halls survived.

Around 2018 the city came knocking for Greenies Beach Bar & Grille, once attached to the Coachlamp Inn at the corner of 1st View Street and Ocean View Avenue. The building was demolished that year; an empty waterfront lot remains. The Thirsty Camel, near the fishing pier at the 4th View intersection, burned in April 2020, shortly after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

At the far end of Norfolk’s East Beach in September 2020, half-brothers Bill Koop and Jimmy Campbell closed the Cutty Sark after about 60 years.

That left Cap’n Ron’s, aka Harry’s Lounge, as the last great dive bar in Ocean View. But in October 2022, longtime owner Ron Hurwitz closed the restaurant his family had operated for nearly 75 years.

Then one Friday night in early March, the parking lot at the corner of Chesapeake Boulevard and Chesapeake Street was full.

Longtime Norfolk antiques importer Fred Guarnieri and a business partner, established restaurateur Annette Stone, had reopened Cap’n Ron’s with the goal of keeping its legacy — and some of the old O.V. — alive.

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The Ocean View Amusement Park in 1953. William S. McIntosh wrote in his book "Witness to Norfolk's Renaissance" that Ocean View was, at the time, the prime resort center for Norfolk. (William S. McIntosh/courtesy photo)

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Norfolk’s bustling downtown clattered with construction following the Allied victory in World War II. Meanwhile at the north end of Granby Street, Ocean View was growing into its own.

Sailboats darted along the harbor while watermen in Chesapeake Bay deadrises prowled the shores. Nestled among the dunes and windswept oaks were summer cottages, inns and shops lining sand-strewn streets. Rattling streetcars brought sailors on leave and tourists from all over the mid-Atlantic to the Spanish-deco Nansemond Hotel and, nearby, the Ocean View Amusement Park.

In 1947, Harry R. Harrison built a 1,600-foot fishing pier at the fourth streetcar stop — now called 4th View. Later, the nearby Paul’s Grill became a bar called Little’s Dugout. Less than a mile to the east, Zachary “Jack” Matiatos bought a restaurant on the bay called Greenies. Farther down Ocean View Avenue and about a half-mile inland, Harry J. Hurwitz opened Harry’s Lounge.

The beaches integrated, and other popular spots sprouted from the coast: the Cutty Sark, Jolly Roger, Wing Ding, Purple Onion, Mama’s Italian Kitchen and the Ship’s Cabin. Little’s Dugout eventually became the Thirsty Camel.

Annette Stone grew up near the airport, and the first time she got on a dance floor, it was at the Jolly Roger. She would cram into a blue Chevy Camaro with some friends from Lake Taylor High and head to the packed streets of East Ocean View. The drinking age was 18 then.

“When I was a teenager and I wanted to get in trouble, I would go to Ocean View,” she said in an interview. “Because that’s where all the cool bars were.”

That’s where her dream of owning a bar began, but the community was declining.

“It was never normal at that time,” Stone said. “There were people out at all hours of the night.”

After Busch Gardens Williamsburg opened in 1975, fewer people were buying cotton candy at the Ocean View Amusement Park. Not even the 1977 movie “Rollercoaster,” featuring the park’s rattling wooden behemoth, could save it. The park closed in 1978 and the coaster was destroyed during filming for the 1979 TV movie “The Death of Ocean View Park.”

In 1980, the Nansemond Hotel burned.

Cheap motels and rental properties with absentee landlords proliferated. Go-go bars had migrated from downtown and sprouted up by the dozen, places like Grinders, Foxy Ladies, Flirts.

From Shore Drive to Willoughby, crime and drugs crept into the surrounding streets.

In response, neighborhood civic leagues strengthened and the city cracked down on seedy nightclubs. The landscape shifted again.

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A colorful signpost stands near the back deck of Greenies in Ocean View on March 9, 2018. (Thé Pham)

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By 1995, the fear of blight in Ocean View’s close-knit community had given way to the specter of outsiders buying up the cheap sand and gentrifying it, Virginian-Pilot archives show.

The city proposed a Georgia consultant’s master plan that included new traffic patterns and more parks along with commercial and residential redevelopment to clean up and revitalize the area.

The project threatened landmarks such as the Thirsty Camel, Greenies and Mama’s Italian Kitchen.

“They’re gonna do the same thing here they’ve done everywhere else,” Thirsty Camel patron Steve Whitehurst told The Pilot in March 1995. “They’re gonna screw the little guy. There’s enough places in Ocean View that need to be torn down that they don’t need to be messing with this.”

Another patron muttered: “Jesus Christ, they tore down the amusement park. Why they wanna go tearing down the Camel?”

Real estate magnates Ronnie and Judy Boone bought Greenies in 1998, keeping it out of the city’s hands. But the same year, Mama’s Italian Kitchen closed after owner Alberto Loiercio died. The city later acquired the property and demolished the restaurant.

When the Boones purchased the land encompassing Harrison’s Pier and the Thirsty Camel in 2003 and eyed redevelopment, the talk of losing Ocean View’s landmarks resurfaced.

In a Pilot article that September — just days before Hurricane Isabel hit Hampton Roads — Bayview resident and pawnshop owner Ernie Andrews voiced his fears.

“This place isn’t much to look at,” he said. “The bathrooms stink. But it’s like the show ‘Cheers,’ where everyone knows your name. I’m afraid that’s going to change.”

But the Boones, longtime Ocean View residents who based their businesses there, promised the Camel would be preserved.

“The restaurant is an integral part of Ocean View,” Judy Boone said in September 2003. “You don’t fix what’s not broken.”

Before the Boones could close on the properties, Hurricane Isabel shredded Harrison’s Pier while mostly sparing the Thirsty Camel and Greenies.

The Boones rebuilt the pier — now called the Ocean View Fishing Pier — transforming it into a 1,690-foot attraction with a restaurant and upstairs deck. Further redevelopment plans near the site didn’t materialize, so they ultimately kept their promises about the Camel and Greenies — until the city made a generous offer in 2018.

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The community’s eclectic, bohemian vibe is still there.

Ocean View is one of the few places where you can take in sweeping bayfront vistas from the sandy parking lot of a Harris Teeter, an ABC store and a combination KFC/Taco Bell. The raucous St. Patrick’s Day Parade is once again turning the streets green and the crowds wild. The Bold Mariner and COVA breweries are new, and you can still find some cheap hotels and apartments on the beach.

But by August 2022, the last of Ocean View’s big dive bars was up for sale. While the decision was tough on owner Ron Hurwitz, it was serendipitous for Fred Guarnieri.

When he learned Cap’n Ron’s was on the market, owning a restaurant was already on his bucket list. So he stopped by to check it out — on his 75th birthday.

He bellied up to the U-shaped bar. Danielle Cuthrell, who had worked at the restaurant for more than a decade, was running the show.

She discovered that Guarnieri was celebrating a milestone. She plopped a candled chunk of chocolate cake in front of him and, at his request, did not sing.

“That was the beginning of our friendship,” Guarnieri said.

Within minutes, patrons at the other end of the bar were sending him drinks and well wishes.

“This is what I want,” he told himself. “It’s the most expensive piece of cake I’ve ever had.”

Ron Hurwitz wouldn’t sell the property to just anybody, according to Judy Boone, whose real estate company represented him in the transaction. Hurwitz wanted the neighborhood restaurant preserved and not razed to make way for condos or another 7-Eleven. He also wanted a buyer with food and beverage experience.

Guarnieri, an antiques dealer who formed Boobala’s Importers at 2600 Granby St. in 1974 with William Charles Mark, didn’t have that. He needed a business partner, and found one in an unlikely place.

He was negotiating to buy Ghent’s shuttered Red Dog Saloon, which had closed during the pandemic. Stone, whose lengthy food and beverage portfolio includes Green Onion, 37th & Zen, and the legendary Hershee Bar, had also made an offer. The two were acquaintances but not close enough to know they were competing for the property.

Neither of them made the successful bid. Afterward, they decided to team up and look at a couple other businesses — and then they stumbled upon Cap’n Ron’s.

Stone had entered the restaurant business as a teenager, working at a sub shop in Portsmouth. But even then, her dream was to own a bar.

In 1983 she founded Hershee Bar in Norfolk’s Five Points neighborhood with Billy Tyndall. Stone said the iconic tavern was the world’s oldest lesbian safe haven and the last in Hampton Roads when it closed in 2018 — an event that made national headlines. The city had bought the property and razed the building in another revitalization effort. She has operated several other restaurants over the years, but the loss of Hershee left an unfillable void.

“It’s still very painful,” she said. “As I told Ron when we were negotiating, ‘The last thing you want to do is drive by and see this building being demolished. Your life’s work, your family’s life legacy. And we want to keep it alive and going for you.’

“And I was really grateful that he trusted us enough to pass the torch on.”

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On a sun-kissed April evening, the iconic Harry’s sign still hung over the back deck.

The Cap’n Ron’s Bar & Grille logo welcomed visitors from Chesapeake Boulevard. Palm trees and utility poles dotted the front lawn. Under the dim lights inside, the layout and blue-lit color scheme had not changed.

“It was really out of respect for him,” Guarnieri said.

The most noticeable differences: some antique collectibles along the mirrored walls and a couple windows on the north side converted to stained glass — a nod to Guarnieri’s other career. The menu, streamlined, still offered an affordable but hearty mix of seafood, bar fare and comfort dishes.

Danielle Cuthrell was just beginning her shift. She grew up on Norfolk’s north side and began working at Cap’n Ron’s as a server before learning how to pour drinks. Now, she’s in charge of both of the restaurant’s bars.

“She’s really the fabric of Cap’n Ron’s,” Stone said.

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Cuthrell had met Stone and Guarnieri a few times before the sale.

“They were just coming in as customers, and we ended up making a good connection from there,” she said. “Then I found out they bought it.”

She misses working with Hurwitz, whom she described as family, but said the decision to return to the bar when it reopened made sense.

“This is an Ocean View landmark,” she said. “The people that come here are neighborhood people.”

At the end of the bar, a couple decked in stunning black and gold outfits had gotten married that day. One of their first dates was at Cap’n Ron’s, they said — and Cuthrell took care of them during that rendezvous.

Before counting her till or even taking a drink order, she ran over to give the newlyweds a warm embrace.

Matt Cahill, 757-222-5450, matthew.cahill@pilotonline.com