Heinold’s First and Last Chance squats at the edge of Oakland’s waterfront like some old dog that’s seen too much and refuses to die. Built in the 1880s out of a ship’s carcass—a bunkhouse for oyster men before it learned to pour whiskey—it’s the kind of joint that’s older than the stories told inside it. The floor still tilts from the 1906 quake, like the whole room’s hungover and leaning into the memory.
You walk in and it’s dark—you have to blink twice before the outlines come clear. One cramped room, ceiling low enough to make you hunch a little, the bar slanted, the wood soaked with beer, smoke, and years. The stove’s still there. The clock’s been watching drunks age for a hundred and forty years. The walls are so cluttered they feel alive, as if they’ve been sweating out the ghosts of everyone who’s ever taken a last drink here before heading for the ferry, the base, the grave, or Alameda—which used to be dry, so this was your first and last chance before crossing that moral desert.
Jack London sat here, all restless and sharp, before anyone gave a damn about his name. He studied, drank, maybe dreamed up a few wolves over a gallon or two of whatever came cheapest. You can almost see him at the back table now—half drunk, half divine, scribbling down the bones of “John Barleycorn” while the dockworkers curse into their glasses. They call this a literary landmark now, but it’s got more life than any museum—you come here for the same reason you open one of London’s books: to smell the salt, the sweat, and the whiskey.
In 1892, London was a young punk stealing oysters and reselling them on the docks. Rest of the time he practically lived at Johnny Heinold’s place. One day, he did what every broke dreamer in a bar eventually does: he leaned over the counter and asked for a loan. Johnny Heinold, who’d watched London hustle oysters and newspapers and knock back cheap drinks and listen harder than was healthy, staked him the money for school—a semester at Berkeley, a shot at something beyond the docks and the factories. It wasn’t much, and it didn’t last long, but sometimes a man doesn’t need a full bridge out of hell, just a plank to run on before the flames catch up.
Today, the regulars still come, leaning into beer and time, and the tourists show up hunting ghosts they can’t name. You don’t order cocktails here. You drink simple and straight. Because this place isn’t trying to make you comfortable—it’s trying to remind you what the world looked like before comfort ruined it. Waterfront labor. Oysters and sailors. The echo of bootlegs and promises. A warped floor and a novelist who turned a bar into a story, and the story into a legend.
Heinold’s isn’t just a stop—it’s a confession booth for the city’s old vices, still open for business.
Heinold’s First and Last Chance Saloon is at 48 Webster Street, Jack London Square, Oakland, CA