“You want to check out this place in Santa Ana?”
My old roommate asked me this question on a random weeknight. Santa Ana? Really? During college, it was frequently joked that Santa Ana was where Irvine PD took homeless people to keep Irvine looking “suburban”. I had nothing better to do so I tagged along.
Mike told me that one of his buddies had friends that were opening up this bar/lounge in Santa Ana. My expectations were low so once I walked into The Crosby, I didn’t know what to think. It was as if I was transported to somewhere other than Orange County. There were old 80’s boom boxes on the walls. There was music playing. No DJ (yet) but really good, background music you could bob your head to. They served food and had beer and wine (no liquor license yet). I got the cheapest thing on the menu, The Starving Artist, and was pleasantly surprised when they had Chimay on tap for $6.
I knew this place was different when I took that first bite out of the sandwich. I said, “Oh shit” out loud. When I have good food, I’ll raise my eyebrows or nod my head in approval. I rarely use profanity out loud unless the food is that good. The Starving Artist is chef Aron Habinger’s take on the grilled cheese. And it was $5. We left that night and thought, “We’re coming back again.”
This was the beginning of my love for The Crosby. We kept going back and in February 2009, I moved to Santa Ana in an apartment two blocks away from The Crosby. I loved that I was walking distance from The Crosby, Memphis and other great bars and restaurants in Downtown Santa Ana. I loved to show this side of Orange County to people who thought it was nothing but suburbs and conservatives.
Around the same time, DJ Rhettmatic and planbb started their infamous Shift residency on Thursday nights. This changed everything. As if we didn’t have plenty of reasons to go, Shift on Thursdays always gave us something to do on Thursdays. My friends and I had it down to a routine. At around 8, Nino and I would walk to CVS to restock our fridge. By 9 we had our first drinks made and started getting ready. By 10, friends would come over and have a few drinks and by 11, we were walking the two blocks to The Crosby to enjoy the rest of the night. We did this for almost every Shift and for countless other Fridays and Saturdays from 2009 until Nino and I moved out in 2011.
The Crosby was more than a restaurant, bar or lounge. You could argue that it single handedly changed people’s opinions of Santa Ana. It was a huge reason why I moved to Santa Ana. It gave my friends a reason to visit and hang out in Santa Ana. I celebrated birthdays there. We celebrated New Year’s there. I reconnected with Mary there and threw her first surprise birthday there. I’ve bought many rounds of drinks for countless friends. When I think of my late 20’s and my transition into responsible adulthood, I’ll always look back and think of my time in downtown Santa Ana and The Crosby. And I’ll be happy that I was a part of it the short time it was there.