FOR Johnny Van Wyk, it’s a time of endings and new beginnings. And in between, there’s the limo. When he first opened Johnny V’s in downtown San Jose in 2002, he bought a 1988 Cadillac stretch limo, battleship gray, to promote the bar. After a while, though, the vehicle just got to be too much work. He gave it to longtime downtown fixture Eagle Buckett, who had worked at Marsugi’s and then the Cactus Club for years before becoming a custodian and general multitasker for Van Wyk’s first club, Clyden’s, and then Johnny V’s.
Buckett was such an integral part of Johnny V’s that he actually lived there, upstairs, until it closed on May 31 of last year. He passed away from a heart attack on May 17, just a month after Van Wyk reopened Johnny V’s.
Now Van Wyk has got the limo again, and on this particular day, he’s driving it from one spot to another trying to figure out what to do with it, and missing Buckett.
“He was one of my best friends,” says Van Wyk. “He was kind of the glue of the club.”
This time around, Van Wyk will have to find new ways to make his night spot stick. Van Wyk has long had a reputation as a champion of live music, and his club was a successful underground favorite before his lease ended and new landlords basically doubled his rent last year. “It buried me,” he remembers.
Even back then, as he gave up Johnny V’s for a short stint bringing live music into Mission Ale House, he predicted the rent increase would be a disaster and he would somehow, someway eventually get his club back. He was right. “Basically, they foreclosed on the building, and it went back to my original landlord,” says Van Wyk. “He called me up and offered me my original deal.” So he signed a six-year lease, and got right to work. Van Wyk had been so confident that something would eventually happen that he’d held onto his liquor license for the year that he was out of Johnny V’s. Unfortunately, he didn’t hold on to some other things.
“I didn’t have anything,” he says. “I had zero sound equipment. I sold it all when the bar closed.”
Starting from scratch, though, has been a great thing for Johnny V’s. It looks better inside than it ever has, starting with a paint job that lightened it up immensely. Some of the cosmetic changes actually date back to right before the bar closed, when he did a remodeling job that opened up the space. But for the reopening he’s put posters up from the hundreds of shows he’s booked, and for the first time ever, Johnny V’s now has real bar stools.
He calls the reopening touches “simple stuff that works.” And he brought back a musical philosophy that worked, as well, with local and touring bands, along with the occasional DJ, playing Thursday through Sunday nights. The popular freestyle open night the Cypher hosted by Andrew Moyco (better known as Audio Dru) is back on Wednesday nights. And he’s adding some rotating regulars, like DJ Jagged Jeff one Saturday a month.
“It’s 80 to 90 percent bands on weekends,” he says. “If I’m going to have a DJ, I like to have somebody like Jeff where it’s not run-of-the-mill stuff.” As far as musicians go, he tends to book an eclectic mix that runs from rock to hip-hop to death metal: “I’m down for all styles, as long as it’s organic and real.”
Van Wyk will soon be unveiling some menu options at Johnny V’s, and is already looking to expand. “There really is a lot of potential,” he says. “We’ll see what happens.”
Meanwhile, there’s the limo to deal with, and he admits he doesn’t have nearly as many ideas for that.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do with it.”
