The story behind The Avenue: the Bay Area's only 365-day-a-year Halloween bar 👻🎃
As the summer months wind down, the street the couple lives on begins to look a little spooky, too. “We get some weird looks from neighbors when there are dead bodies all over the yard,” Curtis said.Curtis is the mastermind behind the mostly handcrafted props, attributing his creative savvy to his parents. His mom is an artist, and his dad, a contractor. “I needed to work that way, with my hands,” he said, so he bartended at the now-closed divefor 14 years.
Consequently, decorating the bar is a family affair. They pay for all of the decorations themselves, which usually cost up to two thousand dollars per year. They also rent a storage unit for their props. The now-permanent display started out as a diorama of paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren’s famed Occult Museum from the 2013 horror flick “The Conjuring,” complete with a creepy Raggedy Ann in homage to the reportedly haunted Annabelle doll. Now, Tana fondly refers to the lounge as “a storage room for s— that’s scary.”
Most regulars are good-spirited about the affair, though. “I’ll get a text from someone about how much they like the wolf, or something, and I remember why I do all of this. It goes from a lot of hard work to fun when you get reactions out of people,” he said.