“I would go to Europe, go on the road, and come home to Patricks. “It was always a great place to come home and play to,” Viau said. “He and Tina did a lot of little things that most places don’t do, like have a woman pass the hat a couple times a night for tips for the band, and he would make sure there were extra microphones in case you forgot yours. “He was a very joyful person, just one of the nicest people you ever met,” said Jonny Viau, a saxophonist who began playing at Patricks II 30 years ago. Matranga tried his entrepreneurial hand at running laundromats and lunch trucks, but after he got his first taste of bartending at his uncle’s downtown bar, The Buccaneer, his destiny was set. He joined the Army in 1959 and was stationed in Germany for two years before returning to San Diego. Philip Neri Catholic High School, he moved to San Diego in the late 1950s to escape the frigid Michigan winters. Growing up, he worked in a bowling alley and his father’s dry cleaning business. 10, 1936, in Detroit, the second oldest of four to Henry and Josephine Matranga. “They certainly were pioneers of the Gaslamp.” I really think he and his wife, Tina, did an amazing job of keeping the music alive. “It was drugs and sex and without question one of the seediest corners in downtown San Diego,” said Ingrid Croce of the area’s early years. He never viewed the emerging nightclubs as competition, but as vehicles that made the area stronger, said his son.

Matranga welcomed his new neighbor with open arms.

When Croce’s Restaurant & Jazz Bar moved in next door in the early 1980s, Mr.

Peppermint larry smiling