Nate Myrick, 41, of Atlanta, is more than the average business owner, he’s an accomplished hobo, a family man and was the bassist for a former punk band called The Hard Luck Kids.
Mr. Myrick is one of four owners of the Parish Publick House in Aptos that opened three months ago at 8017 Soquel Dr.. He’s built a chain of pubs including The Parish Publick House on Almar Avenue in the Safeway plaza in Santa Cruz, The Forge Publick House in Fort Collins, Colorado, the Laureate Publick House in Loveland, Colorado, and the original location–recently closed due to a terminated lease–The Maiden Publick House in Big Sur, California.
The new location, in Aptos, has a capacity of 160 people, and a warm, welcoming feel as you walk through the front door, confront the handmade wooden bar, and a roomy floor plan that makes it possible to stretch out your arms. Burgers, sandwiches, whiskey and beer are all on the menu, as well as salads and wings.
“We have hand built every part of our places from the ground up,” said Myrick, proud of the atmosphere he has created. “The whiskey helps,” he added.
Myrick wasn’t always a steady business owner.
“I was a foster kid,” he said. “I’m a fuckin’ hobo.”
Myrick grew up in foster care in Atlanta, Georgia. He worked as a line cook from age 14 till 18. “That was when I was a kid.” He says, “I was homeless, and I was too scruffy to work the bar.”
Myrick is quite the accomplished hobo, too. He recalls hopping trains from New York to Indianapolis, hitchhiking from San Francisco to Los Angeles, then all the way back to Atlanta, and living at “crack houses” all around the U.S. as he toured with The Hard Luck Kids. Myrick said he has crossed the country about 70 times.
His first trip by train was in 1993, when he was 17.
“It was real easy riding for the first couple of days—like day and a half to two days,” but times got difficult as the train went further north and the weather started getting cold.
The weather was just the start of it. Myrick went through a tunnel that was about two miles long at one point on this first trip from Kent, Washington to Chicago.
“You can either stay on top of the train or you can drop down in between the box cars,” he said. But there was no escaping the densening diesel fumes as the train marauded through the tunnel. You just try to stay as low as you can so you can breathe.
Another time he hitchhiked from Los Angeles to Atlanta.
In hopes of finding a job and staying in California Myrick camped out at “this little corner right on the beach,” where Highway 10 meets Highway 1 near Los Angeles. With little success, he started hitchhiking back to Atlanta.
After catching a ride to the California-Arizona border, he waited for around an hour with his friend Tigger and his brindle Pitbull whose name alludes Myrick. Promptly “this tiny little S-10,”—a Chevy pickup driven by an older man—stopped to give them a ride. As they piled into the truck, bags, dog, and all, they noticed several 12 packs of beer sitting behind the driver’s seat. They all broke into the supply as Myrick recalls, even the driver who spent most of the trip gushing bitter salt about his wife and kids who left him.
In the middle of the night, and the middle of the desert, the man became over intoxicated and started swerving across the road, Myrick says, that’s when they realized they reached their stop. They pulled over and unloaded in a dark, cold desert night near the border of Arizona and New Mexico, Myrick says they set up camp and went to sleep with no food to eat and no water to drink.
When they awoke in the morning, Myrick says he was covered in ants, and to top it all off, when they made it back to the road they stood under a daunting sign. “Do not pick up hitchhikers,” it read, “New Mexico State Penitentiary.” They were doomed to hike, trying as they may to hitch a ride, but finding no success until they finally reached a rest stop. “We begged for money,” said Myrick, living off a vending machine at the rest stop as they tried to get a ride. The garbage man at the rest stop became familiar after three weeks until they finally persuaded him to risk his job security and take them away from their prison.
Underneath a pile of rest stop trash bags Myrick, Tigger and his dog made a 70-mile trip in the bed of the garbage man’s pickup truck. Finally, Myrick recalls, they made it to the next rest stop far from any state penitentiary, and got a ride to Santa Fe, New Mexico Joel Sawtell, 37, one of the other owners of the Parish and a good friend to Myrick assured that the stories are all true. Sawtell met Myrick at a crepe place where he worked in Santa Cruz. “Nate would stop in after work and have a couple drinks,” he recalls. Now they are close friends. Myrick deals with more domestic issues like taxes, rent, state laws and employees who the bar back, Darren, refers to affectionately as “bastards and dickheads,” taking the name “dickhead” as his own title.
Though Myrick agreed with Darren’s title, he shrugged and said he really opened the pubs to put his wife, Shila Myrick, through college. He married Shila on December 26, 1998 and said that she was the introduction to his domestic life.
They didn’t settle down right away, though. They toured with his band The Hard Luck Kids, living in “crack houses” as Myrick refers to them. He enjoyed some prosperity as his punk band toured with big names like the Exploited, Sloppy Seconds, and D.I.. Myrick played bass for the band and toured around the country. After 9/11, though, he says it all fell apart. The singer and the guitarist moved back to Atlanta, convinced the next world war was en route. Myrick, however, stayed in California.
Myrick and his wife used the money from his band’s record sales to pay for 80 percent of the Maiden Publick House in Big Sur. Joel Sawtell, Myrick’s close friend put down the remaining 20 percent and they became partners. Later Erik Granath, 41, bought into the first Parish Publick on the West Side.
Now Myrick lives on 40 acres in Boulder Creek and spends his time between the two Parish Pubs.
“It’s been my life dream to own property in the redwoods, so I worked to make it happen,” he said. He and his wife recently celebrated their 19th anniversary.
“I’ve never really owned a couch,” he reflected, and it is a much welcome comfort.
“I got 6000 more stories,” he said as he walked inside, “if you ever want to hear them.”