SLO County dive bar has only served beer and wine for 70 years. That’s about to change
A neighborhood dive bar in San Luis Obispo County recently got a full liquor license after decades of only serving beer and wine, and it will soon begin serving drinks featuring local distilleries.
The Rodeo Bar in Paso Robles is over 70 years old and has been serving local beers since 1954.
When its previous owners hit the pandemic crossroads and faced the decision of what to do with the bar as they reached retirement age, they decided to sell.
Their first choice for the new owner of the Rodeo? Taryn Caraveo, a bartender at the bar for two years who would play the game of “what-ifs” of owning the Rodeo Bar with her best friend and neighbor Daniel Cardinale.
“When they offered it to her and she called me, I was like, ‘Let’s go,’” Cardinale told The Tribune. “No way is this happening right now.”
The best friends took over the Rodeo in March 2020 and officially reopened the bar on July 4, 2020.
Both Paso Robles locals and frequenters of the dive bar, their focus was on keeping what worked.
“It was the core memories of enjoying this space, having fun and congregating with our friends, and experiencing that age that we were all together,” Cardinale said. “This was the watering hole for us. It was the last watering hole, to be honest.”
The bar scene in Paso Robles is no “Disneyland,” Cardinale said, where bars are on every street corner and there’s an array of choices to grab a drink.
The Rodeo Bar, Pappy McGregor’s and Pine Street Saloon are some of the few bars in the downtown area, and the Rodeo’s co-owners wanted to grow the dive bar with the city.
“The possibility of growing the Rodeo,” Caraveo said, “that goes into the liquor license. Like if we had known then what we know now, I think we would have been a little bit more excited when we first bought the bar,” noting that the excitement now does not compare to their feelings then when they first took ownership of the Rodeo.
The Rodeo Bar will begin serving from local distilleries in the next 30 days, Cardinale said, and plans to keep its Paso Robles roots and local traditions, like bringing in local taco trucks to park on the bar’s premises for no charge and serve food.
“It’s important to us that we stay true to the business that we bought and believe in,” Cardinale said. “We don’t want to veer off course, because now we have starry eyes.”
“Like, we’re still from Paso,” he added. “I’ll never not be, so this part will represent that forever, and Taryn will vouch for that, that we’re on the same wavelength. This is family.”
For more information
The Rodeo Bar at 622 12th St. in Paso Robles is open every day from 2 p.m. to 2 a.m. with a juke box, pool tables, corn hole and dartboards. For more information about the dive bar, visit its Facebook at therodeobarpr.