In October of 2025, Liz Sibley stood in the shell of Jim Dunn’s Cosmopolitan at 301 Second St., the wood plank floor newly oiled and light from the street slanting in on a half-built stage. The bar’s brass footrail lay at its base, yet to be re-attached. At the center of the triptych of mirrors behind the bar, a mammoth, clanging 1921 cash register still bore a label marking it “Mr. Jimmy Dunn’s.” The deer head above, which she’s told is from the 1880s, isn’t original to the bar, but an undated photo from its heyday includes one looming over a pair of old men on stools, a bartender, ghostly white from overexposure, standing opposite them.
Within the month, Sibley’s Siren’s Song at Jim Dunn’s opened with live shows, bringing the stalwart Eureka music venue back to the scene after shuttering its doors down the street at the Healy Bros. Building in April. Moving into the 155-year-old saloon spot is a revival for local bands as well as a historic space that’s been dormant for decades.
The Jan. 26,1871 issue of the Humboldt Times notes A.L. Sawtelle was putting up a two-story building on the corner of Second and D streets. By that summer, the Sawtelle Building’s Bay View House accommodated 20 lodgers upstairs, while the Bay View Saloon served drinks downstairs. Remodeling in 1893, 1909 and 1919 has changed the exterior completely, but the bones remain, as does the “fine, turn-of-the-century bar and back-bar and other fragments of period interior ornamentation” described by the National Register of Historic Places listing of Old Town locations.
Records show James Dunn took over the spot in 1921, early in Prohibition. Not that the lovely bar went to waste. Dunn ran a speakeasy sandwiched between a cigar shop up front and a barber shop in the back, divisions still marked by the archways overhead. Dunn was, according to news clippings Sibley has collected, busted and fined as much as $500 for possession of alcohol a couple times. At least one charge for sale of alcohol, however, didn’t stick since the “federal witness failed to make a positive identification of Dunn as the man who sold him the booze.”
After Prohibition was lifted, Jim Dunn’s Cosmopolitan kept locals in their cups well through the 1990s, until its last proprietor Coy “Butch” Newman was busted for food stamp fraud and in 1999 pleaded guilty to what the state Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control considers a “crime of moral turpitude.”
Once closed, the bar remained dark for decades.
Four months after reopening, with one foot on the re-installed brass rail at the base of the bar, Sibley recounts some of the lore customers have shared. There’s the apocryphal tale of a double homicide, in which one man allegedly slashed the belly of another, who fought back and killed his attacker before making his way to the bar, downing a shot and expiring himself.
One man told Sibley and Clayton that a drunk patron in the 1950s or 1960s caught his side on the corner of the bar in the back, prompting him to fetch a chainsaw from his truck and chop the point of the corner on the spot. That story was later confirmed by the chainsaw wielder’s granddaughter, and the hacked corner remains.
Sibley points to the knobs on the lights overhead, long ago converted from gas to electric. The building owners had already upgraded the bathrooms and other parts of the structure, but Sibley and Clayton still had their work cut out for them. They covered the ceiling with sound-absorbent faux-copper plates, built a stage in the front along the windows and deep-cleaned and treated the floor. “I thought it was just black,” says Sibley, “it was just layers of dirt.”
Still, even with an estimated $60,000 in renovation costs, they wanted to maintain the character of the old Dunn’s. The vintage wooden phonebooth Andy Garcia used in the 1992 movie Jennifer 8 still stands in the corner (see the plaque outside commemorating the filming), though not in working order. The old nautical paintings still line the walls, nodding to the bar’s history as a fisher’s watering hole, as does the large painting of men pulling up crab pots that hangs over the stage. It’s a history Clayton particularly appreciates as a commercial fisher himself.
As if on cue, crab fisher Jason Tunzi comes in to retrieve a penny whistle he’d left at the bar during Sunday’s karaoke. He thanks Sibley when she puts it on the bar top and he hands her a bag with a couple live crab as a thank you for the bartender who rescued the whistle.
Sibley grew up in a fishing community in Key Largo, Florida. While she appreciates her upbringing there, as a teen, its lack of malls and movie theaters chafed. As an adult, she worked as a server and eventually tended bar in New York City. She was bartending in Brooklyn when she first visited a friend in Humboldt. A couple months later, he asked her to join him here working in the cannabis industry, and eventually she gave it a shot. When the market plummeted, she went back to bartending.
She had been bartending at Blue Lake Casino when COVID hit and, amid the starts and stops of reopening, she applied to work at Siren’s Song Tavern. It was then owned by J.D. Pegg, who’d purchased it from the original owners Phyllis Barbra and Nathan Swensen, who took on the spot in the historic Healy Bros. Building in 2012. The opening of the Siren’s Song Tavern in that building, built in 1908, was a revival of its own, as it was the site of the former Old Town Bar and Grill, which had its own storied history as a music venue but was shuttered by earthquake damage in 2010.
Working for Pegg, Sibley says she was soon running the bar, booking bands and keeping track of the books. In 2022, she bought the business from him. In spring of 2025, “When I found out that the lease was not gonna get renewed,” she says, “I put it to the public and see what the response is. … If no one cares, what’s the point?” But the response, she says, was supportive and regulars and bands showed up for a fundraiser to help with relocation. The last show was April 15.
“I reflected on how many stages had closed since I got involved with Siren’s Song,” says Sibley, who recognizes how the economic hits Humboldt in particular has taken in the last few years have made it harder to keep a music venue afloat when people are going out less and watching their money more.
“I sort of realized with the number of musicians we have here, Humboldt couldn’t afford to lose another stage,” especially an all-ages one. “Our all-ages shows give younger kids a constructive place to go. We’re a bar but it’s not rowdy, there’s not drugs and stuff,” she says. “When young bands come, we treat them like any other band,” she explains. The staff show them the ropes and “what it’s really like if they want to pursue this.” Thursday open mic nights welcome newbies, too. “We have a lot of people who come and play for the first time — adults, too.”
Sibley had been considering a spot on West Fifth Street and was moving furniture out of the Healy Bros. Building when she ran into someone on the street who mentioned Jim Dunn’s Cosmopolitan was being renovated. It felt like fate.
The Siren’s Song at Jim Dunn’s officially opened with an open mic night on Oct. 30, as soon as all the permits, licenses and fire marshal inspections came through. A last-minute Halloween night show with Red Hot Shame, regulars from the old spot, drew a respectable crowd on short notice. The new beer and liquor license still allows all-ages patrons (and requires the accompanying vigilance by staff) while thickening the margins a bit with the full bar. The chalkboard beer menu still runs from $3 cans of Hamm’s to a $10 Triple IPA from Laughing Monk.
Jim Dunn’s. Credit: Photo by Jennifer Fumiko Cahill.
Audio engineer Shiny Stillinger is happy to see Siren’s Song come back. “It’s a very welcoming venue for musicians of all levels and I think it’s something that’s needed, that there’s a venue with consist open mics, where beginning bands can play,” he says. “It’s been kind of a staple of the community as far as musicians are concerned.”
Sound-wise, he says, the new location is an upgrade, with its shorter ceiling and overhead arches that act as baffles making for better acoustics. It’s an improvement that has allowed him space to offer multi-track recording for bands. Plus, the little closet off the side of the stage keeps beer spills away from his equipment.
On Feb. 20, a couple shoot pool in the back as visiting band Beauty is Betrayal sets up their gear for the Friday set. There are echoes of the Healy Bros. Building location, including the old stools, drapes made from the red velvet that used to hang in its windows, tables cut from the stripped-out bar and the rescued metal flashing along the edge of the stage.
One window bears a calendar dotted with the month’s gigs, including garage punk band Something Wicked, regular Siren’s Song performers set to play their first show in the new digs. Vocalist and guitarist Nate Johle helped organize the April fundraiser for the Siren’s Song Tavern. “All of the local venues mean a lot to me because they’re very scarce,” he says. “A lot of community would be lost … especially for punk and metal music,” he explains, adding Savage Henry is the only other steady venue for those genres in Eureka.
Fellow band member Miles Kinman sees a social need for places like Siren’s Song, a “third space” between work and home to relax and connect with others face to face. That it’s an all-ages venue is important, too, he says. “Music isn’t just for people who drink alcohol. … I think it brings the community together.”
Beauty is Betrayal, who’ll be driving all night to reach Reno for a gig the next day, launches into a snarling cover of Katy Perry’s “Dark Horse.” Then Something Wicked starts their set as Sibley and Clayton circle the edges of the room. By the time the band is dedicating a number to everyone on the Epstein list and the crowd is pumping their fists and stomping along, Sibley has returned to her spot just outside the open door where the cobalt stage light pours incongruously from the drab exterior.
There are still plenty of folks chatting and sipping as the bands pack up their merch and carry their gear back out into the street.
Johle carries a guitar case, hair a little damper than before the show. Asked how it felt to play in the new spot, he grins and says, “It still feels like Siren’s Song.”
Jennifer Fumiko Cahill (she/her) is the managing editor at the Journal. Reach her at (707) 442-1400 ext. 106, or jennifer@northcoastjournal.com. Follow her on Bluesky @jfumikocahill.bsky.social.
This article appears in The Siren’s Song Returns at Jim Dunn’s.
Umm. A little slow to report this I havbe already seen several great shows at the new location.