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Ricky's in the NewsNews Stories about Ricky's
SI immortalizes family businessBy John Ryan Saturday, February 5, 2005 What, exactly, put Ricky's at No. 2 on Sports Illustrated's list of America's top 25 sports bars? It must have been all that time it wasn't a sports bar. When there was no such thing as a sports bar. "We've been around a long time," owner Ricky Ricardo Jr. said Friday. "I think they were looking for not corporate type of things. I think they were looking for individuality." The famous story...was when Ricky Jr. taped (a rarity in
those days) the Raiders' 1977 Super Bowl rout of
Minnesota and the players came in to watch it weeks
later.
They found it, that's for sure, in the old-school, multi-room facility on an otherwise nondescript corner of Hesperian Boulevard in San Leandro. That's where Ricky Ricardo Sr. and his wife, Betty, moved their life's work in 1962 because Interstate 580 construction had moved them out of the previous spot. They've poured a few beers since. They also poured the foundation for this cultural phenomenon. The Advent big-screen TVs, 6 feet across with three projectors, and the earliest satellites helped the bar show the full slate of NFL games. The famous story -- the one SI noted -- was when Ricky Jr. taped (a rarity in those days) the Raiders' 1977 Super Bowl rout of Minnesota and the players came in to watch it weeks later. When we caught up to him Friday, Ricky Jr. was buying supplies for the Super Bowl party. If you don't have anywhere to go Sunday, this should be your place, and not only because they just put in a 17-foot high-definition screen. Ricky Ricardo Sr. died three years ago. Betty Ricardo died Jan. 3 -- exactly a month before the magazine immortalizing the family business landed in mailboxes.
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