The Village Watering Hole – Stockman Club

Stockman Club’s Scott Nyberg has happy memories of roaming Fair Oaks as a teenager, skateboarding down Bridge Street, and exploring the American River Bluffs and Fair Oaks Village. His wife, Rebekah, grew up in Fair Oaks and remembered spending her allowance at Sunflower Drive-In. It’s only fitting that Nyberg and his wife Rebekah would meet in 2005, marry in 2012, and find their way to owning the Stockman Club in Fair Oaks Village to continue the Village’s spirit of community and hospitality.

The club opened in the mid-1930s after prohibition, and the bar holds the second oldest liquor license in Sacramento County after Old Ironsides Bar on 10th Street in Sacramento. As vital members of our community, Rebekah and Scott haven’t missed a Fair Oaks Fiesta in thirty-five years, and they have two young boys who will help carry on the tradition of celebrating holidays and Village celebrations. While their sons may never be as free to roam as their father did, they will grow up with great memories of Village life.

The bar’s name changed from The Bobcat to the Stockman Club in the early 1950s bringing to mind horses hitched up at a rail outside the bar in the days of sprawling farms and ranches surrounding the Village. Peggy Stone owned the bar until 1976. Bob Bock bought the bar from Peggy, ran it until his untimely passing in 2001, and passed it on to Dallas Bock, who sold the bar to Scott and Rebekah. Dallas Bock was like a second father to Rebekah and took them both under his wing. When Dallas sold the bar to them, he mentored them and worked alongside them, teaching them the ins and outs of running the business and made it possible for them to succeed in continuing the Stockman Club traditions, and Rebekah managed the bar from 2011 until 2015. Dallas added a room on one side of the bar for pool tables, darts, and at the time, video games. The bench out front is in remembrance of Bob Bock. It’s not unusual to find patrons today whose roots go back three generations of social life and friendships. You’ll see them on holidays when grandparents, parents, and young adults meet for a drink and share their memories.

Stories abound about the club, and longtime customers share memories, including the rumor of a haunting. Scott has yet to see the ghost of a woman who lived upstairs when the building caught fire from one of her cigarettes. She was known to wander downstairs in her nightclothes, rubbing elbows with locals. Some still feel her presence, and it is rumored she chooses her favorite tunes on the jukebox. The fire department saved the bar from the fire, encouraged by locals who didn’t want to lose a part of our history, but the upstairs was a complete loss and became office space.

When the pandemic hit, the Stockman Club was just about to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. As with other Village businesses, Scott and Rebekah couldn’t envision holding a crowded celebration with the threat of Covid and canceled their celebration of St. Patrick’s Day that year. Three hundred seventy-eight days later, they reopened after slogging through loans and other tools to keep afloat. Although St. Patrick’s Day was right around the corner and would bring in much-needed revenue a year later, Scott and Rebekah decided to postpone their celebration of St. Patrick’s Day 2021 to help keep our community safe.

Scott also has great memories of spending a lot of time alongside his grandfather in his workshop, where he built anything he could imagine with his grandfather’s help and wisdom. This treasured time with his grandfather would come in handy. Owning a piece of local history nearly 100 years old is a labor of love, with emphasis on the labor. Scott’s time with his grandfather and experience in construction gave him the tools to do most of the building remodeling. Nyberg is proud of his work and spent much of the past year rewiring, plumbing, and replacing old, worn wood behind the counter. He stripped an old, worn counter in the rear of the bar, covering himself with dust and grit for days to get the perfect finish. And he repaired an ornate mirror over the bar a former upstairs tenant, a dentist, built using dental plaster. Scott was able to mend damage from past years and give the mirror a fresh new life. It’s refreshing to see someone put their sweat equity into a project they love and to see it pay off as a vital part of Fair Oaks Village life.

The Stockman Club fits into our community vision where visitors and neighbors can meander through the Village, stop to share a friendly drink, shoot pool or play darts, hang out with friends, and perhaps hear a story from the past.