Introducing JM's Playbook

"You guys are gonna love this place."

That's all JM would tell us. It was our first Raiders road trip to Las Vegas and, like every trip since, he had the itinerary. We'd stopped asking questions. If JM said trust me, you got in the car.

Twenty minutes later we weren't pulling into one of the resorts on the Strip. We were pulling into a strip mall. There was a cannabis shop next door and an old neon sign that had seen better days, and the parking lot was not screaming "best steakhouse in Las Vegas."

Somebody looked at him. "This is it?"

He just smiled. "I got a guy."

We walked into the Golden Steer, and you could feel it immediately. Dark wood. Red leather booths. A bar that didn't look like it had changed in fifty years. JM started pointing around the room like a docent.

"Frank Sinatra sat there." "That's Elvis' booth." "Joe DiMaggio." "The Rat Pack practically lived here."

Before we'd ordered dinner, an elderly gentleman rolled a cart to the table and built a Caesar salad by hand — garlic, anchovies, parmesan, egg, all of it mixed in front of us and served straight from the bowl. Then the steaks came.

I've traveled my whole career. I've eaten in good restaurants all over this country. That steak at the Golden Steer is still the best I've ever had.

And I never would have found it, because from the outside it looks like a restaurant in a strip mall. Which is the whole point.

JM isn't looking for the biggest sign. He's looking for the biggest story.

Forty minutes into the desert

One year he had us driving southwest out of Vegas, past the last of the streetlights and into the Mojave. Thirty-five miles. The farther we went, the more convinced we became that this wasn't ending well.

"This is it." "He's cashing in on us." "We're getting whacked in the desert."

Then we pulled into Goodsprings and parked outside the Pioneer Saloon — an old mining-town bar, one of the oldest in southern Nevada, that looked like it had been waiting a hundred years for us to walk in. Clark Gable drank there while search crews looked for Carole Lombard's plane in the mountains above town. There's still a sandwich named after him.

Inside was everything JM loves. History all over the walls, cold beer, locals swapping stories, and out back a music festival with live bands, cornhole and barbecue — the kind of afternoon you wish didn't have to end.

We all bought T-shirts before we left. JM doesn't collect souvenirs. He collects places.

Another trip took us to the Punk Rock Museum. Most people would've done the museum and called it a day. JM had already heard about a bar worth finding, and inside it we were served the strangest drink I've ever been handed: the bartender dumped a full can of Pringles into a basket, filled the empty can with ice, poured a rum and Coke into it, and passed it across the bar.

Only JM would know a place like that existed.

Thirty years of asking

In thirty years at Ed's, JM has built something you can't fake. Beer distributors. Wine reps. Restaurant owners. Bartenders, servers, hotel managers, traveling salespeople. Raiders fans. Warriors people going back to his days as a ball boy. Regulars who became lifelong friends, and friends who moved away and still call him when they find a great little restaurant, an unforgettable dive bar, the perfect neighborhood tavern.

Every one of them is another connection. Another "I got a guy."

And when he doesn't have a guy, he finds one. Within minutes he's talking to the bartender, the owner, the server, the couple at the next table. Where do you go after work? Who's got the best burger? What's the one place tourists never find?

He's always collecting.

You don't have to leave the Bay Area

The best part is that none of this requires a plane ticket.

Ask JM where to find the best fried chicken and he'll send you to Casa Orinda — though he'll tell you to go Wednesday through Sunday, because they're dark Mondays and Tuesdays, and to get there when the doors open at four unless you enjoy waiting.

Looking for a legendary dive bar? He's got a guy. A barbecue joint worth the drive to Dixon? He's got a guy. The sports bar with the best game-day atmosphere, the neighborhood tavern everybody overlooks, the hidden winery, the roadside burger, the old-school steakhouse, the festival only locals know about.

He's got a guy.

What this is

JM's Playbook isn't a travel column, and it isn't restaurant reviews, and it definitely isn't another list of ten things to do this weekend.

It's access — to thirty years of friendships and phone numbers and recommendations built one handshake and one barstool at a time. Some weekends it'll be Tahoe. Some weekends it'll be twenty minutes from your house. Sometimes a dive bar, sometimes a legendary steakhouse, sometimes the best burger you've ever had in a town you've driven through a hundred times.

The destination isn't the point. The people are.

As I write this, JM is up in Tahoe with his family. When he gets back he's writing the first Playbook himself — his own Tahoe list, the hidden gems and the places you'd drive right past.

After that, they'll come when they come. He still works full time behind the bar, so these won't run every week. They'll show up when he's had time to hit the road, make the calls, reconnect with old friends and put together a weekend worth sharing.

Everybody's got Google.

JM's got a guy.