Is the Santa Ynez Valley still feeling the ‘Sideways’ hangover?
A middle-aged man staggered out of an ornate wooden door under a red awning, illuminated by a sign in school-bus-yellow overhead that reads “The Hitching Post II, World’s Best BBQ Steaks.” He lurched, groaned to himself, then shuffled towards a country road in the moonlight.
Just past the high yellow sign, a woman stood holding her iPhone, filming the whole sequence. This sober couple has just recreated a drunken scene from the movie Sideways , two decades after its theatrical release.
Sideways may be an old, even obscure movie to the rest of the world, but in the Santa Ynez Valley, as the film celebrates its 20th anniversary this October, it’s spirit lives on, day after day.
Courtesy of Liz Ronk
“I always hated the color of that sign,” says Frank Ostini, owner of The Hitching Post II in Buellton, California. “We wanted to replace it, but after the movie [came out], a hundred people a day were taking pictures by that sign. So we were stuck with it.”