Excerpt:

From the outside, 2301 Monarch looks like yet another drafty government building on Alameda's former Naval Air Station. Inside, however, is a different story – or stories, if you stay long enough to hear John Walker tell them.

Area 51, the Alameda Point event center now operated by Walker and Nancy Marzouk, is just the most recent adventure in Walker's 40-year career in the Bay Area entertainment industry. In an office bedecked with Summer of Love posters and other concert memorabilia, the former Marine colonel hosts actors, caterers, race car drivers and maintenance crews. He is gregarious but slightly reclusive, proud but unassuming, all at once.

“Not everyone knows we’re out here,” he explained, “but I like it that way.”